Abstract
This chapter examines the way the Romanian and Hungarian socialist regimes re-ordered space by means of architecture. After a short introduction into space as social(ist) product, the chapter analyses the physical and psychological context of Romania’s prefabricated constructs and Hungary’s scattered homesteads and cube houses. By providing a spatial reading of the cityscape of Bucharest and the rural landscape of Hungary, the examination establishes a cultural and political base for the vertical and horizontal categories on screen discussed later in the book.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Dimaio, ‘the microraions (also called microboroughs or microdistrincts) are small communities of several thousand inhabitants within a larger urban setting. Schools, nurseries, stores catering daily needs, sports, and recreational facilities, cinemas (…), all elements of cultural and public service are to be fully integrated in the microraion plan. And the satisfaction of man’s many and growing everyday and cultural needs will more and more assume a communalized character and will cross the boundaries of the individual apartment. As a basic city planning rile, all new housing should be located in these large complexes’ (Dimaio 1974, 55).
- 2.
As White points out, the term Puszta is often used in conjunction with the Alföld , although the latter refers to an exact geographic territory that stretches from the Danube in the west to the city of Miskolc in the north and the Bihor Mountains in the east (see White 2000, 88). In contrast, Puszta refers to the nature of the land (that is, its alkaline grassland and dreary, open character).
- 3.
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Batori, A. (2018). The Socialist Production of Eastern European Space. In: Space in Romanian and Hungarian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75951-7_2
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