Planning Capital Cities

Yani Valkanov

Suburbanisation in Sofia: changing the spatial

structure of a post-communist city^1

Introduction

The suburbanisation has been one of the most important processes shaping the
structure of the cities in the industrial countries and a subject of considerable
debate. Less is known, however, about the similar trend in the cities of the
transitional countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The most countries of
the region began massive transformations of their societies after 1989, with
an immense impact especially on the capital cities. Some new social and
spatial trends are readily observable: an initial residential and commercial
suburbanisation, a commercialisation, a growing differentiation between the
different urban areas.^2 Sýkora argues that the post-communist development of
the capital cities should be generalised into a model of a post-communist city,
which, unlike other urban models should be dynamic, rather than equilibrium-
based.^3 He poses five topics for the future research of the migration flows
into and out of cities: the population growth or decline, the internal migration
patterns, the inner city neighbourhoods, the future of the housing estates, the
socio-spatial disparity, polarisation and segregation.^4

This paper investigates the changes in the distribution of population within the
territory of the city of Sofia and Sofia Municipality from 1992 to 2001, with the
general purpose of drawing a picture of the suburbanisation. The distribution
of population within the metropolitan region is an important characteristic
of the urban structure and any significant population redistribution indicates
a spatial restructuring. The main hypothesis debated here is that after 1989,
Sofia experienced initial suburbanisation trends and changes in the urban
spatial structure, caused by the transformations and the transition from a
socialist to a market city. The paper begins with an analysis of the socialist
cities’ spatial structure. A comparison is made between the population density
profiles of the socialist and the market cities used as a basis for generalising