The Rise and Development of Urban Social Movements in Poland

The fall of state socialism marks a clear break in the development of the societies of Central-Eastern Europe. The same break is also observable in the emergence and development of urban activism in these societies. This study focuses on the recent intensification in the activities of urban social movements in Poland. The post-socialist transformation has entailed the emergence and development of new types of urban activism, resulting in some considerable achievements on the part of these social movements in the field of local and national urban politics. What is, moreover, interesting in the recent development of Polish urban social movements is that they are in a higher degree than ever before initiating cooperation with each other and other actors interested in urban issues. The heightened level of urban activism and the ambition to coordinate this kind of activism and build coalitions across movements, during the last decade, will stand in focus of analysis. It is the paper’s ambition to distinguish between different urban social movements, active in the country, and present a typology on the basis of their characteristics, repertoires of action and demands. The theoretical aim is to discuss how the term urban social movements can be understood in a specific historical and cultural context of post-socialism. The ambition is also to fill in the gap on urban social movements in this part of Europe and provide a more nuanced picture of the activity among Polish urban grassroots, than hitherto has been presented.