Reinforcing Place Attachment Through its Disruption: An Ethnographic Example from the Solidarita Housing Estate in Prague

Abstract

The Solidarita housing estate was built during the years 1946–1951 as one of the first post-war housing estates in Prague, former Czechoslovakia. Inspired by Scandinavian urban standards, architects designed Solidarita as an urban architectural experiment that combined innovative urban strategies, new technologies, collective approach, and cooperative financing. The socio-spatial structure of Solidarita was influenced by the ideology of socialism – the production of an egalitarian society through a centrally planned economy and collective ownership. As a result, the estate was self-sufficient and conducive to neighborly meetings, and it strengthened their relations through its form. The political transformation, commercialization, and privatization in the 1990s caused a gradual change of the socio-spatial image of the neighborhood. Some elements of the housing complex started to lose their original function and the community character of Solidarita could be jeopardized. Using the theoretical concept of place attachment and the concept of social production of place, the aim of this paper is to show how residents of the Solidarita housing estate in Prague are attached to the place of their home and neighborhood and how this attachment is reconceptualized through the post-socialist socio-spatial changes of the place.