No abstract

Transformation processes activated in the country after 1989 have been influencing not only the configuration and the functioning of urban space, but also the everyday lives of urban residents. Gentrification and commercialization change the central cities, former industrial neighbourhoods in inner zones experience revitalization, and socialist housing estates set off different trajectories from regeneration to stagnation. The processes taking place in various parts of Prague during the last 20 years have left marks on the living environment as well as on the residential satisfaction of local inhabitants. The elderly people, whose daily lives are very locally attached, feel the ongoing changes particularly intensely. This paper compares the three types of transforming neighbourhoods in Prague, the historical core, the inner city and the housing estate, as to the living conditions perceived by the elderly. Residential satisfaction is evaluated in the areas including neighbourhood facilities, public spaces and infrastructure, and local social contacts. A questionnaire survey lead by interviewers was employed to gather the data for 275 respondents older 60 years and living in the three study areas.

Despite growing scholarly interest in residential segregation in Central and Eastern Europe, thus far insufficient attention has been paid to understanding marginalization in these postsocialist transition societies through the perceptions of stakeholders. The present article reports the findings of a qualitative study of the perceptions of urban social problems in the city center of Prague, Czechia. Semistructured interviews with the key actors involved in the city’s social development are used to understand what social phenomena they perceive as problematic, how they localize them within the urban space, and how their perceptions translate into policy attitudes. We find that stakeholders emphasize the issues of homelessness, drug addiction, and the appropriate delivery of social services in their narratives. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the repressive nature of policy interventions partly results from a lack of experience of overcoming such societal issues and partly results from weak coordination at the city level.

The availability of labour, education, services and transportation signifi cantly infl uences the quality of life in urban and rural areas. The supply of job opportunities and services is not suffi cient in rural and peripheral villages and particularly young and well-educated people often respond by migrating. The people who remain cope with the problems of accessibility by various commuting methods. However, the poor supply of jobs and social infrastructure may be a source of considerable problems for less mobile people trying to satisfy basic needs. This article employs in-depth case study research to evaluate the daily mobility of people in peripheral municipalities in Western Bohemia. It aims to identify the problems and barriers in the everyday life of the local population and to identify forms of daily mobility related to work and service provision. It evaluates how the lack of job opportunities and basic civic amenities infl uences the everyday strategies that people adopt to cope with the spatial mismatch between the place of residence and the place where jobs and services are located. The daily mobility and strategies of people living in municipalities are set in the context of post-communist changes in commuting behaviour. Theoretically and methodologically the article draws on the strong tradition of time geography.