7 Ostrava-Poruba

A ‘Pure’ Socialist City in Change and

Permanence
Daniel Topinka

Introduction
The story of the development of the polycentric city of Ostrava and its district
Ostrava-Poruba is a textbook example of modernisation in the Czech Republic.
Today’s Ostrava, the centre of the Moravian-Silesian region, is the third largest city
in the Czech Republic by population.
The social space of Poruba, which was originally planned as the new centre of
Ostrava, has undergone several changes. Firstly, it was influenced by the directed
migration of the inhabitants from various parts of Ostrava and the inclusion of the
surrounding villages. Later, it saw the gradual differentiation of the inhabitants and
the change of life which came along with the advancing post-socialist transforma-
tion of society. Modernisation integrated the newcomers into the emerging social
institutions and organisations. As a result, an industrial, urban, class-structured soci-
ety, with a large population of steelworkers, miners and other labourers, was
formed. The city mediated the ‘breakthrough from the agrarian world’ and created
entirely new social and cultural frameworks and realities (Gellner, 1988). According
to K. Polanyi (2006), the new social relations were incorporated into the new eco-
nomic system.
This chapter focuses on one of the most important residential centres of Ostrava,
the urban district of Poruba. I use this district as an example for observing the iden-
tity and image of this particular part of the city that was built according to the
socialist model; literally on a greenfield site and intentionally populated by workers.
Ostrava-Poruba impresses its visitors with a strong genius loci; the district’s social life
takes place in an area which was designed as a model of an ideal city inhabited by
socialist people. The place manifests social planning, the technicist understanding of
a modern city and is an expression of the unity of an abstract city complex which is
much criticised by Richard Sennett (2008) in his essay Planning Purified Cities. The
unique atmosphere of the ‘purity’ of this city is emphasised mainly by the complete
architectural solution, the model urban plan and the integral inclusion of green
spaces in residential zones. The chapter first discusses the research methodology. It
then goes on to describe the pre-socialist history of Poruba, the construction of the
‘pure city’ New Ostrava. And finally, we present the transformation of Poruba, its
identities and image in the context of post-socialist transformation and identify the
more and less visible changes to the physical, symbolic and social space.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003260769-7
122 Daniel Topinka
Research methodology and conceptual background
This study aims to describe the identities and spatial image of Poruba through their
change and permanence in the context of industrialisation, deindustrialisation and,
in particular, post-socialist transformation. The chapter also identifies the more
and less visible changes to the physical, symbolic and social space. On the example
of Poruba, we can observe several significant modernisation processes, in which
the fundamental transformations of political systems – socialism and capitalism –
strongly intervene. We can see how the social organisation and the urban landscape
change in moments of hiatus. Thus, I focus on the transformation of the important
Poruba residential centre, the historical wave of its societal transformations and
systemic changes which took the form of disruptive, accelerated, and politically-
steered modernisation projects which follow models of society in the framework
of global hegemonies (Merkel, Kollmorgen and Wagener, 2019).
Urban identity is affected by material, social, and mental structures, among
which we can count architecture, the pleasantness of the public places, the sym-
bols, landscape elements, rituals, behaviour of the inhabitants, stereotypes, emo-
tions, personal bonds, and ties. The revitalisation of a city space often works with
the ‘traditional’ symbols and pictures around which civic life revolves. According
to Malý, Dvorák, and Šuška (2020), the post-socialist urban transition has been
broadly examined in order to understand the processes transforming former social-
ist cities. Although the differences between capitalist and post-socialist cities are
described, there is a gap in understanding and interpreting the various trajectories
of urban development among individual post-socialist cities. The post-socialist
transformation cannot be seen only as a political and economic change, but also as
a social change that affects various actions and behaviours, as well as beliefs (e.g.,
Stenning, 2005; Czepczyński, 2008).
That is why I decided to use several research methods. The starting point is
the methodology of Kevin Lynch (1960), which focused on the description of
the visual form of the city; the study of the image of the city. Lynch developed
a method that examined the collective mental image of a city, focusing on its
symbolic aspect. The method was extended to investigate physical and social
space. In the chapter, I refer to my long-term local research, including to the
mental mapping of the urban space by the inhabitants of Poruba. The application
of this method enabled us to outline some similarities in the perception of the
physical features of the districts. Other qualitative methods applied in my study
were individual semi-structured interviews, the ethnography of places and qual-
itative analysis of historical chronicles. The evaluation of social space is based on
secondary data analysis of statistical sources (e.g. Czech Statistical Office).

Construction of the ‘pure city’ New Ostrava

The word Poruba describes a physical space, a place where there was originally
a village, which grew into a town. When we refer to Ostrava-Poruba, we mean
the administrative name of the urban area that belongs to Ostrava. Both names are
used synonymously.
 Ostrava-Poruba 123
Until the 1950s, when the village of Poruba was transformed into ‘New Ostrava’
thanks to a socialist housing project, the place had not attracted any attention. It
had been a tiny village in the middle of fields, more than a two-hour walk from
the Ostrava ironworks and untouched by industrial activity.

