Re-centered City? Multiple Trajectories towards Post-socialist Centralities

LICHTER, Marek and Ondřej MULÍČEK. Re-centered City? Multiple Trajectories towards Post-socialist Centralities. In CAT-ference 2019: 8th International Urban Geographies of Post-communist States Conference Belgrade, Sept. 25-29, 2019. 2019.

Basic information

• Original name: Re-centered City? Multiple Trajectories towards Post-socialist Centralities
• Authors: LICHTER, Marek and Ondřej MULÍČEK.
• Edition: CAT-ference 2019: 8th International Urban Geographies of Post-communist States Conference Belgrade, Sept. 25-29, 2019, 2019.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Keywords in English: urban centres; recentralization; post-socialist city; post-industrial city
• Tags: International impact

Abstract (in English)

The paper aims to take a closer critical look at the production, perception and representation of centrality within the urban time-space. The centrality is understood here in its wider sense as rather abstract attribute assigned to certain urban places, indicating their prominent position within the urban settings. Each stage of the city development introduces new nodalities replacing the previous ones or, more often, adding a new material or symbolic layer into existing structures. We examine post-socialist transition from this perspective as a process reflected via multiple urban recentralization. Focusing empirically on the case of city of Brno (Czech Republic) we discuss evolving role, functionalities and symbolisms attached to the city centre(s). A particular attention is paid to the multiple contexts of everyday praxis, planning paradigms or normative policies that co-defined prominent places (centres) within Brno socialist time-space as well as to the contexts and trajectories of inertia and/or recentralization. We argue that Brno recentralization inevitably interwove symbolical level of post-socialist transition with the processes of post-industrial transformation and with deeply-rooted cognitive images of the city.