On November 25, 2014 the Deputy Rector of Tbilisi State University, Professor Joseph Salukvadze who teaches at the Department of Human Geography at the faculty of Social and Political Sciences held a presentation on the topic “Changing Patterns of Urban Development in Post-soviet Tbilisi” at ISET.

In the beginning of the presentation Professor Salukvadze spoke about Tbilisi of the Soviet period and Tbilisi today, about its growth and urban planning. Afterwards, he distinguished and discussed three different phases of urbanism: the first one is the so-called “Do it yourself” phase covering the early/first transition phase (1990s), the second phase “Investor urbanism” covering the second transition (2000s) and the third phase - “Politically determined urbanism” revealing itself in the second half of 2000’s.

The presentation emphasized the role of state ownership of land in the urbanization process and the Government – Citizens – Business Interests triangle battling for the stake. There was a lively discussion and a number of interesting questions from the audience after the presentation.