Slávka FERENČUHOVÁ - Changes and Continuities in the Post/Socialist Planning of the City of Brno, CZ

The cities in the post-socialist central and eastern European countries are often described as undergoing important changes since the 1990s. The transformations associated with the overall societal changes concern the appearance of the cities, the processes of their re/building, the strategies of governing and planning, as well as the lives of their inhabitants. The question is whether the current changes in these cities are comparable to the parallel urban development elsewhere in Europe and/or to what extent they are specific to post-socialist cities and influenced by their socialist past. My primary interest is however not in studying the actual appearance and development of the post-socialist cities, nor in observing how they are experienced in the everyday life. I am more concerned to question the ways the different actors - inhabitants, governors, or scientists - talk about the cities, about their inhabitants and about the urban life. I focus on the changes in the conceptualizations and representations of the cities as objects of research, planning, or as places of living. In this particular case, I am interested in urban planning as a specific part of urban governance.

The post-socialist urban planning proposes new visions of the future urban development and new strategies of their realization. The emphasis is often on creating new images of the cities attractive to the potential investors, the tourists, as well as to the inhabitants, and on suggesting the corresponding development projects. The ways the cities cope with the tasks and the new context since the 1990s (the idea of entering the global competition between the cities, the new roles of cities in the nation states, the need to deal with the socialist legacy) have been explained in numerous studies (e.g. Young and Kaczmarek 2008; Cochrane 2006; Cochrane and Jonas 1999; Stenning 2000; Eckardt 2005; Ward 2004)). In the Czech Republic, the planning ideas and principles seem to resemble the current strategies of the urban development elsewhere and, at the same time, to display a radical novelty compared to the urban planning under the socialist regime (Musil 2002). However, in order to understand more fully the changes that occurred in the urban planning in the post-socialist context since the 1990s, it is vital to focus on the basic principles and ideas formulated in planning and to compare them with those that were characteristic of the planning discourse in the previous period. A deep understanding of the changing core ideas of planning (such as what constitutes a city as an object of planning or what represents the planning activity itself) can be best obtained through analysis of textual planning documents issued since the 1950 till today.

Therefore, my focus is on studying the ways the contemporary urban planning conceptualizes the city as its object, pictures the historical situation and explains the ideal planning practice along with proposing new visions of development. In the case of the city of Brno, I compare these representations proposed in the recent planning documents with the corresponding representations created in the past. The aim of such a study is to trace the changes and to depict possible continuities in the planning ideas developed over time. If combined with an overview of the findings about the current planning practice in the cities elsewhere in Europe, this approach allows understanding the specificity of the post-socialist urban planning, as well as commenting on the relationship of its ideas to the historical context.

Cochrane, A. 2006. “Making up meanings in a capital city. Power, memory and monuments in Berlin.” European Urban and Regional Studies 13(1): 5 - 24.

Cochrane, A. - Jonas, A. 1999. “Reimagining Berlin: World city, national capital or ordinary place?” European Urban and Regional Studies 6(2): 145-164.

Eckardt, F. 2005. „In Search for Meaning: Berlin as National Capital and Global City.” Journal of contemporary European Studies 13(2): 187-198.

Musil, J. 2002. „Co se děje s českými městy dnes.” In: Horská, P - Maur, E - Musil, J (eds.) Zrod velkoměsta: urbanizace českých zemí a Evropa. Praha: Paseka. S. 298-331.

Stenning, A. 2000. „Placing (Post)Socialism.“ European Urban and Regional Studies, 7(2): 99-118.

Ward, J. 2004. „Berlin, the Virtual Global City.“ Journal of Visual Culture 3(2): 239-256.

Young, C. - Kaczmarek, S. 2008. „The Socialist Past and Postsocialist Urban Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: The Case of Łódź.“ European Urban and Regional Studies 15(1): 53-70.