Specialists Sessions

The paper aims to analyse and compare the development of memory policy in two specific regions of the Czech lands. Both territories (Libavá in Moravian-Silesian borderland and Hradiště in Western Bohemia) used to lie in proximity of the language border between Czech and German settlement and after 1945 were significantly affected by expulsion of German population and by creation of military training bases. Post-WWII demographic and economic changes naturally had serious impact on local identity and collective memory. The paper focuses on changes of self-presentation of municipalities in both regions from 1945 till present day. In case of Hradiště, towns of Ostrov, Klášterec nad Ohří, Podbořany, Žlutice and Bochov will be analysed. For Libavá region, the research will focus on Město Libavá, Moravský Beroun, Budišov nad Budišovkou, Vítkov, Odry and Potštát. The paper examines how the "German" past of the towns was and is presented in local historiography, museum exhibitions, public space (statues, street names etc.), festivities and tourist guides. The purpose of the research is to answer the following questions: Who were/are the "bearers of the memory"? Are there any diffferences between "official" memory, presented by research institutions, museums or administrative bodies, and "popular" memory, presented by civic associations and private researchers? How did the memory policy change after the fall of communist regime? How was the presence of the army interpreted? What are the similarities and differences of the two examened regions?

The period between the collapse of the order providing protection and then the establishment of a new order that codifies these rights again is usually a critical moment for minorities. This took place in the Czechoslovakian borderland in May and June 1945. After the downfall of the Third Reich, the region fell into chaos and the power vacuum was temporally filled by guerilla groups and ad hoc formed militia corps. The aim of this paper is to introduce the inter-ethnic violence and the massacres which took place along the language line in the so-called East Sudetenland. This violence took on the most brutal forms along the invisible language line where the first wave of wild expulsion of the autochthonous German population and the subsequent Czechoslovakian colonization of these territories took place.

The social and economic advancement of eastern European Jews in the early 20^th century brought about changes in traditional social, political and economical structures, which were previously based on small-town communities. One of the factors contributing to the rapid development of Łódź as an industrial city in the 20^th century was the influx of Jewish population from small towns, known as "shtetls" in Yiddish, located in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. Thousands of Jews migrated here in search of work and career opportunities, creating, alongside other city dwellers, a unique conglomerate of diverse religions, languages, and national affiliations coexisting in an industrial metropolis. These communities lived closely together yet belonged to entirely distinct worlds. In the case of Łódź, the interactions among the Polish, Jewish, German, and Russian populations can be seen as relationships between the dominant group and minority groups, bearing in mind that Łódź was a city with a unique dynamics where minorities collectively outweighed the majority in the urban space. Moreover, after the Russian partition period, the dominant group in Łódź shifted to the Polish community.

The relationships between the Jewish minority and dominant groups in Łódź were, therefore, complex and multifaceted. To describe such a nuanced reality, the concept of the "contact zone," introduced by scholar Mary Louise Pratt, widely used in Jewish studies, provides an influential and well-applied framework for better understanding the intersections of different cultures. The postcolonial perspective, from which this concept originates, offers useful tools for comprehending these interactions. The contact zone represents a space where previously isolated groups come into contact, interact, and define differences. It is a place where power imbalances and asymmetric colonization relationships are played out, leading to cultural exchange and mutual influence. This is not a neutral or harmonious space; it is a place where colonizers wield power, and the colonized are subject to violence and inequality, with the choice between resistance or adaptation to prevailing conditions. The contact zone is characterized by conflicts and struggles for power and recognition, and the nature of interactions within it can vary significantly depending on the specific historical and cultural context. It can encompass physical spaces, as well as more abstract spaces like cultural exchanges through language, religion, or education. In my work I will analyze one of the most frequently described or mentioned places in these texts: the courtyard. It serves as an excellent case study to examine the webs of mutual connections in the contact zone and the boundaries defined in daily life. The texts under discussion depict Łódź from the early 20^th century to 1939. They primarily consist of memoirs, which were published after the Holocaust, with a smaller number of literary fiction focusing on the city. Memoirs were authored by individuals who were not scholars but often possessed literary talent, based on their personal experiences. Consequently, they pose certain challenges as historical sources due to frequent factual errors and the lack of objectivity on the part of the authors in portraying the events they describe, including a tendency to present their "own" group in a favorable light. Nevertheless, when approached using postcolonial tools, these memoirs can be utilized as source material to explore the points of intersection mentioned within the texts.

