CONTESTED GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGININGS OF REUNIFICATION - A CASE-STUDY OF URBAN CHANGE IN LEIPZIG

Geopolitics and city restructuring are typically regarded as separate scales and processes: the international and national versus the local, The local politics of urban change in an east German city in the peri od after reunification question this divide, The 'pathways' approach t o post-socialist transitions is utilized to illustrate how reunificati on is contested as much in neighbourhood restructuring and actions in response to incoming capital and the dominance of western legal-politi cal norms as it is in national or international discourses and practic es, Assumed divisions between East and West, professional and lay, and local and national are questioned, (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.