This issue is a discussion continued, and yet to be continued, on the destiny of the postsocialist city. What the texts offered here have in common is that they are all provoked by a visual, aesthetic phenomenon of the urban (graffiti, outdoor advertising, urban renovation, “architectural folklore”, monuments, etc.) – in other words, by the sights in the city – resulting from the unequal battle between the city “from above” and the city “from bellow”. The ambition of the authors, however, is to look not only into the practices underlying these urban sights, but also into the effects these practices have on re-defining citizenship, public sphere, capitalism, neoliberalism, etc.

The city in the present theme issue is considered not only as an urban landscape (“post-urban landscape”, “landscape of postmodernity”), but also as a palimpsest, as a site of memory, as a sign system, as a personal life-story, as well as political space in which rights are discussed, acquired, exercised and asserted, territories (and capitals) are appropriated, marked and re-distributed; and last but not least, as social space in which different forms of otherness co-exist.

This issue aims to turn our eyes on the negatively stigmatized urban sights in the postsocialist city (and challenge them), as well as to encourage the researcher’s curiosity and sensitivity towards the less visible actors in the “battle for the city” – its inhabitants – the citizens.

How do we “do” the city we live in?

Svetla Kazalarska, Editor of Seminar_BG #2