A&U Talks: Prague and Bratislava between late socialism and capitalism
Presentation of the thematic issue of the journal Architecture & Urbanism – In Search of Postmodern City: Urban Changes and Continuities in East Central Europe between Late Socialism and Capitalism (1970-2000).
How to tell the dramatic story of the metropolises of Central Eastern Europe at the end of the 20th century? The journey of the cities here from late socialism to the restoration of capitalism can be framed as a story of emancipation from the grip of rigid centralist planning, or as a search for ways out of the failures of modernist utopias. But we can also talk about the self-destruction of urban expertise, about the gradual weakening of the position of architects and especially urban planners, who cleared the field for spontaneous development, lay people, political compromises and above all neoliberal commodification as the dominant factor determining the development of cities in the wild 1990s.
The current thematic issue of Architecture & Urbanism explores these and other issues. The editors of the issue, Matěj Spurný and Petr Roubal from the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Henrieta Moravčíková and Peter Szalay from the Department of Architecture of the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, will present studies by authors from various countries of Central Europe and the Balkans published in the new issue of the journal. Above all, they will discuss their own research on the transformation of two major cities of former Czechoslovakia: Prague and Bratislava.