Project of a socialist city

In the early phase of socialism, i.e., in the 1950s, the priority was mainly massive
industrialisation and the development of industrial complexes. At this stage, no
central shape of urbanistic similarity between the cities was created and planning
was left to individual cities and their planners. In this phase of early socialism,
attention was focused on the decentralisation of industrial production into indi-
vidual districts and the development of socialist cities concentrated more on bal-
ancing out the historically inherited inequality of the residential zones from the
past. The model socialist cities were rarely created on greenfield sites, and thus
without any history (Steinführerová, 2003, p. 172); one of the few exceptions is
Ostrava-Poruba. The development of industry brought with it the problem of
securing accommodation for the migrant workers. From the 1960s, large com-
plexes of housing estates started to be built, most often located on the peripheries
of cities (Musil, 2001, pp. 289–290), which increased the difference between the
so-called old and new city parts. This had a negative effect mainly on the centres
of the original cities where the maintenance and development lagged behind; old
buildings in the central parts of the cities became dilapidated. (Steinführerová,
2003, p. 173) Poruba remained a unique project that gradually became more and
more expensive. It was followed by a cheaper mass construction of prefabricated
housing estates.
The projects of the ‘socialist’ city were a manifestation of the efforts to over-
come the social inequality between the inhabitants and to create an ideal model of
a city on a greenfield site, which would concentrate the undifferentiated society of
the city without prior burdens and raise the mutual equality of the workers. The
built-up socialist cities were an integral part of the social engineering. They were
meant to contribute to the birth of a new man. Jirí Musil states that:

[…] in the countries with a centrally-planned economy which proclaimed

that they were trying to create a harmonious and cooperative society with the
least possible social inequality and which, in addition, wanted to create a ‘new
man’, it became clear that it was necessary to complement economic planning
with more subtle instruments of control. Those complementing measures
included, among other things, strategies and policies for the planned develop-
ment of settlement systems and individual cities.
(Musil, 2001, p. 272)

During early socialism, the novelty of Poruba was supposed to be underlined by the
name itself. It was to bear the name ‘New Ostrava’ to emphasise its separation from
the industrial city, where the place of work and the place of living were merged.
Poruba was created as a product of socialist local planning, as an expression of the
124 Daniel Topinka
formation of the prototype of the new socialist man, and, in addition to this ideal,
it intended to satisfy the housing needs of the increasing number of workers in the
coal mines and ironworks.
The unique atmosphere of the ‘purity’ of Poruba was emphasised mainly by a
complete architectural solution, the urbanistic plan and the integral inclusion of
greenery into residential zones. Sennett’s (2008) metaphor of the purity of the city
takes on a special anthropological meaning. The dichotomy of the pure and the
impure had a special symbolism in the city. It involved the coal dust that was
brought from the mines to the homes and that the miners struggled to wash off
every day.
The construction of a new ‘pure’ city in the spirit of socialist realism was not
a unique idea in the Czechoslovakia. More city districts in the vicinity of
Ostrava – such as Karviná or Havír ov – were built in this way. This type of new
urban space includes districts of the Czech towns of Ostrov, Kladno, and the
Slovak towns of Handlová and Nová Dubnica. Poruba is unique in many ways.
The district of Havírov, built the style of socialist realism, was declared a protected
zone in 1992.
It is worth mentioning that, in Poruba, local urbanists and architects did not
initially cross paths with interventions and interference from the state administra-
tion on a central level. They were left free to create their own concept of the city.
The space was given the distinctive monumental style of socialist realism and
reflected the ideology of the new socialist man without any limitations. We should
not be surprised that the initial monumentality became the subject of criticism
towards the end of the 1950s (Musil, 2001). The high cost of the overall construc-
tion and the contradiction with the revised goals of the new socialist society began
to come to light. That is why a new urban planning concept, much more modest,
was created to provide housing of humble conditions and thus the housing com-
plexes came into existence (Jirík, 1993).

Ideological background and social reality

After the rise of communism, the state authorities owned the already-built indus-
trial city of Ostrava with its ‘dark’ and stigmatising capitalist history from which
they needed to distance themselves. The capitalist city of Ostrava was character-
ised by bourgeois ways of life and also by very poor working conditions. The city
represented a huge and necessary economic potential and it systematically supplied
labour in the form of controlled migration (see Lipus and Feltlová, 2011). At the
same time, an ideology that aimed to build a socialist society – the first phase
of communism – began to emerge. The creation of socialism was derived from
the quantity of extensive labour and the cancellation of private ownership of the
means of production. The new socialist society was supposed to remove property,
social and cultural barriers between people (Heywood, 2021) and a state-managed
economy was supposed to lead to stability and prosperity. There was an ideological
re-construction of the city’s image. Its symbolism changed. The city of Ostrava
was given exceptional economic importance and earned the symbolic name ‘Steel
Heart of the Republic’. However, it was much more difficult to create better living
 Ostrava-Poruba 125
conditions for socialist people. Class reconstruction led to the disappearance of
the bourgeoisie, the social descent of the middle class and the symbolic preference
of workmen (Necasová, 2018). The social re-hierarchisation contrasted with the
actual living conditions, which were characterised in particular by the poor quality
of housing (e.g., in the mining colonies; Jemelka, 2011). That is why city planners
focused their attention on places that were not affected by undermining and were
far away from industrial enterprises, smelters, and mines. A ‘pure’ city grew up in
the location of the former village of Poruba – a city that separated the living place
from the ‘dirty’ work in industrial, mining and metallurgical complexes; a city that
distanced itself from capitalist ways of life; a city that symbolised a life of prosperity
and equality. It was symbolically labelled ‘New Ostrava’.
How was the urban project of Poruba created? In 1950–1951, the architect
Vladimír Meduna started to elaborate a regional study of the construction of
socialist cities in the Ostrava region and approved the construction plan for New
Ostrava. In 1952, a territorial plan was made of the construction of the first bor-
oughs of the new Poruba with a complex solution of engineering communica-
tions, heating, water and electricity supplies. The project of the construction
corresponded to the three main principles for the construction of socialist cities:
care for people, the idea of socialist humanism and democracy, and the effort to
incorporate the winning class struggle or the greatness of the socialist epoch into
the architecture. The new city was planned to shine with purity and peace. Its basis
was a district (quarter) for up to 10,000 inhabitants, which was supposed to be
surrounded by main avenues from three sides and by a road from the fourth. The
purity was to be emphasised by the omnipresent homogeneity and the stress on
how the clearly-marked complex was separated from the surrounding landscape by
entry gates, lined with welcoming inscriptions underlining the atmosphere of the
ritual transition into the world of a technicist order and planned unity.
Ostrava-Poruba is one of the most important examples of SORELA1 architec-
ture in the Czech Republic. Socialist realism was inspired by historical styles, tak-
ing columns and arches from Antiquity and sgraffito decorations from the
Renaissance Figure 7.1). Lenin Avenue in Poruba was supposed to resemble the
Champs-Élysées in Paris and the architecture of Saint Petersburg. The ‘Arch’
building (Figure 7.2) was topped with small towers and took its inspiration directly
from the Admiralty building in Saint Petersburg.
The construction of the modern estate in Poruba, according to Meduna’s pro-
ject, with the aim to create a big city for more than 150,000 inhabitants, began
immediately after the project was approved in 1952. After a year of building works,
the first completed part of Poruba was the first borough. The first inhabitants had
to deal with its incompleteness; there were roads and pavements missing. In 1958,
Poruba was connected to a tram line. From the chronicles (Lexa, 2007; Mach
1968), we can find out how strongly the decision to build a modern socialist city
with 150,000 inhabitants in 1951 impressed the inhabitants of Poruba. The centre
of the city was supposed to be formed by a new 80 m wide and 2.5 km long ave-
nue, lined with representational buildings. The citizens were disturbed by noise,
accidents, tree felling and the demolition of buildings. In 1953, the tenants of the
three most important socialist enterprises moved in. A year later, people were
126 Daniel Topinka

