Review: Architectures au delà du mur: Berlin—Varsovie—Moscou, 1989–2009 by Ewa Béard, Corinne Jaquand editors; Imaginationen des Urbanen. Konzeption, Reflexion und Fiktion von Stadt in Mittel- und Osteuropa by Arnold Bartetzky, Marina Dmitrieva, Alfrun Kliems; The Post Socialist City: Continuity and Change in Urban Space and Imagery by Marina Dmitrieva, Alfrun Kliems

Architectures au delà du mur deals with the three capitals—Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow—most strongly shaped by Stalinist urban and architectural concepts. As was doubtless discussed at length by the organizers of a conference held in Paris under the same name in 2006, "au delà" not only means "on the other side," but may also be taken to mean "after": after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that is. Most of the book's seventeen contributions deal with post-1989 issues. Much of it is told in professional town planners' and urban housing managers' language, statistics on the one hand, or such general formulations as "paysage urbain et espace public," qualities which, on the whole, the town planners see neglected in recent developments. In Mikhail Khazanov's and Ewa Bérard's report we read of Moscow's megalopolistic aspirations; as far as Warsaw is concerned, in Magdalena...