How do we call the urban change? : The case of cities in Central Europe

International audienceCities are always in movement ; but some movements are very radical and address the structure of a political, economical, social, and territorial systeym. This was the case after the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe: cities in this region have been going through deep changers, that have transformed their material shape, the social dynamics, the governance, and their economic functions. Scholars have tried to identifiy what was going on in these“cities in transition, and proposed several models, theories, and words to describe and analyse urban transformations.Curiously, about 25 years after the systemic changes that appeared in Europe, the situation of cities between Germany and Russia is still not clear. Politically, most of them are cities of countries which are Member States of the European Union. As regards the economy and the culture, they can be considered as outposts of globalization and Europeanization. Nevertheless, some legacies of the former regime are still present in the material structures of cities, and in the way urban society works. This is why the vocabulary and the theoretical frameworks used to define or to qualify those cities is very broad, offering such possibilities as post-socialist / communist, intermediate cities, Central Europe, post-colonial, etc. Some of those categories are time-based (those beginning with “post” for example), whereas some others are rather space-oriented. There still is a need to discuss and to analyse the nature of urban changes and of cities in Central and Eastern Europe, and to clarify their position in Europe and in the World. Do they have to be seen in opposition to what they are not anymore, to what they are supposed to become? Or do they have to be associated with similar cities in they neighbourhood? With their new spatial integration