This paper examined whether the cholera epidemic killed selectively by sex in the 19^th-century populations. We used the Poznań cholera epidemic in 1866 as a natural spontaneous experiment, which lasted from 18 June to 22 October 1866 and was the largest epidemic of this disease in the 19^th-century city. There were significantly more cholera victims among females then males, which was confirmed by cholera specific mortality rates: males and females were 1.98% and 2.67%, respectively. The difference was related to the division of social roles between women and men. As a water-borne disease cholera strongly affected people working with water. Women who performed water-related household activities could have potentially contacted contaminated water while preparing food, cooking, cleaning houses and toilets, washing of clothes and dishes, etc. Higher rates of death from cholera were observed among women whose occupations required contact with water (e.g., housemaids, servants, cooks, nurses, and babysitters) than among men: 61.7% vs. 38.3%. Moreover, significantly more women than men died of cholera in hospitals, shelters, and orphanages, 55.1% vs. 45.9%, and in private homes, 57.8% vs. 42.2%.

The literature emphasizes that various forms of crises (economic, political, environmental) negatively affect matrimonies. In past societies, epidemics of infectious diseases may also have influenced marriage patterns. The aim of the study is to examine differences and/ or similarities in wedding patterns in the rural parish of Detva, Upper Hungary during and after the cholera epidemics, and to compare them to marriage patterns in urban areas. We used the aggregated data on the numbers of marriages (N=9,288) for the years 1831–1920, derived from marriage books of the Detva Parish, the Upper Hungary Kingdom. We compared the Marriage Rates, seasonal patterns of marriages, and changes in partner selection in terms of his/ her marital status. The results were compared with data on urban localities, derived from literature.

This contribution discusses the research conducted by physician and hygienist Johannes Wilhelmus Schick (1818-1853) in 1852 on the victims of the cholera epidemic in The Hague in 1849. The current situation in The Hague during the COVID-19 epidemic can be partially compared to the period between 1830 and 1870. In recent years, The Hague has experienced significant densification due to growth, migration, housing division, and rooming. Large numbers of apartments were purchased and rented out at exorbitant prices to newcomers in the city, exacerbating the lack of affordable new housing construction. Schick was a son of wealthy German craftsmen who moved to The Hague.

After the French Period (1795-1813), the population of The Hague grew significantly and the old city became more densely populated. Most of the new residents were migrants from the provinces, Germany, and the Southern Netherlands. Mansions that were in poor condition were temporarily divided into smaller units, and courtyards were quickly filled with one-room dwellings. These newcomers were particularly affected by epidemics like cholera and typhus, just as today's newcomers are affected by COVID-19 because of the poor living environment. Present-day municipal executive face similar challenges to those in the 1850s, when the city's existing areas became overcrowded and unsanitary, resulting in widespread illness such as cholera and typhoid. The relevance of this research lies in comparing the situation in the city then to the present.

Schick's research was published in 1852 under the title On the Health of The Hague. The article claims that Schick's research was the first to connect the fields of pathology, statistics, and location conditions, which had a significant impact on how cities with a focus on health were perceived. This marked the beginning of a movement of hygienists, a group of individuals who shared the goal of improving sanitation and promoting healthy cities and homes in The Netherlands. In addition to doctors, Schick's research expanded the hygienist movement to include engineers and architects. As a result of this research, numerous new initiatives and legislation were introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century in areas such as housing, urban planning, and the construction of essential facilities like drinking water and sewers to eliminate negative location factors.

Schick's research demonstrates a paradigm shift that occurred from the pre-modern city to the modern city, where hygiene and facilities like drinking water, sewers, and healthy homes are essential. Schick connected epidemics and the overcrowding of the city's canals with large groups of vulnerable newcomers after the French Era. The paradigm shift seemed to happen quietly at the time, but looking back, it clearly separates the perception of cities before and after Schick's findings. For example, the housing association Koninklijke Woningbouwvereniging 1854 was founded in 1854 and the hygienic movement of The Hague Vereeniging tot Onderzoek naar de Middelen ter Verbetering van den Gezondheidstoestand der Gemeente 's-Gravenhage was founded in 1866.

Schick's research took place during a time of significant administrative changes in the Netherlands, coinciding with the implementation of Thorbecke's parliamentarism. Schick followed his lectures at the University of Leiden. This period marked a turning point, with the old city preceding it and the modern city following it. Political reforms, improvements in hygiene in newly developed neighborhoods, and the construction of new houses became increasingly important during this time. His friend and brother in law was the later professor Jonckbloet, a well know progressive liberal politician who promotes the work of Schick in the second part of the nineteenth century. These developments ultimately led to the adoption of the Housing Act by parliament in 1901.

