Dolní Břežany is situated on the southern outskirts of Prague and, like many other municipalities on the edge of the Prague agglomeration, faced a (suburban) development boom and rapid increase in population in the 1990s (from thousand residents after the revolution in 1989 up to today’s 3800). The village changed into a “monofunctional dormitory” fully dependent on cars: Everybody was commuting for work, education, services and leisure time facilities to Prague. The residents, dissatisfied with (non)quality of development, infrastructure and the public space, came together and run as an association of independent candidates ROZKVĚT [Heydey/Blossom] – and won – for the municipal elections in 2002, their leader Věslav Michalik is mayor since 2004. This association gradually succeeded to create, in cooperation with experts, new strategic and master plan, which is “a tool of regulation, not a money-making machine”* and to build a functional core of the village through agriculture brownfield regeneration. The municipality strives for high-quality public spaces, cares about the relation of the urban form with surrounding landscape, and supports quality architecture and art in the public space. The municipality itself e.g. organises architectural competitions, to set an example for the private investors. In the recent years, there have been reconstructed or built e.g. an art school, a municipal office, a brewery, a science and technology complex or a sports hall (which was included in the Czech Architecture Yearbook). Dolní Břežany has long been of interest of the architectural community, which considers them to be the followers of the highly rated Litomyšl. Architect Anna Šlapetová has been involved in the architectural and urban development of the village since 2003, since 2015 officially in the position of a municipal architect.

​

Dolní Břežany undoubtedly is one of the most successful municipalities, which, thanks to the policy of the mayor Věslav Michalik, avoided the fate of many suburbs and gradually turned into a thriving village with high-quality architecture and public space. The long-term majority representation of the ROZKVĚT politicians at the town hall proves the success and popularity of their policies. Although Dolní Břežany can serve as a model for other municipalities, one has to admit that the progress is not only the result of active and conscious politicians, but also the proximity of Prague, fostering bilateral relationships, and the coincidence of favourable circumstances. Also thanks to them, in recent years the village has attracted well-educated young families, who have also contributed to the rapid development and ultimately exceeded the number of old residents. Thus, there is a higher percentage of the economically active population and almost zero unemployment. “With the urban spread into the surrounding fields, newcomers began to realise that this was not their living the dream,” says the mayor, adding that these were mostly well educated and ambitious people who decided to change the situation. Gradually, they gained a majority in the town hall, which enabled them to realise their ideas.** Such a socially homogeneous group usually has similar ideas and expectations; the local authority can thus avoid significant conflicts that would be reflected in local politics. This is also evidenced by the aforementioned four consecutive electoral periods in which the ROZKVĚT has succeeded. Can we call the situation in Dolní Břežany “post-politics” as described by Erik Swyngedouw?*** What role does a municipal architect play in the development of the village? Can architecture express a political opinion, representing the societal structure – how people will live, how they will behave, what they will share, and what they will not share? Can architecture and urbanism contribute to the orientation of the village? Does the architecture in Dolní Břežany try to be intentionally apolitical to avoid conflicts?

 

​

* Věslav Michalik quaoted in: Jansová, P. (2018). Dolní Břežany dokázaly spojit kvalitní stavby a veřejný prostor. Začínají je následovat i další obce. Aktuálně.cz [online]. Available from: http://magazin.aktualne.cz/bydleni/kvalitni-verejny-prostor-je-pro-zivot-v-obci-stezejni-rika-s/r~9815274e3e5511e89efbac1f6b220ee8/r~eb19f0243cba11e883510cc47ab5f122/

** Došek, J. (2009). Města se rozrůstají – proč se tak děje a co to znamená?. Ekolist.cz [online]. Available from: http://ekolist.cz/cz/zpravodajstvi/zpravy/mesta-se-rozrustaji-proc-se-tak-deje-a-co-to-znamena

*** Geographer Erik Swyngedouw (2015) have analyzed that in recent decades, politics have been reduced to a broad consensus among actors in power from all soci­etal spheres seeking to ground the capitalist free market and the liberal state as social foundations. Swyngedouw (2007) has labelled this consen­sual mode of governance as post-political condition characterized by pat­terns of depoliticization; the disappearance of the political; an erosion of democracy; the weakening of the public sphere and a politics of violent disavowal. This transition has, in turn, inevitably entailed silences and absences of vulnerable groups and individuals who have fallen behind on embracing the competitive practices of the free market. […] In their understanding, “technocratic mechanisms and consensual procedures that operate within an unquestioned framework of representative democracy, free market economics and cosmopolitan liberalism” subsume political antagonisms and discontents to social administration “managed by experts and legitimated through participatory processes in which the scope of possible outcomes is narrowly defined in advance” This in turn desecrates the capacity of people to act as a disruptive political collective. The people are supplanted by the population—the aggregated object of opinion polls, surveillance and bio-political optimization. Citizens become consumers and elections are framed as just another choice in which individuals privately select their preferred managers of the condi­tions of economic necessity.

Knierbein, S., & Viderman, T. (2018). Space, Emancipation and Post-Political Urbanization. Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 9–10.

Swyngedouw, E. (2007). The Post-Political City. BAVO (eds.). Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City. Rotterdam: Netherland Architecture Institute (NAI) Publishers.

Swyngedouw, E. and Wilson, J. (2015). There Is No Alternative. J. Wilson and E. Swyngedouw (eds.). The Post-Political and Its Discontents. Edinburgh: Edin­burgh University Press, pp. 299–312.

 

​

Anna Šlapetová graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague, then worked as an intern at Hilmer Sattler Architects in Berlin. She moved to Dolní Břežany in 1999. Next to her architecture practice, in which she designs mainly family houses and smaller civic amenities, since 2003 she has been chairwoman of the urban and architectural committee in Dolní Břežany and since 2014 the Municipal Architect. In Dolní Břežany, she is the author of several family houses, the fire brigade, the reconstruction of the kindergarten, the completion of the new school pavilion and the canteen. She comes from the family of famous architects (Lubomír, Čestmír and Vladimír Šlapeta).

​

— “The breaking point was in the year 2002. There was an election, and the ROZKVĚT movement got the leadership. All the unsatisfied newcomers were in action, so the things got moving.”

 

​

Robert Osman is a social geographer, he works as a specialist at the Department of Geography at the Masaryk University and at the Department of Environmental Geography at the Czech Academy of Sciences. He uses particularly qualitative research methods, he aims for their broader entrenchment in the Czech geography discourse. In his research he deals e.g. with the spatial experience of electric wheelchair users, his main topics include time-geography, rhythmicity of place, space-time experience, human territoriality and geography of disability. He edited the book Prostory geografie [Space(s) of Geography] published in 2014.

​

— “With this attitude, you would liberate the architects from their responsibility for a dialogue between different social groups. It would mean that the architecture profession is actually apolitical craft… Or art…”

 

___

camera: Vít Trunec
video editing: Tomáš Hlaváček
translation: Ondřej Kvapil, Karolína Plášková

subtitles: Tereza Kvapilová, Karolína Plášková