Urban party zones and their changes in former communist countries on the example of Polish cities

Abstract

Eight former communist countries joined the European Union in 2004, and since then they have become popular party tourism destinations. In connection with social and economic transformations following the fall of communism, public spaces with the densest concentration of clubs were formed in the centres of big cities. Such a space can be called a “party zone”. This paper presents such zones delimited in Polish cities and attempts to investigate changes in those zones in 2004–17 (and thus, after accession to the EU). An additional objective was to identify the most popular clubs based on information from social media and from interviews with DJs. The results lead to two main conclusions: (a) three main types of party zones can be identified in the analysed cities taking into account their form and relationship to urban space; (b) in 2004–17 the preferences of club-goers changed in favour of open air clubs.