This shift in perspective or paradigm can also be easily seen on city maps. In the maps of Van der Poth 1812, Zürcher from 1817, Zeger Reijers from 1833, and Belinfante from 1847, the city was represented with all the important buildings, everything within the building line was not drawn or shaded. In 1868, on behalf of the Vereeniging tot Onderzoek naar de Middelen ter Verbetering van den Gezondheidstoestand der Gemeente 's-Gravenhage, surveyor Last and mapmaker Lobatto created a city map that meticulously indicated the slums and poverty, thus highlighting the significance of Schick's work. Schick's insights became the guiding principle for hygienists, urban planners, and architects in The Hague until the Second World War. One year after publishing his study in 1853, the physician Schick died of typhoid fever at the age of 36.

The questions in this contribution are: Who was Doctor Schick? What does his research involve, and what were the consequences of his research for the municipality? The structure of this article includes a reconstruction of Schick's life, a description of the factors that influence health, a description of both natural and man-made conditions, the victims themselves, and a depiction of the slums and the change in attitude after Schick's introduction of the first hygienic and affordable houses in The Hague.

An integral part of the modernisation process of the second half of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries was the development of public health. Statistical data from the mid-19^th century show an undersized network of health care facilities and a shortage of medically trained professionals. Civil registers and reports by official doctors show that this was a period with a higher-than-average mortality rate, low life expectancy and poor health. The low standard of living condition affected not only the population of the emerging industrial agglomerations, but also small towns and rural areas. For Moravia and Austrian Silesia, the path of the search for a compromise between the highest representatives of the health system and the provincial government will be presented, which resulted in the adoption of provincial health laws for Moravia (1884) and for Austrian Silesia (1896). The adoption was preceded by the creation of a system of provincial subsidies for public health, which became the pillar of the organisation of health services in the municipalities. The priority of public health care was the introduction of comprehensive preventive and prophylactic measures to prevent the spread of epidemics (cholera, typhus, dysentery, smallpox, etc.) and to improve the health of the population. On the basis of selected data, their impact on the health status of the population of specific cities (Morávská Ostrava, Brno – industrial cities and  Olomouc, Opava - regional administrative centres etc.) on the eve of the Great War will be presented. In the given context, the role of vaccination and the society-wide discourse on this tool of modern health care will be discussed.

The 19^th century was a century of a massive decline in mortality and an epidemiological transformation, which was associated with the transition from a demographic regime with a high incidence of infectious diseases to a modern society with the predominance of lifestyle diseases. The ongoing rapid urbanization led to the deterioration of living conditions in overpopulated cities. One of the important causes of death was diseases of the digestive system, often related to access to contaminated water. In many cities, including Poznań, access to clean water became common only at the end of the 19^th century thanks to the sanitary reforms introduced at that time.

Therefore, the paper aims to analyze mortality from waterborne infectious diseases in the population of 19^th-century Poznań. The work will use data from civil status files, which will allow for examining changes in mortality in time and space and its differentiation within social classes. The obtained results will be compared to rates for Poznań parishes.

Maternal stress experienced during pregnancy plays a significant role in influencing the developmental processes of their offspring. This study aims to explore the impact of World War II, which is considered one of the most significant stressors in the 20^th century, on human development, specifically during the prenatal and early childhood stages. Our main goal was to determine the potential long-term consequences of stress experienced by pregnant women and their daughters during World War II by comparing the anthropometric measurements of daughters born before, during and after the war, and analysing possible variations in body and head dimensions between them. The study contains data from unique archival questionnaires of university students surveyed in Poland, including anthropometric measurements and demographic, epidemiological and socioeconomic information about the person. Preliminary findings suggest that the group of women conceived and born during the war differ significantly in various body and head measurements, including body height, waist circumference and shoulder width. The findings of this study could provide valuable insights into the lasting effects of historical events on prenatal development and the intergenerational transmission of stress.

During the first half of the 19^th century, Brno became one of the most important industrial centres of the Habsburg Monarchy thanks to the massive wave of industrialisation in the wool industry. The rapid economic development is perhaps comparable only to the similar process in textile production in Manchester, England, which is why Brno earned the nickname of the Moravian or Austrian Manchester.

Brno suburbs located on the eastern edge of the city under the city walls, such as Dolní and Horní Cejl, Náhon, Hráze, Příkop, Josefov and Zábrdovice, had a significant share in the development of textile production. The attention will be focused on the last mentioned suburb.

The location of Zábrdovice in front of the walls of the provincial capital was advantageous for the activities of crafts that could not be carried out in the inner town. The water source in the Svitava River was essential for the development of industry in Zábrdovice. As a result, from the end of the 18^th century onwards, weavers, weavers and cutters and journeymen began to settle in Zábrdovice.

Zábrdovice was one of the localities where the population grew rapidly as a result of industrialisation, increasing by 229% between 1797 and 1846. From the end of the 18^th century to the 1840s, there was also a rapid change of property owners, as evidenced by the town directories. In 1850, Zábrdovice became part of the Second Municipal District of Brno and the population increased due to the abolition of patrimonial administration and the possibility of free movement.

