News
New paper by Jana Jíchová, Ivana Přidalová and Martin Ouředníček published recently in Eurasian Geography and Economics investigates to what extent are mainstream criminological theories useful for researching crime in Czechia today and in the beginning of the societal transformation. The limited relevance of both social disorganisation theory and routine activities theory adds to the critical literature on using theories and concepts formulated in the West in post-socialist countries. The paper is available from the journal and can also be obtained from the authors. Moreover, a pre-print version is available on the website of the research project Spatial patterns of crime and the perception of safety in Czechia which supported the authors' work.
A new three-year project on Residential segregation and mobility of foreigners is now being co-investigated by Urban and Regional Laboratory. In collaboration with the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Science the project focuses mainly on analyses of neighbourhoods, residential trajectories and neighbourhood effects in Czechia .
Members of the Urrlab team participated in the second international conference of the Urban Development Issues journal. The conference title East meets West - Contemporary Urban Issue Revisited refers to the main topic and aim of the conference, the introduction and discussion of different views on urban topics. The keynote speakers were Loretta Lees, Nick Bailey and Philip Harrison. The papers presented by Urrlab members Martin Ouředníček, Ivana Přidalová, Adam Klsák and Petra Špačková looked at the participation of foreign citizens on urbanisation processes, particularly suburbanisation.
Greta Kukeli holds the title of Master of Science (Msc.) in Urban Planning and City Management. In her master thesis (2017), she focused on post-socialist urban transformations, specifically the urban shrinkage phenomenon taking place in Albanian cities. The thesis’ title was “Planning for Shrinking Cities- A policy guideline for the management of the shrinking process of the Albanian cities and the preparation of the municipalities to plan for shrinking situations”. The study included 54 Albanian cities, the creation of a specific methodology for measuring shrinkage, specifying its typologies in the country’s context, and providing guidelines for the creation of addressing policies. After her graduation, Greta worked for a year as an urban planner in Tirana, contributing in 2 General Local Plans, 5 Detailed Local Plans and 1 Detailed Local Plan of a National Importance Area.
Since October 2018, she is part of the URRlab team, working on the Ph.D. project “Contemporary changes on the social-milieu within the post-socialist suburbs” and participates also in a Czech Science Foundation project dealing with changes of social milieu in post-socialist suburbs. Her main research interests include urban and regional studies, post-socialist transformation of planning systems and territory, urban policies, neighbourhood qualities and development, urban shrinkage and informal settlement development.
Students are welcome to register for several courses in urban geography taught in English this winter term. Apart from the annual Urban Social Geography course (Thursdays), our visiting professor Monika De Frantz will give lectures on Planning and Governance in Complex Social Spaces (Mondays) and Cities, Development and Globalisation (Tuesdays).
A new book focusing on the development of housing estates in Europe since 1990 has just been published by Springer. The entire book entitled Housing Estates in Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Segregation and Policy Challenges, edited by DB Hess, T Tammaru, and M van Ham, is available for free download. A number of authors contributed to the volume which presents case studies of cities such as Athens, Birmingham, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Tartu, including also a chapter on housing estates in Prague by Martin Ouředníček, Petra Špačková, and Lucie Pospíšilová from Urban and Regional Laboratory. The book first introduces two crucial topics related to housing estates: physical structure and design of housing estates, and their social strcture including demographic and ethnic change. It then turns to 14 case studies of individual cities and countries across Europe. The chapter about Prague assesses the development of housing estates in the second half of the 20th century and the specifics of their social-spatial differentiation.
Being one of the most cited papers published in Sociologia Ruralis which contributed to the journal's Impact Factor, Martin Šimon's article on counterurbanisation in post-socialist countries is now available in open access. Congratulations!
The Historical Population Atlas of the Czech Lands which was edited and co-authored by URRlab team members was awarded the prize of Map of the year in the category of Atlases, map collections and map editions by the Czech Cartographic Society. We are proud for this acknowledgement of the 6-year work of the whole team. More information on the project during which the atlas was created can be found here (in Czech). The bilingual Czech-English atlas can be bought from Karolinum Publishing.
The prestigious Magnesia Litera prize for non-fiction book of the year 2018 was awarded to the team of the Paneláks project for the book Paneláci (in Czech). Petra Špačková and Lucie Pospíšilová were involved in the project in 2014-2017 and are co-authors of both the award-winning book and the English book The Paneláks.
New paper on reurbanisation in post-socialist Europe authored by an international team including Petra Špačková was published recently in the Comparative Population Studies journal. The paper compares population development in Eastern Germany, Poland and Czechia. Full text can be found here.