Eco-Friendly Tendencies in Czechoslovak Urban and Regional Planning (1965-1990)

In post-socialist European countries, there is, compared to Western European countries, a marked shortage of research on the history of spatial planning in the 20th century. Using former Czechoslovakia in the years 1965-1989 as an example, the proposed project aims to fill this gap and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of European planning history. The project maps and interprets the many remarkable and still current eco-friendly tendencies in Czechoslovak urban and regional planning. Based on a review of the main primary sources (e.g. internal institutional reports, scholarly articles, studies, designs, and realized projects) and on interviews with planning experts who were active in this period, the project describes these eco-friendly tendencies as well as the contemporary barriers to and benefits of professional eco-friendly behaviour. The resulting analysis will then be situated within the wider context of European spatial planning from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s. The findings will be presented primarily to an academic audience – domestic and international.