The Changing Everyday Geographies of Consumption Related Mobility in the Post-Socialist Bulgarian City

by Garstka, Grant Jude

This thesis aims to study urban transition in the post-socialist context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). I explore the urban morphology of post-socialist cities through the dialectic relationship between social processes and the changing built environment. I show how post-socialist cities are produced, reproduced and transformed (Pred 1984) via the changes in the everyday social geographies, framed as consumption related mobility, in the retail landscape of the case study city of Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. This thesis argues that everyday geographies of city residents are growing in spatial extent with the rise of de-centralized formal retail, while at the same time, everyday geographies are becoming more localized as consumption activates increase in concentration at the micro-level of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, both of these changes to everyday geographies indicate a decrease in consumption related mobility, urban consumption and retail consumption in the city center, in turn, putting the city center at risk for decline.