New Suburban Development in the Post-socialist City: the Case of Prague

OUŘEDNÍČEK, M. (2005): New Suburban Development in the Post-socialist City: the Case of Prague. In: Eckardt, F. (ed.): Paths of Urban Transformation. Peter Lang, s. 143-156.

The paper describes the most intensive urbanisation process in post-socialist cities – suburbanisation. Prague, the capital of Czech Republic was chosen as a case study city. Prague is one of the strongest regions in East-Central Europe and can be seen as a laboratory of contemporary development of post-socialist city. Firstly, I would like to make a difference between suburban development and suburbanisation, which can be seen as only one specific form of suburban development. Next part of this paper gives an overview of suburban development in the Prague urban region, with particular stress on pre-war, socialist and post-socialist period. The last part is concerned with evaluation of changes in physical and social environment of suburban area of today’s Prague. The study seeks to recognize the negative and positive consequences of suburbanisation in Prague urban region and describes specific features of post-socialist suburban development in comparison with suburban development in Western countries.