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Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss different ways of dealing with ecological disaster. The research material will be the plans of urban planners and the works of ecologists, and novels, reportages, memories, films, and photographs articulating the semiotic opposition of black and green Silesia.

Paper long abstract:

The Upper Silesian Coal Basin is one of Europe's oldest and largest industrial districts. Industrialization, which had been ongoing since the end of the 18th century, led to enormous pollution already at the end of the 19th century. Many researchers diagnosed an ecological disaster in the second half of the 20th century. This paper will discuss different ways of dealing with this catastrophe. Engineers, architects, urban planners, and ecologists proposed the first group of methods. The first great plan was the deglomeration of the industrial district, blocking the development of the most polluted areas, where harmful industries were to operate even more intensively, and at the same time, building new cities on the outskirts of the industrial zone. This plan was partially implemented. The second bold plan was to build a Forest Protection Belt around the industrial district. The second group of ways of dealing with the environmental disaster consists of various narratives presenting life in a degraded environment and the industrial landscape. It was also often a literary response to implementing plans to reconstruct the industrial district. We will reconstruct the common semiotics of these two perspectives to see how the governance of the space of ecological disaster and life in the industrial landscape was connected. The research material will be, on the one hand, the plans of urban planners and the works of ecologists, and on the other hand, novels, reportages, memories, films, and photographs articulating the semiotic opposition.