How is contemporary Prague changing? Get to know the city’s memory through the stories of those who live in it
Read also
The same goes for the “black soul of Karlín”, the working-class Holešovice, Žižkov full of turbulent student life or Smíchov, where people used to go skating on the undeveloped bank of the Vltava. Today everything changes…
Even if some changes are for the better, there is not much talk about the impact on and how to deal with them.
The memory of the city, hidden in the people and their stories, is disappearing. He moves to a place where the rent can still be tightened, where it is possible to feel safe, where you can open a regular pub and where even the locals can have a beer. What is Prague actually missing out on? And how do Prague residents feel today?
An old settler by a foreigner
“Everything is only interested in business, not that we can’t sleep,” says Petr Městecky sadly. Founder’s Initiatives For tolerable living in the center of Prague, he has been living in Růžová Street for several decades. He observes how the space around his house changes. Not only the one outside, behind the windows, but also the one directly behind the front door. Noise, mess, daily parties. A functioning tea room on the ground floor alternates with a luggage store, groceries and a scooter rental.
Read also
The life of Petr Městecky and his family changed completely with the onset of the phenomenon called “short-term rentals”. Mass tourism that eats up cities is a global problem and it has to do with a whole range of things.
How Prague should deal with tourism, which has already begun to eat away at it, is also being solved on a political level. The same number of visitors come to our city as to Berlin, which is three times larger. And the city will begin to adapt to their needs.
“We used to think: there’s us, the butcher shop, the post office, household goods and stationery. Then the stationery disappeared. Then household items. We were still here, the butcher shop, the post office. And today there is only a butcher shop and a post office. And both have an uncertain future,” describes Mariana, who for years worked in the legendary Fišer bookstore in Kaprová Street in the Old Town. It survived the protectorate, the communist regime, the wild nineties, but the current boom in tourism has suffocated it.
Are you experiencing this too?
We hit the streets looking for quite ordinary stories. We were interested in how those who have lived here for years and watch all the changes in the city from afar feel about Prague today. We were interested in how these changes affect them – psychologically and practically.
Tenants, owners, small entrepreneurs, students, pensioners, families with children. All of them make up our “city memory”. We filmed a series that, through intimate probes and delving into memories, focuses on current problems such as unaffordable housing, massive tourism, gentrification, new development construction and displacement of the original inhabitants.
1. Old and New Town
Crowds of tourists rush through the city center. Tens of thousands of people cross the Charles Bridge alone every day. Congestion and a feeling of not belonging are the main feelings experienced by the old settlers. When you live in the center of Prague, tourists are everywhere. Even in the places you consider home.
2. Smíchov
From the end of the 20th century, factories in Smíchov were gradually demolished. A number of business and administrative centers have been established mainly around the intersection and the Anděl pedestrian zone. For example, Nový Smíchov was built on the site of the canceled ČKD Tatra site. A year before, the Zlatý Anděl building by the French architect Jean Nouvel was built.
Smíchov is thus gradually transformed into a transport capsule. The development of free places that dust particles are starting to suffocate the district. “Only cars and a brewery live here,” sighs Honza, one of the characters in the documentary, directed by Alžběta Medková. Pensioner Zora feels the same way. It seems to her that the new development does not respect the needs of the residents at all and that the people of Smích will not recognize their neighborhood any time soon.
3. Holešovice
Where you used to go for a beer with a jug and children looked at tattooed sailors, there are residences with apartments for more than ten million, which most Czechs cannot afford. Such a fate befell the formerly working-class Holešovice, located on the bank of the Vltava.
4. Carlin
The vital part of the city is sterilized. And it affects the Roma community the most: it was the Roma who were evicted from their original homes by the floods. White-collar workers jumped into their place. Today, Karlín is an administrative district.
It is especially busy here at lunch time, when all the employees of newsrooms, openspaces, startups and other similar places flock to the “changer”. It’s quiet here in the evenings. And that’s also because the formerly despised and mocked district has become a lucrative district.
5. Žižkov
Žižkov is one of the neighborhoods with a rich history. There have been struggles for freedom since the time of the Hussites through the labor movement to the present day. Since the end of the 19th century, the rebellious atmosphere of Žižkov has been a breeding ground for a non-conformist lifestyle, rowdyism and bohemianism.
But not only its original inhabitants have almost disappeared from Žižkov, but also the “pubs” where you used to find rebellious figures like Franta Sauer, Jaroslav Hašek or Franta Gellner. Instead, there are barbershops, cool cafes and kebab shops.