Figure 7.1 Sgraffito decoration: folk motifs with builder’s slogan (‘with your steel fists, with
the power of education, defend your rights and the peace of the world’).
Photo: Daniel Topinka.

Figure 7.2 Part of the ‘Arch’ building in Ostrava-Poruba.

Photo: Daniel Topinka.
 Ostrava-Poruba 127
beginning to settle down in their new flats. The number of inhabitants increased
to 9,220 and there were around 2,000 temporary workers in the area. In 1955, the
inhabitants struggled with the ubiquitous mud.
The construction of the second district was architecturally more planned which
is visible in the style, the housing facades, and the decline in artistic decoration.
1957 to 1958 saw the arrival of workers of big companies. They belonged to the
supported group of inhabitants who did so-called value-producing work. The
move was accompanied by the music of a brass band and ceremonial speeches by
representatives of the communist elite. Immediately after that, construction of the
third district began which consisted of houses along the High Street (Hlavní trída);
the central point of the emerging city.
The first and second districts formed an urban unit characterised by a high
standard of living. The main axis was a wide main street with a green park in the
middle. Shops were located in the housing complexes. The courtyards were
entered through archways and each courtyard was a separate social microcosm.
They were safe, quiet zones where new generations of children could socialise.
They offered a certain degree of privacy and separation from the loud city, but at
the same time they were subject to a strong social control and surveillance.
In the 1960s, Poruba faced its first social problem. In 1961, almost half of its
population consisted of children under 15, which led to the establishment of new
kindergartens and schools. Not much of the original village remained by this
point, yet the proximity of the fields kept local agriculture alive. Further invest-
ments were made and, because of that, the quality of housing and the surroundings
improved, for example, through the addition of greenery. Residents were involved
in a number of events and worked hundreds of thousands hours at part time jobs
around their homes. This was a form of self-help that replaced the lack of resources
by unpaid work. In the mid-1960s, there were 220 stores in the district; 111 were
grocery stores, 73 industrial goods stores and 36 restaurants. Because new residents
were coming from large socialist enterprises that paid them above average wages,
they spent a lot of money and boosted the service sector. This created Poruba’s
own internal economy, contributing to the creation of an independent and impor-
tant city centre for Ostrava.
In terms of social structure, the new city must have had a very fresh impression
on visitors and inhabitants. People of working age were moving in and starting
families here. The residents were part of the successful socialist middle class. They
enjoyed all the benefits and lived a happy and successful life in a place that others
could only envy. It should be noted that assigning housing was part of the system
of central planning and redistribution, which was determined by local economic
needs and relationships. Preference was given to workers in large enterprises; in
Poruba there was segregation of the middle class. First came the successful work-
ers, the high-status ironworkers and miners, and second came the other workers in
the growing service sector.

Post-socialist changes in the physical, social, and symbolic space

This part of the text identifies the more and less visible changes to the physical,
symbolic, and social space in the context of post-socialist transformation. After the
128 Daniel Topinka
political change of 1989 when the communist regime collapsed, Poruba under-
went a difficult and long-term social and economic transformation. A lop-sided
dependence on heavy industry led to a lot of difficulties in the 1990s. There was
a huge slow-down of the metallurgical industry and many mines had to be closed
down. The region lost its economic resources and went through an extremely
tough period of socio-economic transformation. It was hit by high unemploy-
ment, slow job creation, and a widespread anomie.
Ostrava was experiencing a rapid deindustrialisation and post-socialist transfor-
mation and it was struggling to break free from the industrial reality and to find
new resources. It turned into an old industrial city that was suffering from eco-
nomic, social and cultural decline, which contributed to the city’s growing nega-
tive image (Hubbard, 1996); a stereotypical image from which it is hard to escape.
The negative symbolic meaning and decades of stereotypes prevented the mobili-
sation of the city’s internal resources – its human capital – and the necessary exter-
nal economic capital and other resources needed for its overall regeneration.
According to M. Miles (2000), regenerative change is not easily achievable with-
out redefining identities and image. Nowadays, we can see that the city is begin-
ning to regenerate in many ways without losing its connection to the past. Events
in the broader context also strongly influenced local events in Ostrava-Poruba.
The impact was considerable and led to strong resentments. Its physical space, the
symbolism of places, and the social and demographic characteristics of the popu-
lation began to change. We describe them in more detail below.

