Lucie Pospíšilová

Urban Social Problems and Marginalized Populations in Postsocialist Transition Societies Perceptions of the City Center of Prague, the Czechia

Despite growing scholarly interest in residential segregation in Central and Eastern Europe, thus far insufficient attention has been paid to understanding marginalization in these postsocialist transition societies through the perceptions of stakeholders. The present article reports the findings of a qualitative study of the perceptions of urban social problems in the city center of Prague, Czechia. Semistructured interviews with the key actors involved in the city’s social development are used to understand what social phenomena they perceive as problematic, how they localize them within the urban space, and how their perceptions translate into policy attitudes. We find that stakeholders emphasize the issues of homelessness, drug addiction, and the appropriate delivery of social services in their narratives. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the repressive nature of policy interventions partly results from a lack of experience of overcoming such societal issues and partly results from weak coordination at the city level.

The Long-term Development of Socio-spatial Differentiation in Socialist and Post-socialist Prague

The article examines how different social and urban processes were refl ected in the spatial patterns of three dimensions of population structure (demographic, socio-economic, and ethnic statuses) in Prague during the socialist and post-socialist periods. The article has three main objectives. First, it analyses inertia and change in socio-spatial patterns and evaluates the processes that have infl uenced them. Second, it investigates how the importance of all three statuses in the spatial differentiation of urban space has evolved. Third, the article focuses on the level of geographical variability as recorded within different spatial scales, and the development of this variability. It examines selected indicators of socio-economic, demographic, and ethnic statuses by employing detailed statistical data on the level of basic settlement units from the Population Censuses held in 1970, 1991, and 2011. The results confi rm that the most signifi cant changes in socio-spatial patterns between socialism and post-socialism can be observed for ethnic spatial differentiation. In addition, the city witnessed considerable changes in demographic spatial patterns in both periods, while socio-economic spatial patterns have remained relatively stable. New socio-spatial processes driven predominantly by movements of young and better-off populations have taken place in previously less attractive neighbourhoods. As a result, very different populations often live side-by-side in contemporary Prague.

Long-term Development and Current Socio-Spatial Differentiation of Housing Estates in Prague, Czechia

The housing estate is perceived to be one of the main symbols of the socialist regime in the former Eastern Bloc. Immediately after the Velvet Revolution, housing estates were to some extent rejected by the general public as well as neglected in spatial planning and policies. At the same time, Prague’s housing estates contained more than 40% of the city’s population, thus representing the most important part of the built environment within the city. The main aims of this chapter are to evaluate the specific development of Prague’s housing estates in the second half of the twentieth century, and then to explore the finer details of their inherent socio-spatial differentiation. The role of state and local housing policy is evaluated as the crucial factor in the current and future development of housing estates. The results are similar to those for many other CEE cities, and confirm that the transformation period had little impact on social structures within these residential areas and that the social mix sustains the main attribute of Prague’s housing estates. New housing construction and ethnic differentiation are the most important processes to have changed the social environment of housing estates in Prague during the post-transformation period.

DISCLOSURE OF HISTORICAL SPATIAL AND STATISTICAL DATA OF DISTRICTS IN CZECHIA IN A GIS ENVIRONMENT

This article presents a methodology for the creation and reconstruction of historical borders of chosen spatial units, especially political and judicial districts in Czechia for the specific years of population censuses within a GIS environment. Since an ethnic, language, demographic, social and cultural composition of a population is one of the main features of national and regional identity, the main objective of the article is to introduce new method for the creation of spatial-statistical databases which will make these historical data sources accessible to both experts and the public for general use. For this purpose, district borders from 1921, 1930, (1947), 1950, 1961, 1970, 1991, 2001 and 2011, which represent the years of the population censuses in Czechia, were digitized. Our method is based mainly on historical maps, which correspond with the censuses’ statistical datasets. The proposed methodology for the creation of GIS layers (digitalization, geo-referencing, vectorization, accuracy assessment, and spatial identification), their connection with censuses statistical data (creation of spatial codes), metadata creation, and web publication is described in this article along with examples of some of the difficulties encountered during the process. We also bring attention to several case studies of problematic areas where the reconstruction of borders was particularly complicated. Finally, spatial and statistical data in the format of ESRI shapefile and ESRI Geodatabase offer possibilities for a retrospective analyses of quantitative data to current researchers from a range of scientific disciplines. Files in both formats are publicly available at webpage www.historickygis.cz.