Martin Veselý in the context of the series Housing Estate, what's next?

Housing estates represent specific areas of cities that require conceptual and thoughtful decision-making from public administration. Their spatial structure brings complications in the area of economic and social sustainability. Until now, we as a society have dealt almost exclusively with houses and their construction technology standard and have not paid much attention to finding a long-term strategy for the development of these locations. Finding answers to questions about the future development of these specific areas thus represents one of the most important topics of urban planning and city management.

After the introductory part of the lecture series, in which we got acquainted with the issues of housing estates in Visegrad countries, we now turn to the topic of housing estates viewed from the perspective of Czech experts. This time we will look at housing estates through the lens of a social anthropologist. Martin Veselý actively engages in urban development issues. He is the coordinator of the Prague Urban Circle and is currently also a member of the research team Paneláci.

Housing estates from a social sciences perspective
The lecture and subsequent discussion will initially focus on two topics frequently addressed in social science research of panel housing estates:
1) residents’ satisfaction with life in the housing estate
2) factors and prerequisites for sustainable socioeconomic development of housing estates.
Based on identifying the factors of (dis)content among residents and (un)sustainability of development, we will be able to move on to the topic that overlaps the interests of designers, social scientists, and local governments: the regeneration of housing estates and the problems that regeneration projects encounter.

The lecture will take place in the building of the Faculty of Architecture CTU in Dejvice on Tuesday, April 29th at 6:30 PM in room 152.

The lecture is part of a large research project "Housing Estates, What Next?", organized by the Faculty of Architecture CTU in cooperation with the Quality of Housing Center, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Prague, and the National Network of Healthy Cities. The project is supported by the Visegrad Fund.

The project “Housing Estates, What Next?” explores possibilities for transforming existing housing estate units into functioning and attractive parts of the urban structure. The project includes a studio assignment in the Kohout-Tichý studio, a student workshop, and a series of six thematic lectures. In the first part of the lecture series, experts from Visegrad countries will present the issues of housing estates in the Central European space, which will subsequently be complemented by Czech experts from among architects, urban planners, and theorists who deal with the topic of housing estates in their work. An international conference is planned for this autumn, which will not only present the results of case studies and analyses produced in the studio but also introduce guests from Germany, France, and the Netherlands, who will present implemented or ongoing regenerations of housing estates, both in terms of content (principles) and process (the role of public administration). The project concludes with a traveling exhibition, which will be launched at the Faculty of Architecture CTU and will subsequently be presented in cities and urban parts that participated in the project. The theoretical knowledge gained during the various phases of the project "Housing Estates, What Next?" will also be summarized in a publication, which will also indicate basic recommendations for the transformation of Czech housing estates.

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