We have a new book on the socio-spatial differentiation of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region! The book is one of the outputs of the project Prague suburbs: the dynamics of social environment within the growing metropolis, which was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and ran from 2018 to 2021. The objectives of the project were to map contemporary changes in the social environment of the Czech suburbs and to test hypotheses about increasing ethnic heterogenization and the return of part of the suburban population back to the core cities. The book is in English and is entitled Prague and Central Bohemia: Current Population Processes and Socio-spatial Differentiation The editor of the book is Doc. RNDr. Martin Ouředníček Ph.D.

What is the book about?

The theme of socio-spatial differentiation has belonged to the core issues of social geography and urban studies for a long time. The general aim of the book is to describe and explain the current socio-spatial differentiation of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region and the processes that have influenced it during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The book offers its own theoretical perspective on the structuration of spatial patterns and the social environment, a general view of regional development, and the main socio-spatial processes of the period after transition. Maps are an important part of this volume and concentrate crucial information within most chapters. Apart from the static information described in the maps, the book offers a look at current population “processes”, as hinted at by the subtitle of the publication. The presentation and evaluation of “processes” require more dynamic forms of cartographic visualisation and new methods of investigation. Among them, new tools of segregation measurement, various approaches for the use of mobile phone data, and an innovative form of population forecast are presented in the book. The common thread connecting all chapters is a regional focus on Prague and the Central Bohemian Region and a quantitative approach to comparing spatial patterns and regional processes.

What chapters are in the book and who are the authors?

1. Prague and the Central Bohemia Region: Main Socio-Spatial Processes in the Period After Transition (Martin Ouředníček)
2. Methodological Approach: Concentric Zones of Prague and Typology of Municipalities in the Central Bohemian Region (Martin Ouředníček, Jiří Nemeškal)
3. Spatial Patterns of the Foreign Population in Prague and the Central Bohemian Region: The State 10 Years After the Financial Crisis (Adam Klsák, Ivana Křížková)
4. Migration and Residential Mobility of Foreign Citizens in Prague and the Central Bohemian Region (Ivana Křížková, Adam Klsák, Martin Šimon)
5. Residential Segregation in Prague and the Central Bohemian Region in 2012–2018: A Multiscalar Approach Using Individualised Neighbourhoods (Martin Šimon, Ivana Křížková, Adam Klsák)
6. Real Population and Daily Mobility in Prague and the Central Bohemian Region (Jiří Nemeškal, Martin Ouředníček, Lucie Pospíšilová, Pavel Frydrych)
7. The Dynamics of Age Structure and Primary School Network Development and Its Consequences for Municipalities Within the Central Bohemian Region (Jana Jíchová, Zuzana Kopecká)
8. Residential Mobility Within the Central Bohemian Suburbs (Nina Dvořáková, Marie Horňáková)
9. Demographic future of the Central Bohemian Region: A prognostic vision for the next three decades (Tomáš Kučera, Boris Burcin) 

The book was published by Karolinum Publishing House, where it is also available for purchase.

A new paper about residential segregation of non-European migrants in Czechia by URRlab’s Ivana Křížková and Martin Šimon has been published recently in Applied Geography. It analyses residential segregation using the method of individualised scalable neighbourhoods and uses anonymised geocoded register data. Comparing residential segregation in Czechia and in Northwest Europe, the authors draw implications for neighbourhood research and policy and question the pertinence of the term segregation in the European context. Read the full text of the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622822001011

We attended the 9th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States Conference (CATference). The Budapest CATference was held at the Danube waterfront campus of Eötvös Loránd University and was followed by a 2-days post-conference field trip. 

Members of our team took part in the following papers:

• Nina Dvořáková: Prague suburbs – History and present
• Slavomíra Ferenčuhová, Marie Horňáková, Jana Kočková: “It depends on how much coronavirus there is at the moment…” – Residents’ perspective on the large housing estates (LHEs) during the covid-19 pandemics in three Czech cities
• Niloufar Ghafouriazar & Dilnoza Tasheva: Revisiting residential satisfaction in a post-socialist city – the case of Prague, Czech Republic
• Pavel Frydrych: Changes in children’s rhythms of everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic in a small town in the Prague metropolitan area
• Kadi Kalm, Petra Špačková, Jan Sýkora, Ondřej Špaček: Housing estates’ trajectories in post-socialist countries – Similarities and differences of Estonian and Czech cities
• Adam Klsák: Ethnic turns of one capital – The non-Czech population of Prague in its modern history
• Jiří Nemeškal & Martin Ouředníček: Disruption of long-term commuting development – the impact of covid-19 on the daily mobility in the Czech Republic and Prague
• Adela Petrovic & Martin Ouředníček: Changes in the socio-demographic composition and potential gentrification in formerly working-class neighbourhoods of Prague
• Jan Sýkora, Marie Horňáková, Kirsten Visser, Gideon Bolt: ‘It is natural’ – Sustained place attachment of long-term residents in a gentrifying Prague neighbourhood

 

The set of specialised maps created in our project Prague suburbs: the dynamics of social environment within the growing metropolis was selected among the 4 best out of 17 entries and nominated for the Map of the Year 2021 award. We value this appreciation very much. The eventual winner in our category is Atlas of Moravian-Silesian Region authored by Moravian-Silesian Region and Urban Planner. See our specialised maps at https://www.atlasobyvatelstva.cz/cs/predmesti and the project website at https://www.prazskapredmesti.cz/en.

