Shifting prominence of places and times: multiple centralities of socialist Brno

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to take a closer critical look at the multiple and multi-layered nature of urban centrality. Centrality is conceptualized here as a kind of prominence, perceived, planned and represented quality within the urban timespace. We employ three distinct ontological categories of the urban centre (centre-as-event, centre-as-thing and centre-as-structure) to take a deeper insight into the symbolism, ideological narratives and planning practices behind the genesis of the prominent urban places and times. With this approach, we expose even the seemingly subtle phenomena that (co-)shape multiple urban centralities. We are empirically focusing on the case of the city of Brno (Czech Republic). Attention is paid in particular to the period of socialism, more specifically to the influence of socialist ideology on the reorganization of urban central places and times. We are trying to overcome the traditional view of centralized and all-encompassing socialist transformation. Instead, the socialist Brno provides the case study to demonstrate a subtle fabric of overlapping, competing or simply coexisting socialist and pre-socialist centralities. We argue that the physical re-centralization of the city was in the end less significant than the efforts to symbolically recode the urban environment.