Paper short abstract:

Based on the research of urban planning processes in Prague and the notion of territorial complexity (Kärrholm 2012), the paper seeks to investigate how the urban brownfields' un/certain future and re-actualized past are constantly (re)assembled and (re)configured.

Paper long abstract:

Central and Eastern European post-industrial brownfields remain a suitable ground for the emergence of multiple urban transition un/certainties. Co-opted and absorbed by privatization, financialization, and densification policies, these industrial areas became animated places of in/visible motion enforced by (vested) interests and pubic needs which are connected with more-than-human agencies.

Based on ethnographic research of urban planning processes and participatory policies in Prague, the paper seeks to investigate how un/certain visions of future and re-actualized/contested versions of past are (re)assembled within the particular place of transition. By using Kärrholm's notion of territorial complexity (Kärrholm 2012) and Slater's perspective on "heteronomy of urban research" (Slater 2021), I am going to reveal the details of the “landscape of power” (re)configuration in one of the Prague's biggest transformation areas – Bubny-Zátory. Thanks to this perspective I consider urban brownfield a process of multiple territorial (re)productions that are demonstrated by "movement“ and "labor “ of various human and more-than-human actors (Mubi Brighneti and Kärrholm 2020).

Within these socio-material processes, various modes of urban phenomena – connected with housing crises, the tyranny of participation, tokenism, and NIMBY or YIMBY effects – can be easily traced and investigated. Great expectations towards the “new city within a city” are intertwined with fear of various modes of displacement, environmental issues, or specific (non)human re/un/settling strategies. Some of those un/certain processes are performed publicly on a daily basis while others remain systematically black-boxed.