Paths of the urban regeneration process in Central and Eastern Europe after EU enlargement - Poland and Bulgaria as comparative case studies

Abstract

The enlargement of the EU towards Central-Eastern Europe in the years 2004 and 2007 and the related EU funds provided new opportunities and created new challenges to both big metropolitan cities and smaller settlements. One of the particularly important challenges was to define appropriate national and local policies for the urban regeneration of neglected areas, which were abundant in this part of Europe. The objective of the paper is to analyze and evaluate actions taken in Bulgaria and Poland at the national and local level in the field of urban regeneration after the countries? accession to the EU. The paper compares the general national and local planning approaches and capacity building for urban regeneration in the context of regulative and procedural issues. The local case studies represent two types of urban areas under regeneration: the metropolitan core cities Pozna? and Sofia and medium-sized non-core towns of Pi?a and Gabrovo. The results are in the form of a concurrent evaluation of both the achievements and negative effects resulting from the national and local processes in the envisaged and the recently implemented activities with regard to the regeneration of deprived urban neighborhoods and areas.