CROATIAN CITIES UNDER TRANSFORMATION: NEW TENDENCIES IN HOUSING AND SEGREGATION DUBRAVKA SPEVEC* & SANJA KLEMPIC ´ BOGADI** *Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Marulicev trg 19/II, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: dspevec@geog.pmf.hr **Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Trg Stjepana Radica 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: sanja.klempic@imin.hr Received: April 2008; revised January 2009 ABSTRACT This paper analyses changes and new tendencies related to housing and segregation patterns in Croatian cities following the process of transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. Housing in Croatia has experienced large changes since the beginning of the 1990s, including a massive privatisation process of public housing, rising costs of housing and an increasing diver- sification of housing types. New developments and changes in housing policy have to a large extent influenced the development of residential differentiation in larger Croatian cities. Key words: Croatian cities, housing, privatisation, residential mobility, segregation, transition INTRODUCTION: FROM SOCIALIST TO POST-SOCIALIST CITIES Since the first comprehensive research on the socialist city by French & Hamilton (1979), many analyses have been carried out on the development of cities in Central and Eastern European countries (e.g. Szelényi 1983, 1987, 1996; Musil 1987; Enyedi 1996; Smith 1996; see also Van Kempen & Murie 2009). During the socialist period, urban living was seen as the highest form of socialist life and cities were regarded as the focal points for the realisation of the aspired modernisation of the economy and the development of the classless society (French & Hamilton 1979; Sailer-Fliege 1999). Living conditions both within and between cities were to be equalised (Sailer-Fliege 1999) and the state had much greater power to deter- mine the pace and the form of urban devel- opment compared with capitalist societies (French & Hamilton 1979; Smith 1996). Smith (1996) defines the ideal model of the socialist city, as a combination of economic effi- ciency, social justice in terms of access to urban goods and services, and a high quality of life for the urban population. This ideal model was never completely achieved, but the new social- ist towns came closer to the model than other cities with an urban legacy inherited from different traditions (French & Hamilton 1979; Harloe 1996). Szelényi (1996) pointed out three distinctive features of socialist cities: they achieved industrialisation with less urban popu- lation growth and less spatial concentration of the population than in capitalist cities at similar stages of growth (under-urbanisation); there was less urbanism – less diversity, less economis- ing with space, and consequently lower inner- city densities and less urban marginality; and the cities had a distinctive ecological structure. After the collapse of socialism at the begin- ning of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Euro- pean countries witnessed complex and radical Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2009, Vol. 100, No. 4, pp. 454–468. © 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA