The state of the art in research on residential segregation and concentration in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) largely focuses on process description (e.g., the multitude of works on gentrification and suburbanization). Even though major advances in the conceptualization and measurement of segregation have been made, works that scrutinize the patterns of segregation and/or concentration in CEE are rare, while studies that simultaneously explore and link segregation patterns under socialism and after are virtually nonexistent. Relying on Polish census-tract level data on the educational structure of population in 1978, 1988, and 2002, this study explores the patterns of social segregation and concentration in the three major Polish cities (Warsaw, Cracow, and Łódź), representing different paths of development under socialism and after. The results show that the population of the three major Polish cities was still socially heterogeneous at the census tract level in 2002. The results also reveal that the level of social residential segregation in the three cities has been decreasing steadily since 1978, irrespective of the prevailing economic system. [Key words: Residential segregation, concentration, socialist city, post-socialist city, Poland.]

In Europe a range of segregation studies can be found in the North, West and South, but hardly any in Central Eastern Europe – a region where the major economic and political changes induced by the demise of socialism in 1989 contributed to new social divisions and related spatial patterns. However, these changes have not been uniform and have resulted in context-specific outcomes. Relying on data on the socio-occupational structure of the population from the National Census 2002 at the census tract scale, this article explores the levels and patterns of social segregation in three major Polish cities: Łódź, Cracow and Warsaw, urban areas that reflect divergent paths of more and less successful post-socialist transformations. This contribution concludes that, more than a decade after the demise of socialism, census tracts still generally contained populations that were heterogeneous with regard to socio-occupational status and that socioeconomic transformations in Poland and the social toll these processes involved have not yet been fully translated into intra-urban spaces.