The physical space

After 1989, several surrounding municipalities which used to be connected were
separated and, with only a few exceptions, the area of Poruba did not expand. The
present districts are gradually becoming more built up with new buildings and vacant
areas which were previously left unused or covered in green are being renovated
(e.g., the case of the meadow between the third and fifth district). The architecture
of the city is complemented by some more or less successful elements connected to
the enhancement of the infrastructure and strong commercialisation – from small
pubs to large shopping centres. New Poruba offers living with above standard facili-
ties in cooperative ownership, and interest in living there is manifested by high prices
of flats according to the individual districts.
In 1990, negotiations over the construction of a new church began, the first
private shops were established and a privatisation project was being prepared; the
switch of public property to private ownership. This was the opposite of the pro-
cess of nationalisation that affected Poruba after the communists came to power.
Poruba Castle, the oldest building to survive in the locality, was sold to a private
entrepreneur. It is worth mentioning that he was of Greek origin and, even during
the capitalist era, he publicly supported the idea of communism. The small, dilap-
idated castle was reconstructed and a Greek restaurant was later opened there.
Expansion of the complexes that had been built under socialism continued,
e.g., a library and a new sports hall were built on the university campus. The col-
ours and visual appearance of the space changed and the first colourful
 Ostrava-Poruba 129
advertisements appeared. Stalls appeared on the streets, bringing a completely new
element to the harmonious space and expressing the first entrepreneurial efforts in
response to the lack of goods and rising prices. The first non-residential rooms
began to be rented out to private buyers. This is how bars, confectioners, and
jewellery stores were established. Some statues were removed from the area, e.g.,
that of Lenin. Some municipalities, which were connected to Poruba during
socialism, became independent, so the physical space of the city (the cadastral ter-
ritory) became smaller again. In 1991, a new administrative arrangement of the
city districts in Ostrava was approved.
The physical space was transforming throughout the 1990s. The buildings that
had been built in the 1950s were still there with all their symbolism. Nothing
changed in the dominant features here. The space was cleansed of some of the
statues of the socialist authorities. However, the non-residential spaces of the
buildings started coming to life. Within the so-called small privatisation on the
ground floor, commercial, production and other areas were being sold or rented.
While the upward gaze still evoked the harmony, order and patterns of socialism,
capitalism began to flourish on the ground floors of buildings. In 1991, 521 new
businesses – boutiques, bistros, fitness centres, and snack bars – were opened in the
city. Property privatisation showed up in the first renovations and reconstructions,
both public and private. New buildings were created in empty spaces, often con-
trasting with their surroundings (e.g., restaurant buildings). Gas stations, car
washes, shops and a number of restaurants were added. Residential construction
stopped, except for family houses. A number of buildings began to be insulated.
Residential buildings were sold to newly-formed housing associations.
In the second and the third decades after the Velvet Revolution, a number of
new buildings were built in Poruba. They were located either on the periphery or
filled vacant spaces between the original buildings; investments grew. Continuity
was ensured by the high imageability of the socialist places. Although the symbol-
ism remains visible, it refers only to the founding act and has been historicised;
incorporated into the plan for the protection of historical monuments under the
SORELA. Here we can find a number of continuities. These include the imprint-
ing and preservation of the physical form of an independent centre with its own
internal structure, the preservation of architectural peculiarity in the form of the
declaration of a state-protected zone, the strong image of a self-sufficient centre at
a sufficient distance from Ostrava, the internal differentiation of the individual
districts that establishes the identical citizenship of the inhabitants (local, architec-
tural, aesthetic) and the image of a quiet residential zone with quality housing. In
contrast, one of the biggest discontinuities is the construction of new commercial
buildings and infrastructure, the expansion of facilities, the revitalisation of the
housing stock, the construction of more buildings, the privatisation of the housing
stock, and the strong commercialisation.

The symbolic space

We applied Kevin Lynch’s theory of imageability (1960) because it takes into
account qualities of main urban elements that are paths, nodes, edges, landmarks
130 Daniel Topinka
and districts and puts emphasis on the component of ‘identity’ and ‘structure’ of
the urban elements as important factors in altering the image of a city. At the same
time, we focused on understanding the meanings that occur around these objects
from an anthropological perspective (see Damayanti and Kossak, 2016) through
interviews. We present our findings based on the structure of K. Lynch.

Paths
Among the roads built were Main Street and 17th November Street. 17th
November Street runs perpendicular to Main Street. In the mental maps, other less
significant roads branch off from them. In all cases, Porubská Street, which crosses
the Main Street in the middle and where a roundabout is located, is also important.
The roundabout was drawn on the mental maps as disproportionately large com-
pared to the rest of the buildings. It has big imageability because it is an essential
traffic hub; in the past and in the present, important public events took place here.

Edges and districts

In Poruba we do not find any edges that are not related to the division into areas.
Our participants mapped parts of the city as urban districts. Poruba-Ves was also
drawn on the maps under the old name of Old Poruba. The spaces of the first,
second and third districts are key elements in the mental maps (see Figure 7.3, left).
This mental map shows the structured perception of urban space. Only the first,
second, and third districts, i,e. the oldest parts that were influenced by socialist
realism, are drawn and highlighted on the maps. These are key territories for the
participants, regardless of where they live. Other districts are rather peripheral in
the minds of the inhabitants, except for those who grew up in them. The first
three districts built in the socialist era have strong imageability.

