News
In the next academic year, you can look forward to the course "Urban Regulations and Political Memory: Towards Understanding Spatio-Temporal Aspects of Urban Development" organized within 4EU +. This interdisciplinary course is being prepared by three universities: University of Warsaw, University of Milan and Charles University.
Lecture „Urban transformation processes. Gentrification. Suburbanisation“ will be led by members of our team Martin Ouředníček a Adél Petrović. The entire course will be held in English and those interested can send their CVs and cover letters by 8 September 2021 to email unread@wpia.uw.edu.pl.
Key topics of the course are driving forces of urban changes, the development of smart cities and interdisciplinary methodologies of urban studies. The project concerns changes in the conditions of the urban development of smart cities in Poland, Italy and Czech Republic, according to three dimensions: past (history), present (law) and future (geography), emphasizing an integrated and interdisciplinary approach in order to understand the complexity of new urban centers in which real estate development must coexist with the protection of the environment and with the history and heritage of the local community.
The course programme can be found here.
Last week, the Annual conference of the Czech Sociological Association (CSA) took place, at which three papers of our team members were presented. Two papers were presented in the panel “Financialization, Citizenship and Housing”:
- Slavomíra FERENČUHOVÁ, Petra ŠPAČKOVÁ: Specifics of housing estates and residential satisfaction in Czech cities: a historical comparison
- Petra ŠPAČKOVÁ, Jan SÝKORA, Kadi KALM, Ondřej ŠPAČEK: Various housing estates’ trajectories in post-socialist cities: does the socialist legacy still matter?
One paper was presented in the Czech panel "Cities and Housing":
- Marie HORŇÁKOVÁ, Petra ŠPAČKOVÁ: Searching for new housing: the struggles and strategies of young middle class families living in the Prague Metropolitan Area
Learn more about the conference papers here.
On Wednesday 16 June, an international webinar One thousand and one forms of suburbanisation: comparative research, terminology, methods was held with an aim to discuss the diversity of forms and concepts of suburbanisation as a global urban phenomenon. The keynote speakers were Steven Logan (University of Toronto, Canada), Roger Keil (York University, Canada), and Konstantin Grigorichev (Irkutsk State University, Russia), accompanied by Martin Ouředníček, who also moderated the event. More than forty of you joined the event as active discussants or listeners. Thank you all very much!
The webinar took place within the framework of project No. 18-14510S Contemporary Changes in the Social Environment in Czech Suburbs supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR).
We are proud to reveal that the application for a joint educational project of the Warsaw University, University of Milan and Charles University, where Urrlab team members will also participate, was supported by the 4EU+ funding. The course entitled Urban Regulations and Political Memory: Towards understanding Spatio-Temporal aspects of Urban Development brings together three dimensions: the past (history), the present (law) and the future (geography) of the conditions of the urban development of smart cities in three 4EU+ counties. The course will run from October 2021 until April 2022 and will consist of blended form (virtual and in-person activities including a field trip, workshops, and a conference in Warsaw). Active participation of students by using research-based education work in an international team is foreseen. The course aims at improving data literacy and encouraging students’ critical thinking. Keep an eye on our News feed to find out more soon!
We are excited to invite you to two online seminars that we are organizing in the coming days. In both cases, the seminar will be led by Kadi Kalm, who is currently collaborating on the project History and Future of Housing Estates: quality of living environment and residential satisfaction as part of her post-doc position. Her research focuses mainly on ethnic segregation and internal migration. Before joining the URRlab team, she worked as a researcher in the Department of Geography at University of Tartu. She has also previously worked as a visiting researcher at Delft University of Technology.
The first seminar is entitled "Various housing estates' trajectories in post socialist cities: does the socialist legacy still matter?" and will focus on the developmental trajectories of different housing estates in Czechia and Estonia from 1989 to 2011.
- When: 4 May 2021, 14:00
- Where: online - meet.google.com/hmm qfbh pjr
The second seminar is entitled „My journey in academia“ and destined mainly for (PhD) students. During the seminar, Kadi will present her journey through academia with time spent in three universities, cities, and countries. She will talk about her main research interests as well as the life of PhD student and post-doc. After her talk, an informal discussion will follow.
- When: 29 April 2021, 12:30
- Where: online - meet.google.com/kqw ebwt jti
Click here for detailed information on both seminars.
Our project Prague suburbs: the dynamics of social environment within the growing metropolis aims to describe and explain the transformations of social environment of peripheral parts of the dynamically growing Czech metropolis from industrialisation until present. Key outcomes of the project include a geodatabase of historical spatial and statistical data for cadastral units of Prague, which were recently published on the project website. The data and layers relate to historical population censuses from 1869 until 1910 and can be downloaded – after registration – here.
We are excited to announce that our members were successful in obtaining new funding for their research from GAUK and START schemes. Congratulations!
Adela Petrovic's GAUK project entitled "In the face of gentrification: the changing identities of working-class neighbourhoods in the inner-city of Prague" analyses two selected gentrifying inner-city neighbourhoods, Karlín and Smíchov, identifies the changes in the urban physical and socio-cultural landscape, reflects upon their implications, and investigates the identity construction of these changing neighbourhoods.
Another project, supported by the START programme, is "What about your locality? Life-course differences in experiencing and perceiving residential neighbourhoods" with Pavel Frydrych as the principal investigator and Marie Horňáková, Jan Sýkora and Niloofar Ghafouriazar as co-investigators. The project focuses on life-course differences in how residents experience, perceive and are satisfied with their residential neighbourhoods. It aims to approach the topic from perspectives of three population groups in various life-course stages and living in distinct neighbourhood types (children from suburbs, young families from housing estates, older adults from the inner city).
This upcoming summer semester URRlab welcomes all Erasmus and Czech students and offers two courses taught in English. The registration is open.
Urban Social Geography: Contemporary Issues is for students interested in finding out the contemporary trends and issues in urban social geography. The students will have the opportunity to study urban occurrences and processes and to compare those with cases in Prague and other European cities. The course offers its participants lectures, discussions, group work, film seminar, field trips and the opportunity to carry out their own research. The lessons will be held at the Faculty of Science on Thursdays from 9 am.
Discussion Seminar on Contemporary Urban Studies, new course starting this year, focuses on exploring the phenomena and processes in contemporary cities and analyzing and explaining them in their local context and relationship with different urban actors. The main objective is to promote students' critical thinking and introduce them to a broader spectre of urban issues through alternative teaching methods. The lectures will be held at the Faculty of Science on Wednesdays from 10:40 am.
Urrlab team remains active despite the covid-19 restrictions. On Tuesday 15 December, many of us participated in the urban walk organised by Marie, Greta and Adela. Although the weather was cold, we enjoyed this opportunity to meet some of our colleagues and learn more about Invalidovna. We thank the organisers and wish everyone Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Two new articles by Jana Jíchová and Martin Šimon have been published. Both papers focus on the concentration of crime in places and use geolocated data for crime from a regional Czech city. The first article was published in the Czech Sociological Review and focuses on the concentration of crime in street segments. At the same time, it presents a general model of the distribution of crime in the city, based on different levels and concentrations of crime in different types of residential environments. The second article was published online in the European Journal of Criminology. This article combines crime harm indexes and the law of crime concentration in place. The research shows the differences between the concentration of crime and its severity between western cities and in the Czech city, where they are less spatially clustered. These findings are essential for planning locally oriented policies. Both papers are available on the links above.