The Revitalization of Prefab Estates in Ostrava, by Regina Kuchtová
During more than forty years of intensive construction of prefab blocks of flats − between 1955 and 1990 − 1,165 thousands of flats were built, 237 thousands of them in the region of North Moravia. The profoundness of the problems of housing in such locations is evident. Luckily, the prognoses of the depopulation and devastation of these locations have not come true yet, but prefab neighbourhoods do represent a continuous problem, especially in such concentration like in Ostrava. To continuously search for new developments of such areas is a must.
Metamorphoses of the Belt of Central Bohemia, by Milan Körner
Similar to other countries which are being integrated into European structures, there have been some characteristic changes in the Czech physical planning after 1990:
– larger differences among regions
– demographic stagnation, or depression, in large cities
– changes in the regional dominance of centres
– developments of suburbanization
The belt of Central Bohemia, with the capital of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region, is a very specific zone, featuring the above phenomena very intensively.
Central Elbe Plain at the Onset of the 3rd Millennium, by Vladimír Mackovič
The plain of the river Elbe belongs to the most valuable agricultural areas of the Czech lands. Nevertheless, the perception of the link between agricultural land and living is disappearing. The number of people whose living directly depends on agriculture is decreasing, while more and more people can see agricultural products for the first time when walking around hypermarket stores. On the other hand, the strengthened protection of agricultural land makes it difficult to the heirs of those to whom land was returned: most of them had never worked in agriculture, but to increase the value of their property through transfer into the category of construction plots is difficult. Also largely unknown is the fact that agricultural land fulfils many more functions than just its productive role. As a result, a lot of people think that there is a surplus of agricultural land. In the beginning of the 1990s, physical planning was considered a major tool of differentiated land stock protection. What does the concept of the local master plan offer to the agricultural land of the Elbe Plain?
Survey of the Implementation of a Physical Planning Information System in the Regions of the Czech Republic, by Karel Maier, Jíří Čtyřoký and Marie Jindřichová
The GIS Centre of the Prague Faculty of Architecture addressed the Regional Offices in May 2004 in order to carry out a questionnaire survey of the actual state of the preparation of the GIS physical planning information system, investigating in how the Offices were creating their own data models for the elements of the system. The questionnaire consisted of 13 questions and sub−questions. Of the thirteen Regions (Prague, as a separate Region of rather different conditions, was not addressed) ten have responded. The response shows that the roles, activities, and expectations of Regional Offices in the preparation of the concept of the Geographic Information System (GIS) differ a lot. A rather passive approach is that of the Region of Olomouc, while the Regions of South Bohemia and Carlsbad are working on their own regional GIS projects. The Regional Office of Vysočina is actively coordinating the creation of GIS, while that of Moravia−Silesia is even in the command of the process. Three Regions have explicitly mentioned that they were using regional intranets with geographic data for the territories of planning; nevertheless, the context indicates that other Regions also work with GIS data on their intranets.