Nodes
The most frequently depicted node was the entire Main Street. Another was the
area of the Technical University of Ostrava, the entire Opavská Street, on which
was marked Poruba Vozovna, a very frequent drop-off and pick-up point for public
transport passengers at the intersection of the Porubská and the Opavská Streets (see
Figure 7.3, middle). The mental map shows the same space as above. In addition,

Figure 7.3 Sample mental maps of local residents.

Source: Author’s archive.
 Ostrava-Poruba 131
however, it features key nodes: the Technical University of Ostrava, Opavská Street
with the Poruba Vozovna transport hub, and the boundaries of Porubská and
Opavská Streets. Additional nodes depicted were places of rest: the cultural house,
swimming pool, winter stadium and forest park. Other nodes appeared as rather
fragmented. These included the hospital, the VOKD stadium, the main post office,
the swimming pool, the Duha complex, the Vlatava and Zuzana shopping centres,
the ice rink, and the Kaufland store; places built or created after 1989.

Other significant elements

Among the other significant elements, Main Street, or rather the buildings that
line Main Street, appeared. What is more, it was only half of Main Street, from the
roundabout to 17th November Street, which is part of the first and second districts
and belongs to the conservation area. The Arch is perceived as another significant
element. In addition to this, the castle and the church, both located in Poruba-
Ves, and the grounds of the Technical University of Ostrava were also included.
Another significant element was the development of the entire first district and
of the second district. As can be seen, the significance is based on the founding
plan from the 1950s. It imprinted itself so strongly in the minds of residents that
it forms the basic significant elements of their mental maps. Among the less sig-
nificant points were the Community Centre, and the courthouse, located on the
meadow between the third and fifth districts, as well as the Towers (Figure 7.4),
the swimming pool, and the ice rink.
The symbolic meanings point to the great significance of the founding socialist
act. Symbolism remains linked to the values of socialism; the emphasis on equality,
social justice, urban harmony, order and modernity. Poruba continues to be consid-
ered a ‘pure’ city with a certain level of order and a constantly-maintained quality of
life and environment. Residents dislike the noisy and industry-impacted city of
Ostrava; this fact has not changed over time. From the outset, special importance has
been given to the three oldest districts which represent the model of the ideal city and
reflect the prototyping of the new socialist man. The heads of the residents still rise
to the tops of the buildings, which are decorated in the dominant style of the socialist
era; they are proud of the district’s appearance. Meanwhile the ground floors and
interior spaces are governed by the logic of the free market. The only thing that has
been slowly disappearing since 1989 is the vision of an eternally young city that is
inevitably ageing. The mental maps also included religious places (churches – see two
crosses in Figure 7.3, right) for religious inhabitants. However, they do not play any
major role. Some Catholic churches appear mostly on the individual mental maps of
believers. An example of a mental map is where Poruba’s church is marked (a Baroque
Roman Catholic church from the 15th century) and the new parish church of St.
Cyril and Methodius in Pustkovec is available in the neighbouring district.
From the interviews, it is clear that residents are still looking for clearer con-
tours of collective identity. They are trying to derive it from the symbolism that
surrounds them. This is a source of strong resentment that grew with the age of
our participants. Although the socialist symbolism has faded, we can see in the
mental maps and interviews that children are socialising in the same backyards as
132 Daniel Topinka

Figure 7.4 ‘The Towers’ building.

Photo: Daniel Topinka.

their parents and that many residents are tending the front yards of their houses the
same way they used to. New objects are gradually being added to the mental maps,
but the basic map contains elements that have been points of orientation for many
decades. Poruba has retained its basic symbolic framework; even in spite of the
economic and social shock, it has retained the character of a place that is exclusive,
‘clean’ and separated from industrial Ostrava and it offers a good quality of life.
Among the participants, it has a reputation as an independent urban district offer-
ing good housing and living conditions. Gradual regeneration and development
enables it to maintain a continuous positive image.

Social and demographic changes

The local population is made up mainly of the generations of 80- and 50-year-olds
because the district was built from scratch and rather intensively populated.
 Ostrava-Poruba 133
The generation of 80-year-olds are the migrants who received accommoda-
tion in the 1950s and 1960s. In turn, the generation of the 50-year-olds was
born and grew up in this place. Poruba thus became the youngest at that time
neighbourhood of the city and significantly lowered the average age of the
population of the whole Ostrava. An undisputable social problem has been the
ageing of the local population which has been moderated by new arrivals, who
have been attracted to Poruba because of quality of life but are discouraged by
the expensive cost of living.

