Iconic Industry: The Making of Meaning in the Lower Area of Vítkovice

Drawing on cultural sociology and memory studies, this thesis offers a new framework for understanding post-industrial urban development. Focusing on the case of the Lower Area of Vítkovice in Ostrava, the Czech Republic, the author explores the meaning-making processes taking place in an area that has undergone a conversion. Interviews with 16 stakeholders involved both directly and indirectly in the current activities taking place in the Lower Area of Vítkovice serve as the main source of data. The conversion turned a brownfield, which as such, has been a contested terrain, into a cultural educational site. By placing meanings at the forefront of the interest, the author reveals a cultural structure that connects the post-industrial site with a larger, local, urban narration. The struggle to maintain the area as a cultural heritage site, while converting it into a living part of the city exemplifies the conflict between the past and the future, which is typical for post-industrial sites that were success-makers in the past yet are trouble-makers in the present. The process of making sense of the transformation of the Lower Area of Vítkovice has been navigated by understanding the area as a chance to reverse the negative narration of Ostrava city