The shrinking of cities is a process that accompanies cities in post-conjunctural changes, when they are entering a phase of economic decline and the decline in population connected with it.The Ostrava-Karviná area is one of the economically problematic regions in the Czech Republic nowadays but it used to be ranked as one of the economic heartlands in the period of socialism. The region, dependent on bituminous coal mining and heavy industry, gradually began to decline after the year 1989 and one of the consequences is a significant decline in its population. This paper deals with identification of the causes and consequences of shrinking cities explained through the example of the town of Karviná through an analysis of quantitative data, questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire survey revealed that the main reason causing the departure of young and educated citizens is the lack of work opportunities. High unemployment and thus the presence of many socially disadvantaged people causes the atmosphere in the city to deteriorate, and this is accompanied by social problems, such as ageing of the population or criminality. Lack of safety of citizens and a bad environment are other reasons why young people leave the city. The decreasing number of citizens closes the vicious circle by leading to a lower demand for services, closing of shops and other services and increasing numbers of empty houses and flats. Another essential part of the paper is the question of possible measures by the local authority leading to the elimination of these undesirable phenomena, but also the belief in the necessity of help from the government.

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The Czech economy has been significantly affected by the global economic crisis since the second half of 2008. The Czech economy is strongly dependant on the motor vehicles industry, the sector severely hit by the crisis. There are not only three major automobile companies in the Czech Republic (Škoda Auto Mladá Boleslav, TPCA Czech Kolín and Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Czech Nošovice), but there are also many subcontractors. The Vysočina Region, the model territory used in this article, has several such major companies. This fact had quite a significant impact on the economic situation in the Vysočina Region during the crisis. The paper also examines individual anti-crisis measures adopted by the largest subcontractor to the motor vehicle industry in the region, Bosch Diesel s.r.o. Jihlava.This paper was elaborated under the students’ support project at the Faculty of Science, “Strengthening and Improving Students Creative Work in the Fields of Mathematics, Physics and Earth Science “(KVAS-MPG). The project is funded by Masaryk University and it is aimed at supporting student projects at MU (MUNI/A/1060/2009)

This paper belongs to the sub-field of queer geography. It is a spatially sensitive study of queer film festival programming that relates its politics to the affective politics of the site. It focuses on the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, which is a film festival that takes place in the cities of Prague and Brno, Czech Republic. We differentiate between intentional subject-centred programming politics and de-subjectivated festival site politics. The film programme is created by a single organizing team and is the same for both cities. Still, the programme means different things to each of them. According to programming theories, we distinguish between films of traditional assimilationist, even homonormative, programming, and films of anti-identity queer programming. The different status of the two festival incarnations makes the former more appropriate for Brno, whereas the latter is more appropriate for Prague. Yet, in Brno, the assimilationist identity politics is turned into an autonomous community politics through the festival site. In Prague, the queer politics is turned into a politics of competition among art film festivals. Hence, we go beyond critiques of homonormative cinema as depoliticized and consumerist. The problem is not the difference between “better” queer programming and “worse” traditional programming. The problem lies in discerning site politics as shaping different screenings of the same films, whether they are homonormative or art-house queer films.