Paper short abstract:

This paper explores a controversy over the recent rebuilding of the city centre in Katowice, a Polish coal mining city. The contradictions surrounding the changes shed light on the complex relationship between transition and continuity in relation to production of space, identity and place-making.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores a controversy over the recent rebuilding of the city centre in Katowice, a Polish coal mining city. The architecture of Katowice's city centre has received a material and symbolic inscription of its turbulent history. Established in the nineteenth century, Katowice has been subject to numerous reconfigurations in its urban form. In the 1970s, Katowice was rebuilt as a blueprint of socialist planning. In the 1990s, from a socialist ideal, the centre became a problem case study, rendered as chaotic and disorderly.

This paper pays attention to the current reconfiguration of the city's urban centre. Ongoing reconstructions aim to restore order, remake Katowice's reputation and enhance its metropolitan vision. Following recent controversies surrounding the rebuilding of the focal points in the city, including the railway station, the town square and the surrounding cityscape, I intend to explore the multi-layered nature of Katowice's urban fabric. I illustrate that current rebuilding initiatives are embedded in a sequence of future visions, linked to the construction of a Silesian identity within a modern, industrial society. Focusing on the social life of these changes, I argue that the contradictions related to the planned reshaping of the city complicate widely held assumptions about the nature of post-socialist transformation. Rather, they reveal multiple layers of reconstruction, negotiated future visions and different levels of residents' participation in these processes. I show that the production of the city centre sheds light on the complex relationship between transition and continuity in relation to identity and place-making.