is an urban historian, social scientist and an essayist. His teaches urban history and urban studies at the Stockholm University. He has researched property and housing issues, urban planning, and segregation in European cities during the twentieth century. Recently he is researching the relationship between education and urbanization ‒ how the modern city during the last century has been established as a ‘knowledge society’. Forsell is a has been Research Fellow at IRS Erkner/Berlin and at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
The anachronistic appearance of the post-communist world fascinated westerners visiting eastern Europe after ’89. As Håkan Forsell puts it, the East offered the image of a ‘future that would never happen’. Four decades of totalitarianism were rapidly forgotten by the seekers of ‘true Europe’.
