Žižkov, Prague. This now iconic neighborhood started as a proletarian colony in the 19th century. Communist Party wanted to bulldoze it as a “remnant of bourgeois oppression” and build panel blocks in its place. Due to incompetence and lack of funds, they demolished only a small part before 1989.
by GPwat
2 comments
i was there last week! I loved it!
[Longer read:](https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asanace_a_p%C5%99estavba_%C5%BDi%C5%BEkova)
> The project was implemented in phases. It was originally to have three stages, progressing from east to west, up to the main station.
> The project started in 1977. First, 7,000 residents of the old development[6] were moved to the Jižní Město housing estate. It was assumed that the housing of the original old inhabitants of Žižkov on the outskirts of the estate would be of a more temporary nature and would return to Žižkov after the construction of new houses. Construction work then began in October 1978, and today there is a monument in the estate part of the site which commemorates the start of the “rebuilding of Žižkov”. Demolition began first in the vicinity of Olšanské náměstí, where 416 flats, 160 garages and 26 studios were to be built in new buildings by the end of 1980.
> By 1989, the strip of houses between Rokycanova and Ostromečská Streets (west-east) and Koněvova and Jeseniova Streets (north-south) was completely demolished and replaced. Before the demolition, the cleared houses were used for firefighting exercises and also for the filming of a Czech musical comedy.
> Probably the only original building that escaped demolition here is the Gymnasium and Music School of the Capital City of Prague from 1870, which was originally to be demolished but was eventually incorporated into the project.
> The space between them, i.e. the western part of Žižkov, was probably supposed to be demolished in the 1990s, but political changes in Czechoslovakia at the time, which among other things meant a move away from the idea of building new houses through plans for “complex housing construction”, i.e. paneláks, eventually prevented it.
> The unique project of reconstruction of a part of Prague, which was unprecedented in Czechoslovakia at that time, was the subject of interest to the general public.
> Although the first redevelopments were positively received, in the first half of the 1980s public opinion in Prague turned very sharply against the continuation of the redevelopment of the whole of Žižkov. Initiatives calling for the restoration of the entire site were created and opposed to demolition. A group of young architects openly criticised the plan in newspapers and leaflets. They demanded a change in the zoning plan, decentralisation of the whole idea of modernising the city and a return to the original building methods.
> The regime of the time, on the other hand, tried to promote and support the redevelopment through the mouths of its political representatives. It often argued that it was eliminating low-quality housing that was the fault of the previous “capitalist order”.