A new article was published! It was written by our team leader Martin Ouředníček and Jan Kubeš from the Department of Geography of the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bohemia in České Budějovice. The article was published in the journal Cities and is entitled “Functional types of suburban settlements around two differently sized Czech cities”. It describes and explains the current functional differentiation of suburban settlements around two differently sized Czech cities – the capital city of Prague and the regional city of České Budějovice. You can read the whole article here.

Two PhD students from our team have been successful in obtaining research funding from the University’s Grant Agency (GAUK). We congratulate them and wish them successful research!

What will they be working on?

Jiří-Jakub Zévl will work on a project entitled “Big data in the analysis of urban mobility and spatiotemporal behaviour of the population“ Dilnoza Tasheva will work on a project “Place attachment and renovation in socialist housing estates of Prague and Bishkek”  

Two members of our team, Martin Ouředníček and Adela Petrovic, together with three geography students, are in Warsaw for the final conference of the 4EU+ Course “Urban Regulations and Political Memory: Towards understanding Spatio-Temporal aspects of Urban Development” (UNREAD), which is one of the educational projects developed under Flagship 1.  The new promo video from the conference is out, please click here to watch it. More information can be found here. 

The International Migration Review has published an article entitled “Spatial Incorporation of Multiple Immigrant Groups in Gateway Cities: Comparative Analysis of Sydney, Barcelona, and Prague” by Jiří Hasman and Ivana Křížková, which tests the theories of spatial and segmented assimilation through a comparative analysis of three different immigration cities. The paper is based on a detailed investigation of the spatial distribution of all major migration groups in these cities, using modern quantitative methods such as spatial autocorrelation or spatial relatedness assessment of migration groups. The results of the analyses showed that when assessing the spatial incorporation of immigrants, it is necessary to take into account not only the specificities of individual migration groups and destination cities, but also their interaction.

Martin Šimon, Ivana Křížková and Adam Klsák have published a new article in the journal Central and Eastern European Migration Review. The article is titled New urban diversity at and after the economic downturn: recent trajectories of ethnic segregation in Central European cities. The authors focus on ethnic residential segregation in Czechia in the period after the economic crisis of 2008. Special attention is paid to the trajectories of individual cities and their position in the urban hierarchy. Longitudinal population register data are used and segregation indicators of unevenness and exposure are computed for the largest cities using a detailed spatial grid. The results show a broad picture of decreasing segregation despite the continuously growing number of immigrants in the country. While the economic crisis temporarily halted immigration, the spatial patterns of immigrant dissimilarity did not change and more-established immigration gateway cities experienced an increase in spatial isolation. In the conclusion, the article calls for further discussion on ethnic residential segregation in post-socialist cities.

A new book in full open access has just been published. It is entitled Urban Inequality and Segregation in Europe and China: Towards a New Dialogue and it was edited by Gwilym Pryce, Ya Ping Wang, Yu Chen, Jingjing Shan and Houkai Wei. The book brings together leading international researchers from Europe, USA and China- It offers fresh ideas, cutting edge methods and analysis through comparative studies. Moreover, it provides readers with access to self-study training materials and data. Most importantly, there is a chapter written by our team member Ivana Křížková and Meng Le Zhang, Dan Olner, Gwilym Pryce entitled Social Frontiers: Estimating the Spatial Boundaries Between Residential Groups and Their Impacts on Crime.

What is the chapter about?

This chapter highlights the importance of social frontiers—sharp spatial divisions in the residential make-up of adjacent communities—as a potentially important form of segregation. The handful of studies estimating the impacts of social frontiers have been based in the USA and the UK, both of which are free-market democracies with a long history of immigration, ethnic mix and segregation. There are currently no studies of social frontiers in former socialist countries, for example, or in countries where immigration and ethnic mix are only a recent phenomenon or non-existent. This chapter aims to address this research gap by estimating the impacts of social frontiers on crime rates in a post-socialist country, Czechia. We demonstrate how a Bayesian spatial conditional autoregressive estimation can be used to detect social frontiers in this setting, and we use a fixed effect quasi-Poisson model to investigate the impact on crime. Our results suggest that in new immigration destinations, social frontiers may not be associated with higher rates of crime, at least in the short run. Moreover, our use of cultural distance measures helps to promote a more nuanced approach to studying the impact of segregation and highlights the role of cultural diversity in understanding the link between immigrant segregation and crime. We reflect on how this approach could contribute to the study of segregation and inequality in the Chinese context.