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New paper out on residential change and gentrification

In autumn an article by Jan Sýkora and Petra Špačková was published in Housing Studies journal. The article aims to analyze variations in residential change in individual localities within Holešovice, Prague’s inner-city district. It concludes that gentrification influences Holešovice simultaneously with other types of residential change. The most common type of change is incumbent upgrading related to the privatization of the housing stock. At the same time, several stagnating areas were identified. The neighbourhood development indicates the concurrent presence of diversified neighbourhood trajectories with drivers at various spatial and temporal scales. Read here.

Urrlab at the 2020 Annual Conference of the Czech Geographical Society

Last week, one of the few conferences of this year took place, the Annual Conference of the Czech Geographical Society on the topic of Geography for Sustainable Development of Cities and Regions. The plenary lecture included a paper by Martin Ouředníček, Jiří Nemeškal and Lucie Pospíšilová: Delimitation of metropolitan areas and agglomerations of statutory cities in the Czechia, which was followed by a panel discussion with representatives of the Ministry of Regional Development. The conference in Pilsen was attended also by other team members with interesting papers, and others had an author’s contribution to the papers:
 
  • Adam Klsák: Transformations of “Russian” Karlovy Vary: Five years since the annexation of Crimea
 
  • Adela Petrović: Gated Communities in Prague Urban Region: Location and Positionality on different Scale
   
  • Robert Osman, Zuzana Kopecká, Veronika Kotýnková: Time disadvantage: when the body does not meet the standards of time
    Pilsen from above Interior designed by Adolf Loos  

New papers with a focus on residential segregation

Two new papers by Martin Šimon, Ivana Křížková and Adam Klsák with a focus on residential segregation were published recently. The papers use newly available register-based data on foreign citizens’ residence in Czechia that were aggregated to spatial grid and used dissimilarity index as a widely used measure of segregation. Although the both papers are in Czech, they also contain an English summary and abstract. The Geografie paper looks at the development of spatial residential distribution of six major immigrant groups, based on citizenship, in selected Czech large cities. The article published in Urbanismus a územní rozvoj deals with these immigrant groups in Czechia as a whole and introduces the innovative method of measuring segregation using multilevel individualised neighbourhoods. Basic results show a dominant trend of decreasing segregation between the majority and immigrant groups. The slow and constant increase in immigrant population in Czechia thus does not lead to clear segregation patterns, except in some specific areas. The papers were supported by funding from the Czech Science Foundation for the project Residential segregation and mobility of foreign citizens: analysis of neighbourhoods, housing trajectories, and neighbourhood context and the latter paper was also co-authored by Renáta Mikešová and Yana Leontiyeva.

Ekofrukt excursion to Slaný

Cherry-picking was a great start to the day thanks to the Geomigrace team who organised this one-day excursion to Slaný on Tuesday 16/06/2020, attended by some of our URRlab members and a group of bachelors and doctoral students of geography at our faculty.   After meeting the boss of the orchards, Mr Kníže, who gave us clear guidelines on how to pick cherries, which size and shades of red we have to search for, we were off to fill up our buckets. We were told that the skilled cherry pickers need approximately 15 minutes to fill up one bucket. Although we were motivated to show off our cherry-picking skills, our productivity was limited by our cherry addiction after the first bite.   Once the buckets were full, we set down for a discussion under the cherry trees. We could perceive that Mr Kníže takes a lot of pride in Ekofrukt being the 10th biggest fruit producer in Czechia; however, he was honest about the company’s struggles. Namely, due to the pandemic Czechia and other countries have considerably constrained mobility, which resulted in a lack of workforce that was mainly composed of foreign workers. During our visit, Mr Kníže showed us around the plantation and the factory where they further select and use the fruits for making different products (syrups, muesli bars, etc.). We tackled a broad range of interesting topics during our visit; such as effects of different circumstances on the company and local economy, customers’ preferences, and a wide variety of conditions necessary to satisfy for each type of fruit.   To sum up the foregoing, Ekofrukt demonstrated their dedication to their work with, for example, acquiring expensive technology for a quality selection of cherries according to their size and efforts put into the cultivation of watermelons!    

Exciting news: Kadi Kalm to visit URRlab from this autumn

We are very pleased that from October 2020 to April 2021, Kadi Kalm, who was accepted for a post-doc position at the Department of Social Geography and Regional Development (CUNI), will join our team. Kadi currently works at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and focuses mainly on ethnic segregation and internal migration. In 2018 she defended her dissertation, which looked at ethnic residential segregation and integration of the Russian-speaking population in Estonia.

New paper on immigrant internal migration in Czechia

New paper Immigrant internal migration in a new destination country: Do immigrants suburbanise in Czechia and why? by Ivana Křížková and Martin Ouředníček was published in Population, Space and Place. The paper contributes to the debate on immigrant internal migration that has been limited to established immigration countries. It investigates trends in participation of different groups of foreign residents in urbanisation processes in Czechia, which has recently become a new immigration destination. The paper also evaluates the strength of sociodemographic and place‐based factors contributing to suburbanisation. Similarities are found between the internal migration of different immigrant groups and that of the Czech majority, indicating the predominance of suburbanisation of affluence, notably in culturally and economically well‐off groups.

New paper on suburbanisation in Czechia

new paper, co-authored by Martin Ouředníček, Adam Klsák and Petra Špačková, focusing on the development of spatial patterns of suburbanisation in Czechia between 1997 and 2016 was published last December in Demografie. The main objective of the article is to furnish a coherent methodology for the delimitation of suburban municipalities in Czechia, to describe and explain the scope and spatial distribution and to compare the development of residential suburbanisation during two distinct periods: 1997–2008 and 2009–2016. The article uses the delimitation of zones of residential suburbanisation (Ouředníček, Špačková, Novák 2013Ouředníček, Špačková, Klsák 2018), as an analytical tool for the evaluation of positional aspects of municipalities within the Czech settlement system.

Urban Social Geography in summer term 2020 – registration now open

Registration for Urban Social Geography: Contemporary Issues summer-term course is now open. The URRlab team is welcoming all Erasmus and Czech students who are interested in finding out what the contemporary trends and issues are in the field of 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 lectures, discussions, group work, film seminars and field trips. The language of instruction is English. The lectures will be held at the Faculty of Science on Thursdays from 9 am.  

New paper in Journal of Maps

The first issue of Journal of Maps this year brings a new paper entitled „Temporality of urban space: daily rhythms of a typical week day in the Prague metropolitan area“ by Jiří Nemeškal, Martin Ouředníček and Lucie Pospíšilová. The paper focuses on identification, analysis and explanation of daily rhythms in cadastral units of the Prague Metropolitan Area which are influenced by commuting of inhabitants to work, services and free-time activities. Mobile phone location data on time-space population mobility are used to define and cartographically produce a typology of cadasters according to the predominant use during a working day.

URRlab hosting international students

URRlab offers placements for international students. The first of our visitors is Vicente from Brazil who is interested in urban geography. He is currently focusing on material and symbolic transformations in Rio de Janeiro of the last decades. Together with others, he seeks for the main stakeholders and processes that re-organise the setting and functioning of urban areas, particularly the central ones. He came to visit Prague for a comparison with European urban environment. Another visiting student is Júlia who we are awaiting in May.  

URRlab


Urban and Regional Laboratory

Department of Social Geography
& Regional Development

Charles University in Prague
Faculty of Science

Contact us


Albertov 2038/6
128 43 Praha 2 - Nové Město

Contact person
Jiří Nemeškal
jiri.nemeskal@natur.cuni.cz
211 951 972


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