Demographic decline and population ageing

One of the significant changes has been the decline in population. At the begin-
ning of the 1950s, Poruba had around 1,500 residents. By 1957, the number of
residents had risen to 24,831. However, this number also included the inhabitants
of two surrounding settlements which became part of Poruba in the same year
(Sikula, 2005, p. 7). The population grew until 1980, when it surpassed 93,000.
The biggest increase in population was from 1961 to 1970, when 40,627 new
inhabitants came to Poruba. Since 1980, the population has started to decrease.
The reason for this decline was the disintegration of ‘Great Poruba’ and the inde-
pendence of the previously annexed villages (Idem).
During post-socialism, young people moved away from the area in search of
new job opportunities. But the declining birth rate was much more harmful for
the number of inhabitants. The number of children aged 0 to 15 was declining. In
1991 there were 13,177 and by 2011 only 8,379 (Czech Statistical Office, 2021).
Families usually had one or two children. On the other hand, the ageing of the
population is showing here.
The average age of Poruba inhabitants has been gradually increasing. In 1980,
the average age was 32.1, in 1990 it was 37.7, in 2001 it had risen to 41.4 and in
2011 it was 41.7. Over a 30-year period, the average age of the population rose
by a total of 9.6 years (Czech Statistical Office, 2021). The average age of women
was higher (and still is). This is logical because men’s life expectancy was lower;
they died earlier due to bad health caused by all the work in heavy industry.
Poruba turned from the youngest part of the city to the neighbourhood with the
highest concentration of older inhabitants. Nowadays, it is a significant contribu-
tor to the ageing of the entire population of Ostrava. The ageing process is so
strong that it overshadows the current young immigration to Poruba, of people
arriving in search of quality housing.
Although the Czech Republic is an immigration state, immigration does not
have any significant impact on the territory of Poruba. We do not find any grow-
ing representation of foreigners here, with only minor exceptions (Vietnamese).
Foreigners from the EU and foreigners who are not from the EU each make up
approximately 1% of the population and high-skilled migration does not have any
effect here. In Poruba, the Czech nationality is dominant (97.5%) and the environ-
ment is highly ethnically homogeneous.
134 Daniel Topinka
Diversification of professions on the labour market
The economically active population includes those who are employed and those
who are unemployed but actively seeking employment. The number of economi-
cally active residents has been decreasing: from 50,924 in 1980 to 30,303 in 2011.
In 1980, the labour force of Poruba was still fully employed, due to the legal obli-
gation to work in the socialist era (Czech Statistical Office, 2021). After the fall
of the communist regime in 1989, the economically active population included
even the unemployed, who represented 3% in 1991, 15% in 2001, and, by 2011,
11.5% (Czech Statistical Office, 2021). Thus, it looks as if Poruba overcame the
sharp increase in the number of unemployed people in the years between 1991 and
2001. Many workers retired early.
Over the years, the number of people outside the labour force has also decreased.
In 1980, there were almost 43,000 economically inactive people in Poruba, in 1991
there were 35,500, and 33,294 in 2011. The largest share of these numbers are non-
working seniors, of whom 19,214 were living in Poruba in 2011 (Czech Statistical
Office, 2021). In comparison to 1980, their number has almost doubled.
If we look at the representation of employees in each sector, we can see that, in
the years of late socialism, the largest proportion of the labour force worked in
industry; about 46%. In 2011, the industrial sector still employed the highest num-
ber of workers, but their representation among the employed had fallen by half to
21.5%. The decline in industry was linked to the crisis on the labour market and
to the rise in unemployment. The post-socialist transition meant that new sectors
were developing and new jobs connected to money, insurance, real estate, business
services, research, etc. emerged on the labour market.

Changes in the educational structure

In 1980, the vast majority of the population of Ostrava-Poruba was still made up
of people who had only primary education or who had finished secondary school
without the maturity exam (73.5%). Less than 7% of the population went to univer-
sity. This fact is not surprising; it was mainly manual workers, working in industrial
production, who lived in Ostrava-Poruba. With the changes in the labour market,
the educational structure of the population was transformed. Over the years, the
number of residents only with lower levels of education has been decreasing while
the number of people who have successfully passed the maturity exam and who
completed a university degree has been rising. In 2011, 16.6% of the population
of Ostrava-Poruba held an academic degree; this number has almost doubled from
4,795 in 1980 to 9,249 in 2011 (Czech Statistical Office, 2021).
The new strategy for the educational development of Poruba deals with its
further improvement. It emphasises the development of the quality of school man-
agement and pedagogical work, promoting access to all children, the transparency
of schools and the participation of individual actors in the educational process and
also the deepening of the social responsibility of schools (Koncepce rozvoje vzdelávání
mestského obvodu Poruba v letech 2020-2023, 2020). The strategy highlights school
management (transparent selection of headmasters, criteria for their evaluation,
 Ostrava-Poruba 135
annual reports on school performance), evaluation (observing the school climate),
participation (fulfilling the potential of school boards, cooperation and communi-
cation between all levels of Poruba and Ostrava schools), equal access to education
(school counselling centres, support for the education of children from culturally-,
socially- and technologically-excluded environments, support for children’s tal-
ents, support for alternative and distance education), and competences that open
the doors to further education and employment in the international working envi-
ronment (support of teaching languages).

Housing changes
The vast majority of the flats in Ostrava-Poruba are located in blocks of flats.
In 2011, there were 1,650 blocks and more than 95% of the population lived in
them. There were 564 family houses. Most of the complexes were built during the
socialist era. The privatisation of flats owned by the City of Ostrava, comprising
12,008 flats in total, meant a major change in the ownership. The transfer of flats
into the hands of private owners, who mostly bought entire buildings, began in
1995. The goal of the privatisation was to keep just 5% of the flats in Ostrava’s
ownership, so the city lost most of its housing fund.
In 2011, 32,686 flats were registered in Poruba. 7,932 of them were privately
owned, while 10,416 were rented and 10,116 were cooperative (Czech Statistical
Office, 2021). The municipality of Poruba owns a total of 1,007 flats (2020 data).
The municipality aims to have a housing stock that is not outdated and is used by
long-term tenants from different socio-economic groups, which are connected to
the neighbourhood. It also responds to the ageing population; it wants to have a
mix of available places designed for older people, houses with adaptations for dis-
abled access and, at the same time houses, with support services to enable them to
remain in the flats to which they have become accustomed (Koncepce nakládání s
bytovým fondem mestského obvodu Poruba..., 2021).

