David GOGISHVILI

Academic Year:
2017/2018

Research Program:
PoM Pontica Magna

Affiliation:
Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy

Position:
Ph.D. Candidate

Country:
Georgia

Research project: Conflicting Uses of Public Space – Cases from Post-Soviet Tbilisi

Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was a place for radical urban transformations including the accessibility of public spaces. In the 1990s, Tbilisi was famous for its informal markets held on sidewalks and squares, the exploitation of the ‘no-mans-land’ for the in-fill developments or IDPs extending their living space and transforming built environment. Since the 2000s the state actors and the private corporations played a more lively role in defining Tbilisi urban development trajectory. Still, the residents or their communities have not disappeared as important actors. These processes often led to the shrinking of the public realm and decreased the accessibility of public space. In this research project, I intend to focus on two case studies – implementation of parking barriers and privatization of sidewalks as parking spaces – and try to place them within the transformative developments in the post-Socialist urban realm stemming from the introduction of free market economy and later neoliberalisation of the urban policies.