ABOUT THE CITIES AFTER TRANSITION (cat) SCHOLARLY NETWORK

Cities After Transition is a loose network of scholars primarily interested in urban issues regarding the ('post-socialist') countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. The majority of us are academic geographers - ranging from early career doctoral students to senior specialists - although there are members from other disciplines as well. Our main goal is to facilitate and promote international scholarly contacts and cooperation within our field, including a  workshop, held every other year, on the 'urban geographies of post-communist states'.

History of the cities after transition network

The CAT network does not have any official date of foundation. The network developed as a result of a stream of conference sessions organized by Thomas Borén and Michael Gentile on 'Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States' at the Inaugural Nordic Geographers' Meeting in Lund, Sweden, 10-15 May 2005. Informally, these sessions were renamed 'First Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States workshop', as they formed a well-integrated 'package' of sessions with an equally 'well-integrated' attendance. The workshop resulted in a joint publication in Geografiska Annaler series B Human Geography and an e-mail list that quickly gained in popularity. Since then, the network has expanded, and it now counts nearly 150 members. And who are the members? In practice, it may be said that all of the e-mail list subscribers are members of the CAT network.

The second workshop (7-10 December 2007) was organized in Stockholm under the auspices of the Stockholm School of Economics, and part of the event literally floated on the Baltic Sea en route towards the destination of the workshop's excursion, Tallinn. In fact, the excursion is a crucial part of all CAT events.

The third workshop was held in Tartu, Estonia on the 17-19 September 2009, with an excursion to the highly industrialized Northeast Estonian region of Ida Virumaa, located approximately halfway between Saint Petersburg and the Estonian capital.

The fourth workshop is about to be held in Bucharest on the 14-17 September 2011.