What attracts people to inner city areas? The cases of two post-socialist cities in Estonia and the Czech Republic

Abstract

Since the 1990s the inner city residential areas of CEE post-socialist cities have experienced substantial physical and social transformation. Previous studies have recorded a gradual rehabilitation of inner city housing stock and the displacement of lower status groups by middle and higher social status residents, but they have also shown that diverse social groups continue to live in the inner city. The scholarly emphasis on identifying the macro-scale factors that influence inner city change has resulted in a lack of studies considering micro-scale processes. We therefore herein attempt to address this gap in the literature by providing qualitative insight into the drivers of inner city dynamics at the level of the individual actors concerned. Our study is based on an investigation of two second-tier cities: Tartu in Estonia and České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. We found that, besides supply side factors which emphasise the conditions of urban spatial fabric, relocations to inner cities can best be explained by a combination of household socio-economic, life course and lifestyle factors. We also provide a typology of relocators to post-socialist inner cities, based on our findings.