Socio-cultural perspectives on the issue of housing in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 20th century

Prefabricated housing estates represent the most typical and widespread form of mass socialist home building in our country. Their form comes from the modernistic urban planning of the European inter-war avant-garde, but living there was typified by the principles of socialistic housing policy. These were home for more than three million Czech inhabitants. Nevertheless there are many myths and incorrect evaluations connected with them, and there are many areas of this complex phenomenon which have not yet been investigated. The cultural, social and physical aspects are linked through the study of cultural theory, which was chosen for this dissertation. The three main chapters are based on a comparison with traditional city structures, the observed spatial and social specifics of prefabricated housing estates on three levels: in the imaginations of their designers, who were influenced by contemporary intellectual trends, in their implementation under specific political and social conditions, and in the opportunities which this form of building could offer for the future. The first chapter deals with formation of prefabricated housing estates as new city structure with different form of urbanism. In the second chapter the spatial specifics are described by means of five criteria of the "habitable" space:..