The future of Ostrava-Poruba in the light of local policy

In recent years, the local authorities have created several strategic documents that
are the expression of efforts to strengthen local development (Akcní plán 2021 ke
Strategickému plánu rozvoje mestského obvodu Poruba 2018–2023 s výhledem do roku
2030, 2021; Koncepcní strategická studie I. stavebního obvodu A. Analytická cást, 2017;
Koncepcní strategická studie I. stavebního obvodu B. Návrhová cást, 2018 ; Verějný prostor
meš tského obvodu Poruba, 2016). They have been created on two levels. It is all cov-
ered by the strategic plan of the city of Ostrava. This has its own specifics on the level
of Ostrava-Poruba. The strategic development plan of the city of Ostrava (Strategický
plán rozvoje mesta Ostravy na období 2017–2023, 2017) focuses on finding solutions to
problems that have their roots mainly in industrialisation and the post-industrial real-
ity (e.g., the revival of the city centre, development of education and entrepreneur-
ship, cultivation of the environment, getting closer to nature). There is an interesting
attempt to connect the city from inside and to respond to its polycentric charac-
ter; so to further connect one of the centres, Ostrava-Poruba, with other parts.
136 Daniel Topinka
The priorities of Ostrava-Poruba are efficient management (quality of services),
pleasant public spaces and housing, improving the environment and bringing the
city closer to nature and clean transport. Strategic projects include, for exam-
ple, the aestheticisation of Hlavní Trída city avenue, reconstruction of the Poklad
community centre, the introduction of bike and scooter sharing, revitalisation of
the Castle park, relocation of the tram depot, reconstruction of the Arch and the
reduction of traffic on the main avenues.
In general, the strategic documents of Ostrava-Poruba outline two areas of
special priority: the regeneration of its oldest part (district I) and the development
of the peripheral parts (district VIII and the locality of the so-called Nový
Pustkovec) (Strategický plán rozvoje mestského obvodu Poruba 2018–2023, 2018). The
public spaces within the central part were divided into categories based on their
connection to an important institution or a major architectural complex (Studie
urbanistického prostoru VIII. stavebního obvodu a lokality tzv. Nového Pustkovce,
2020). The strengthening of the public spaces brings more intimacy to the court-
yards that should be used more by residents. The plan also considers the restoration
and use of green spaces, parks and landscaped areas. The street network is also to
be improved; the aim is to calm the traffic, differentiate pedestrian spaces and hier-
archise the streets, by dividing them into main, service and courtyard streets. The
concept of territorial organisation distinguishes two parts; Sorel and Dvouletky.
The concept is based on the idea of strengthening the identity of the residents by
differentiating public and private areas. It therefore returns to the intimacy of the
courtyards and the spaces between houses. Privacy is also distinguished within the
courtyards into three spaces; pass-through areas, common spaces (sandpits, barbe-
cues, playgrounds) and private spaces (gardens, drying areas). The construction of
Sorel trail holds a special position in the urban plan. The trail is planned to start in
Dvouletky, the oldest part of the city where a square is to be built, and to end at
the post office which is part of district III and may become a museum. It was evi-
dent from my sociological surveys that many residents do not have sufficient infor-
mation about many places associated with Sorel. It is difficult for a tourist to
navigate the area and find interesting architectural places. The planned trail will
lead through 22 places where there will be information boards.

Conclusion
After the political change in 1989, economic depression gradually led to the
discovery of new opportunities for Poruba. In this study, I examined the spatial
identity and the changing image of Poruba in the context of post-socialist transfor-
mation and identified more and less visible changes to the physical, symbolic and
social space. Despite the number of changes, we can still see traces of continuity
and permanency in the social structure in this neighbourhood. One reason could
be the unchanging attractiveness of the neighbourhood, but also the short trans-
formation period (Hermanová and Patocka, 2007).
The collective spatial identity of the ‘pure’ city has evolved over time; from the
Stalinist concept of social hierarchy to the socialist concept of equality and welfare
and, later, to the capitalist concept of an individualised society based on the
 Ostrava-Poruba 137
entrepreneurial spirit of individuals. The identity of Poruba inhabitants was
forged in the environment of the ‘pure’ city that was a symbol of prosperity, good
services, and proximity to the countryside and nature. The urban conception was
based on the separation of the place of work from the place of living. Inhabitants
could hide and enjoy privacy in enclosed courtyards, from which they could go
straight out into the public areas of the city, which were equipped with all neces-
sary infrastructure. The residents belong to the Ostrava area, which represents the
industrial and post-industrial rhythms of life. However, at the same time, the
citizens feel a strong local identity that sets itself apart from the industrial world
thanks to the concept of ‘cleanliness’ and the fact that, from the beginning, the
area was intended to be an exclusive place; a green and quiet oasis near the dirty,
noisy and polluted area of Ostrava.
According to the results, the permanence is connected to the generational
imbalance, the inner physical structure of the city and the specific meaning of the
three oldest inhabitants, its architecture, the perception of Poruba as an attractive
residential zone, and the separation of the city with a good quality of life and
infrastructure, in contrast to the noisy and polluted Ostrava, positive ties to the
city, more anomic political attitudes (strong resentment to socialism) and ethnic
homogeneity.
The discontinuities are connected to the changes in the socio-economic struc-
ture of the population, revitalisation of the physical space, condensation of the
built-up areas, strong commercialisation of public space and the disappearance of
the impression of the new, young city. It is to be expected that the search for the
image of the city cannot manage without a strong history which will guarantee
and frame the continuity of the local identity. Even if new places appear on the
map and the memory of some older places fade, it seems that the socialist frame-
work will remain strong. Even though it will be stripped of its symbolism, the
place as a whole will continue to carry its genius loci.
And, finally, thanks to its ‘purity’, Poruba has avoided the need to distance itself
from its industrial history and the negative image common to post-socialist trans-
formation. The imageability of the city was positively created from the beginning,
as it was oriented towards ‘ordinary’ people, the middle classes. There is no need
to run away from the negative image. On the contrary, there is great potential
within urban planning to maintain the positive stereotype of a place that can secure
the necessary economic resources from its surroundings and, at the same time,
maintain a sufficient quality of life for local residents.

