The aim of the book is to explore the efforts of the development industry, planners, designers, as well as multi-national corporations to expand and gentrify the underground for the middle classes in Bucharest. The author claims that the process of gentrification in the historic city in the last decades of post-socialist transformation was not for the benefit of the middle class, but was in fact moving the middle classes beneath the city center. Very broadly, the book “theorises the intensification of techniques of class separation that privilege the wealthiest at the expense of the rest” (x). The methodology is grounded in ethnographic research with a strong emphasis on case study vignettes, observations, and interviews.

The exploration of the underground space in Bucharest is an interesting reflection on the complex trends and pattern of change embedded in the overall process of economic, social, and political transformation of post-socialist cities. While other studies have done this in a very systematic manner, emphasizing the links between the “transition” to democracy, markets, and governance on processes of spatial transformation, the spillover effect on the urban underground has been overlooked.Footnote ¹ Despite the diversity of urban experiences, urban studies have identified the salient features of post-socialist spatial transformation: i) new spaces of production/consumption reflecting economic restructuring; ii) social segregation in urban spaces associated with growing social inequality; and iii) urban development driven by profit-based investment and laissez-faire planning.Footnote ²

In the absence of a theoretical framework for this ethnographic study, the understanding of these interrelated “transitions” is a helpful way of navigating the rich narratives in the book. The stories, collected over the course of five years, start with the underground as a place of dynamic transition. The author argues that the city’s most vulnerable were cleared out of its center by the forces of gentrification, investment in new metro lines, and the creation of a new business district in the Old Town. These forces set the context for the new wave of transformation opening up the city’s underground to the middle class.

The book is organized in ten chapters with an introduction and conclusion. The chapters tentatively follow a pattern reflecting on changes in a typology of underground spaces—commercial, residential, infrastructural, and cultural—highlighting aspects of their adjustment to demand from the middle class in the city center of Bucharest. Stories of different people, based on their lived experience, add a nuanced interpretation of ways people play, entertain, live, raise a family, educate, commute, and explore the opportunities of city life in the underground. The author advances a hypothesis that a repository of underground functions and typologies in the city center of Bucharest produces vertical inequalities, essentially framing middle class dreams and aspirations.

Bucharest is a European city with a significant historic evolution dating back hundreds of years. Home to over 1.7 million people today, it has emerged from prolonged economic recessions, privatization, and social decline during the thirty years of post-socialist transition with bold aspirations for its future. Urban analysis needs to recognize change and continuity; to acknowledge the importance of the socialist legacy affecting places and people; to understand the complexity of everyday life in the post-socialist city; as well as to capture the planning and development policies that are evolving.Footnote ³

While less ambitious in this regard, the book focuses on two clusters of issues—new spaces of production/consumption and new spaces of social segregation emerging in the underground. As post-socialist Bucharest is emerging from economic shocks, the investment in infrastructure, public transit, and new spaces for services and retail fosters economic growth. In the context of economic adjustment, the existing metro system built in the late 1970s receives a much-needed facelift and expansion. The author turns attention to the city’s efforts to add new metro stations and to capitalize on opportunities of adaptive reuse of the city’s underground. Bucharest has a large metro system that has retained its attractiveness and enjoys over 150 million rides per year. This captive market is served by a rapidly growing system of underground kiosks set up by middle class entrepreneurs running businesses with more affordable rent. In addition, smart technologies market the metro’s attractiveness to middle class passengers through a free “Digital Public Library” for commuters, culturally making the city closer to western Europe.

Similarly, businesses capitalize on the adaptive reuse of a whole labyrinth of tunnels, basements, cellars of historic buildings, and cultural spaces in Bucharest. Some of these were used by Romans, Ottomans, and the Communist Party—an equally mysterious legacy. Like any other European city, Bucharest has an historic asset of underground spaces that is rediscovered by a growing cluster of small, service-oriented businesses in the Old Town. This newfound eclectic mosaic of cafes, artisan shops, restaurants, and entertainment often fails to meet safety and building code requirements, placing people at risk. This does not defer residents and business owners that enjoy distinct experiences in this underground space, while pursuing real estate market opportunities.

The second cluster of issues explored in the book reflects a dramatic spatial transformation in the city center of Bucharest, driven by the rapid post-socialist social segregation. The former egalitarian social structure is affected by decline—economic, demographic, and social—that exacerbates class divisions and poverty. People face the consequences of rapid economic adjustment, closure of state industries, escalating unemployment, and deprivation.Footnote ⁴ The author argues that the repurposing of the underground in Bucharest offers an opportunity for the middle class to share proximity to new offices, shopping malls, and residences for affluent consumers above ground. Narratives about the business strategies by newcomers to the city willing to trade spaces with street vendors and large-scale retailers in the formal city center above, as well as reside in basement apartments, illustrate patterns of this social transition.

Despite the dynamic nature of transformation, developments tend to be path dependent. The city center retains its attractiveness, propelled by a new wave of plans for Bucharest as “Paris of the East,” gentrification forces, and laissez-faire planning. This vision is an evolution of the grand restructuring initiated by Nicolae Ceausescu’s government in the 1980s that displaced 40,000 residents to build the House of the People, residential complexes for the political elite, and grand avenues wider and longer than the Champs-Élysee. The socialist utopia framed with the aesthetic of reordering the city center was planned gentrification that led to the destruction of heritage buildings and cultural ruins, a trend reinforced by the post-socialist transformation of profit-driven development.

Selling the vision of European capital to the middle classes includes the building of underground parking, residential intensification, and establishing pedestrian car free zones in the city center. The book illustrates the mixed degree of success in the implementation of these strategies. While post-socialist car owners continue to resort to illegal parking, the conversion of basements, cellars, and bomb shelters to housing is an important landmark of social transformation.Footnote ⁵ The city center is marketed to the new middle class with the development of high-end residential buildings with basement garden apartments. This process of vertical aesthetic maximizes profits, but also responds to massive affordability challenges of living and working in the city center. Stories reveal that basement apartments are 30% cheaper but provide the security and luxury of having one’s own place in the context of escalating living cost. Essentially, this gentrification without displacement brings Bucharest closer to other European cities by adopting a popular strategy for a housing mix in the city center.

The author uses the term middle class very loosely in the book and this is one of its weaknesses. It is not a coherent sociological category, but a growing assemblage of property owners, office workers, public sector employees, university students and essentially everyone that is not a part of the new economic and political elite. He argues that “the project of class separation within the city through underground gentrification provides an affordable access to the middle class that facilitate dreams of working, living and playing in the heart of Bucharest” (31). However, we really need some theoretical perspective and more robust empirical evidence to relate to such statements.

Finally, the conclusion of the book does not really draw the threads together, nor does it provide a critical reflection on challenges for the future of Bucharest’s underground. What stands out is that transformation and change are central to the post-socialist urban experience. The forms of urban change are the result of historical legacies, path dependencies and real estate market forces. Perhaps the story of Bucharest’s underground is one of continuity and return to a pre-socialist past, where underground functions and typologies reflect social inequalities, while providing economic opportunities for people’s dreams and aspirations. The book’s rich ethnographic narrative is an interesting contribution to this discourse and will be of value to scholars, planners, and students that explore the diversity of urban phenomena in post-socialist cities.