Interview and Community Participation Event About the Area History for Finding Attractiveness of South Town in Prague

Abstract

In the Czech Republic, the housing estates consist of prefab housings developed in socialist era are often have called as "uniform" with negative images. However, these housing estates continue to be one of main housing stocks in Czech until today and the regeneration of the housing estates have already started in some areas. Therefore, present environments of these housing estates can be revaluated from the viewpoint of area history. In this paper, South Town (Jižní Město, JM), one of the largest housing estates in Prague, is a case study area. By the cooperation with Prague 11 municipality, the interview research was done in October 2013 with 13 inhabitants and the community participation event "Interesting places of Prague 11" was held in September 2015 and about 400 comments were gathered in 3 days. The interviews and the event with inhabitants illustrated that public facilities and transportation systems have been evaluated since the beginning of the housing development because of their accessibility and convenience. At the same time, green areas around JM have been evaluated because they can be used for relaxation and outdoor exercise. In addition, open spaces in JM are highly evaluated compared with them in socialist era. Through the analysis of the development history of JM and the results of interviews and the event, one of the biggest problems of JM had been the time gap between the completion of housings and other living environmental conditions. Only the panel housings could be completed so quickly at the very beginning of the development, but recently regeneration works for improving the green spaces around housings have been operated. According to the interviews, the upgrading of the qualities of neighbourhoods was evaluated positively, but new housing developments in green spaces were often criticized. The values were pointed out by the inhabitants because of mainly four reasons; utility, memory, personal preference, and public value. About things which have utility, some of them have already existed since the socialist era and the others were made after democratization. Things which are connected with inhabitants' good memories have been accumulating since they start their lives in JM. Personal preference is for example, colour of building, design of art work, etc. Public value means things which have high evaluation by the public. It can be thought that value by utility can be getting better by adding amenities lacked in socialist era. Even after the utility achieves enough level, value by memory will have been accumulated without limitation and would be one of the important factors of the value of JM. Then, if these memories are shared with the inhabitants, they can be the public value. The results clarified lots of efforts for improvement and values of JM. It also shows a possibility that there are improvements and values in other prefab housing estates not only in the Czech Republic but also all around the world. In future, these 'uniform' prefab housing estates can be revaluated as 'unique' housing estates with their own area histories and values.