Abstract
This chapter aims to offer a perspective on research into the socialist and post-socialist city on the grounds of the papers presented at the biennial conferences organised by the European Association for Urban
History (EAUH) in 2006-2014. Particular attention is devoted to papers which deal with post-war East-European cities. Three themes were of particular importance for the conferences' presenters: interpretations of the social roles of architecture; examination of the behaviour it shaped; and research into the paths of transformations of the spatial memory. The overview is therefore divided along these clusters. The first section deals with studies on socialist design understood as political promises of happiness. Papers that are taken into account in the second section touch on the "tactics" of the population in response to the official discourses on societal norms. The final section provides a glimpse at papers that focused on the memory and transformation of urban spaces in the post-socialist period.