Forty-five years ago, the first residents of the South City took over the decrees

Prague – Jižní Město is the largest concrete-panel housing estate in Prague, with nearly 80,000 people living there according to the Czech Statistical Office. It makes up a large part of the Prague 11 district across its two cadastral areas, which are Chodov and Háje. The concrete-panel buildings in the cadasters of Chodov and Háje began construction in 1971, and 45 years ago, on June 18, 1976, the first residents of the estate received their decrees on today’s Hviezdoslavova Street.

Due to a housing crisis, Czechoslovak authorities started looking for suitable areas for the construction of a larger number of large apartment buildings in Prague as early as the mid-1960s. Attention focused on the predominantly vacant cadasters of Chodov and Háje, which were still located outside the borders of the capital city. The area had good prerequisites for easy supply of electricity, natural gas, and also water. At that time, the construction of a water supply system from Želivka was being prepared, and there was also a route for a planned highway crossing the area. The urban plan for Jižní Město, approved in 1968, was developed by the authorial collective Jan Krásný, Jiří Lasovský, and Miroslav Řihošek. Construction began in the early 1970s.

After the first decrees were handed over, the cadasters of Háje and Chodov quickly filled up with gray multi-story concrete-panel new buildings, alongside which family houses were also rising. Gradually, schools, nurseries, shops, healthcare centers, and garages were built in the area. In 1980, the extension of the metro line C from Kačerov to Háje (then Kosmonautů) contributed to the transportation service of Jižní Město.

The construction of Jižní Město and the life of its first residents were depicted in the expressive tragicomedy Panelstory from 1979 by Věra Chytilová.

Prefabricated panel houses experienced their biggest boom in the 1970s and 1980s in Eastern Bloc countries, while the first panel house was built shortly after World War I in the Netherlands. In Prague, tenants moved into the first panel house in July 1955 in Ďáblice. The first concrete-panel estate became Zelená liška in Prague 4, built between 1954 and 1955.