Note
1 Abbreviation – Socialist Realism in Architecture.

References
Akční plán 2021 ke Strategickému plánu rozvoje městského obvodu Poruba 2018–2023 s výhledem
do roku 2030 (2021) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSbuTnZVufHMq5l6o1Ski5lSjd-
FO651O/view (Accessed 17.11.2021).
138 Daniel Topinka
Czech Statistical Office (2021) Website https://www.czso.cz/csu/czso/home (Accessed
22.11.2021).
Czepczyński, M. (2008) Cultural Landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities: Representation of Powers
and Needs. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Damayanti, R. and Kossak, F. (2016) ‘Extending Kevin Lynch’s concept of imageability
in third space reading; case study of Kampungs, Surabaya–Indonesia’, ITU A|Z, 13:1,
57–67.
Gellner, E. (1988) Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Hermanová, E. and Patocka, J. (2007) Regionální sociologie, sociologie prostoru a prostredí II.
Praha: Oeconomica Press.
Heywood, A. (2021) Political Ideologies: An Introduction. London: Macmillan Education.
Hubbard, P. (1996) ‘Urban design and city regeneration: social representations of entrepre-
neurial landscapes’, Urban Studies, 33:8, 1141–1461.
Jemelka, M. (Ed.) (2011) Ostravské delnické kolonie. Ostrava: Filozofická fakulta Ostravské
univerzity v Ostrave.
Jirík, K. (1993) Dejiny Ostravy. Ostrava: Sfinga Press.
Koncepce nakládání s bytovým fondem mestského obvodu Poruba v letech 2021-2025 s výhledem
do roku 2030 (2021) Ostrava-Poruba. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13KC1sr_
YaC1mfG_Yj-iao3HaeZ9SdIGw/view (Accessed 20.11.2021).
Koncepce rozvoje vzdelávání mestského obvodu Poruba v letech 2020-2023 (2020) Ostrava-
Poruba. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LX8_wEafxIoT8g4uDFLuAQPdCz70Ka8x/
view (Accessed 21.11.2021).
Koncepcní strategická studie I. stavebního obvodu A. Analytická cást (2017) https://drive.
google.com/drive/folders/1Sz_l1WJOLl3-Zl5sAQ_WuQNIMTJ1_M1s (Accessed
18.11.2021).
Koncepcní strategická studie I. stavebního obvodu B. Návrhová cást (2018) https://drive.
google.com/drive/folders/16ZLSDnFI1qZhdAkGPmPZpa3XvRp_hOXZ (Accessed
18.11.2021).
Lexa, J. (2007) Odkazy porubských kronik. Ostrava: Mestský obvod Poruba Press.
Lipus, R. and Feltlová, M. (Eds.) (2011) Ostravské príchody: príbehy, osudy, cesty. Ostrava:
Repronis.
Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the City. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press.
Mach, J. (1968) Poruba. Z kroniky obce. Ostrava. Ostrava: Obcanský výbor v Porube-vsi
Press.
Malý, J., Dvorák, P. and Šuška, P. (2020) ‘Multiple transformations of post-socialist cities:
multiple outcomes?’, Cities, 107, 102901.
Merkel, W., Kollmorgen, R. and Wagener, H. J. (2019) The Handbook of Political, Social, and
Economic Transformation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Miles, M., Hall, T. and Borden, I. (Eds.) (2000) City Cultures Reader. London: Routledge.
Musil, J. (2001) ‘Vývoj a plánování mest ve strední Evrope v období komunistických
režimu’, Sociologický casopis, 37:3, 275–296.
Necasová, D. (2018) Nový socialistický clovek. Brno: Host.
Polanyi, K. (2006) Velká transformace. Brno: CDK.
Sennett, R. (2008) The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life. London: Yale
University Press.
Sikula, P. (2005) Poruba. Ostrava: MONTANEX Press.
Steinführerová, A. (2003) ‘Sociálne prostorové struktury mezi setrvalostí a zmenou.
Historický a soucasný pohled na Brno’, Czech Sociological Review, 39:2, 169–192.
 Ostrava-Poruba 139
Stenning, A. (2005) ‘Post-socialism and the changing geographies of the everyday in
Poland’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30:1, 113–127.
Strategický plán rozvoje mesta Ostravy na období 2017–2023 (2017) https://fajnova.cz/
strategicky-plan/ (Accessed 22.11.2021).
Strategický plán rozvoje mestského obvodu Poruba 2018–2023 s výhledem do roku 2030 (2018)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IQu8AwRg0r3e4bMmsOynD3c4ABBN9ePr/view
(Accessed 17.11.2021).
Studie urbanistického prostoru VIII. stavebního obvodu a lokality tzv. Nového Pustkovce (2020) https://
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PrqfVqbDM812vQ- 6LMWwRyoSMaNTzKCR
(Accessed 5.11.2021).
Verejný prostor mestského obvodu Poruba (2016) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OH_
uliLTh9zDD1AsR-edBPLFF4ujkINM/view (Accessed 21.11.2021).