South City, my home. How to live in a housing estate for 85 thousand inhabitants

South City, my home. How to live in a housing estate for 85 thousand inhabitants

They used to be wide open fields, where grain grew golden and cattle grazed on fallow land. Prominent and insignificant families farmed here, the court here once belonged to the Knights of Jerusalem, at other times to the Benedictines. Villas and family houses grew here, where life was like in the countryside, and people only went to the city on holidays.

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There was a state farm built there, surrounded by beet fields, and boys and horses and cows bathed together in the ponds. Tens of thousands of people fought here every rainy day with muddy clay. Not always successfully. Today, around eighty-five thousand inhabitants live here. Calculated exactly, 7,753 of them fit per square kilometer.

By the way, where is it? Place your finger on the map of Prague and drive southeast from the center. You will be there when you swing over the South Junction to Roztyly. In the South City. In a world that was shaped into its current form mainly by the D1 highway and the drawing boards of architects Lasovský, Krásné or Řihošek.

At the same time, the history of Chodov, Hájů, Litochleb or Milíčov has been written for many centuries. "However, when people mention the South City and its parts, they think of the movie Panelstory. Even though today it is a pleasant place to live," remarks historian Jiří Bartoň, who is writing a chronicle of the South City and has primarily lived here since 1978.

Bartoň can colorfully describe the ancient past, he experienced the recent one himself. For example, the autumn of 1971, when the first excavations began to appear in Hájy, so that the first wall of panel houses could be gradually raised from them, which then spilled over the fields towards the highway. And when the gray prefab flats filled the plains to the east of D1, the builders also moved to the west side.

"The original designs of the housing estate seemed good, I saw the model. There was supposed to be a central square, parks, schools, kindergartens. But there was a rush, people needed to live, so mainly houses were built," Bartoň tells how the largest Czech Housing estate.

Just remember how the director Věra Chytilová described it: wellies or at least plastic bags for the feet as mandatory equipment for the trip on an overcrowded bus, one phone booth for hundreds of apartments, anonymous housing estates without sidewalks, grass, trees, shops and services. Just a life sentence.

And today? "Prague 11 has undergone a fundamental transformation. It has turned from a block of flats into a city where people can find most of what they need for life: schools and kindergartens, medical care, sports, culture, but also nature," points out the spokeswoman of the town hall, Šárka Cicvárková, on the most important change.

Prague 11 has undergone a major transformation. It turned from a block of flats into a city.

Step by step, a cluster of houses, whose roofs protrude high into the clouds, became a living whole. True, still without a square, but otherwise there is probably everything here. "I remember how, at the very beginning, people used to go to the masons for bread in the canteen and the pub, all full-service, there was probably only one. That we would one day have a subway, a large shopping center or even an aqua park here, I would not have believed at the time," compares Tomáš Zajíc ancient memories of the Groves with what he sees outside the window today.

It is the metro that the locals pamper and praise. Chodov used to be a village an hour away from the city walls, today it is enough to get on the underground railway and in a quarter of an hour you are standing at St. Wenceslas under the National Museum. It's not even for properly reading the newspaper.

At the same time, Southern Town can still enjoy the privileges of the periphery. That is, from here it is just a jump into nature, a real luxury in the most populated part of the metropolis. "We can choose whether to go to the Hostivař forest park, Milíčovského forest or the three hundred hectares of Kunratické forest," the chronicler mentions the green wedge that safely separates Roztyly, Krč and Kunratice. He doesn't forget to add other green areas: "We have a lot of greenery between the houses during the time that the housing estate has been standing. Miličovský vrch is also designed in a funny way."

For those unfamiliar with local geography: Milíčovský vrch used to be a twenty-meter-high pile of excavation material from the construction of a housing estate and the subway, which accumulated in the southern tip of Prague 11 at the end of the 1970s. The hill gradually became overgrown with trees, in the 1990s paths for pedestrians and cyclists were added, so today it invites locals to go for walks. There is a view not only of the city, but also of the Benešovská hills on the opposite side.

A walk to Milíčovský vrch may not be the only sporting activity that locals can enjoy in their free time. There is an extraordinary amount of places to torture your muscles in the South City. There is no point in counting gyms, gyms or playgrounds, they also have other specialties here.

For example, they can boast a climbing hall, which has the highest wall almost eighteen meters high. Or they have a curling hall. If metana is an unknown pastime for you, you can go here for a coffee and watch the teams use special brooms to sweep the ice in front of the rolling stone "doughnuts". You won't experience that anywhere else.

Jižní Město through the eyes of Mayor Dalibor Mlejnský

Yo Jižák, Jižák, city of dreams, we've been living here for many days, concrete is here and concrete is there, everything is made of concrete and everyone cheers for us, raps PSH band. It doesn't exactly sound lucrative, but the mayor of Prague 11, Dalibor Mlejnský, is convinced that "Jižák" no longer needs to be the target of ironic jokes.

"Although we have a large concentration of inhabitants, we are also a locality where the inhabited part touches the forests. People here can go out into the forest in the morning without doing more than leaving the entrance. We are a city of green. I use the word city deliberately , because after the changes that the gray housing estate has gone through, it has become a pleasant place to live," the mayor of Prague 11 defends against squatters.

And he lists why life is good in Jižní Město. Good, great! "We have built and repaired a number of sports fields, we can boast of a unique football field in Schulhoffova Street, we have a climbing hall in Donovalská Street," he calculates how the town hall takes care of sports amateurs. After all, they also think of professionals, for example athletes, soccer players and floorball players. "Prague 11 is a decent place to live. I like living here."

Has life improved in the South City?

Voting is over

Readers voted until 23:00 on Sunday, February 9, 2014. The poll is closed.

YES1817NO336
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