Population growth, unsuitable living conditions, and heavy physical labour have had an impact on the mortality rate. The inhabitants of Zábrdovice had to face various infectious diseases such as smallpox, typhoid fever, dysentery, tuberculosis, scarlet fever and cholera. For the period 1784-1867, mortality by age and sex, stillbirth and infant mortality, causes of death, and seasonality will be examined using the Zábrdovice death records.

No larger city in the Russian Empire was subjected to greater political discrimination than Warsaw. Following the Partitions of 1772-1795, it had functioned as chief city to the autonomous Congress Kingdom (1815-1830) which, despite the 1830-1831 November Uprising, remained in formal existence until the January Uprising of 1863-1864. The political backlash of this latter event led to the 'Kingdom's' incorporation into the Empire, known from hereon as the Vistula territories (Привислинский край), and Warsaw's subjugation to the whims of imperial bureaucracy. The «double whammy» came with the imperial military command's decision to encircle the city with a series of fortifications and outer forts from the 1880s onwards, declassified in 1911.

This political subjugation and curtailing of spatial growth, as well as failed Russification, happened to coincide with the most crucial period in Warsaw's urban history. The city experienced its most intensive period of urban expansion from barely 200,000 to what amounted to over a million inhabitants by 1914* (i.e. 400% growth, compared to a meagre 30% for the inter-war years and barely 300% from 1946 to 2022). The unavoided aspects of Warsaw's large-scale development may be broadly defined by the limitations imposed by St Petersburg upon municipally led building programmes and its overall spatial growth, leading to the city becoming one of the more densely populated built-up areas of Western and Eastern-Central Europe. Paradoxical features borne out of this extraordinary era include Warsaw's far-reaching transformation from a medium sized city into a cosmopolitan metropolis at the trading and banking-financial watershed between Russia and Western Europe, in which the Jewish population played as much of a key role as the Poles. Architecture was exceptionally diverse, being dominted by the tenement house as one of the earliest building forms accommodating immense demographic increase.

* Including suburban demographics.

During the late 19^th and early 20th centuries, the Russian Empire underwent a period of rapid modernization in which the development of modern communication and railway systems was the main impetus. The expansion of the imperial borders led to the development of the railway infrastructure towards the peripheries of the Empire. In this context, Tiflis, the capital city of the South Caucasus, experienced growth along the north-south axis in the eastern part of the city following the construction of the Poti-Tbilisi railway. The establishment of suburbs surrounding railway lines emerged as a response to population growth, the high cost of living, and the insufficiency of housing options both in quantity and affordability. These areas primarily attracted railway employees and immigrants seeking settlement. At the turn of the twentieth century, residential areas associated with "fresh air" emerged alongside worker's neighborhoods. In addition to housing issues, suburban growth was driven by problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, and sanitation. It was the responsibility of the self-government of Tiflis to address these urban issues.

This study focuses on new suburban areas of Tiflis, the self-government's pursuit of urban solutions, and infrastructural improvements. It will examine the role of professionals in forming the urban landscape and the self-government's endeavors to follow Western models in their objective of urban improvement through an analysis of documents from the National Archives of Georgia and periodicals of the self-government kept in the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia.

In the early 1900s many Polish authors depicting maladies and shortcomings of the Polish Kingdom's (ten westernmost governorates of the Russian Empire) urban life were promoting the Western-oriented "art of building towns" – a complex

approach to planning, perceived as open for national reinterpretations. Existing cities were portrayed as chaotic, deprived of modern infrastructure and public services, lacking architectural integrity. Social turmoil was also discussed as an effect of the poor urban governance over Polish Kingdom, were towns lacked self-government completely, being subordinated to imperial administration, criticized by nation-oriented reformers as corrupted and deprived of skills enabling modernization.

But, contrary to many press accounts from the period, town planning system in the Polish Kingdom not only existed, but also many urban regulation schemes had been produced and implemented. In this contribution I will show circumstances in which municipalities across the Polish Kingdom invested considerable amounts of money and time in preparation of land surveys and planning documents for their towns, not only for expanding industrial metropolises like Warsaw, Łódź or Częstochowa but also for provincial centres. I will also argue that for reformers, interested in the Polish national emancipation from Russia, administrative planning was an oppressive, imperial tool of homogenization. Discussing crisis of the town planning system in the 1900s, I will propose close readings of political interests, invested in spatial regulatory practices, discussing the imperial and national contest of "paper towns" and different conceptions of the political future of the region.

Eastern Europe is something of a paradox in historiography. Like Schroedinger's cat, she is and is not there at the same time. It is difficult to name another region that would be so coherent and so internally contradictory at the same time. In the 19^th century, the region was influenced by four great empires - Russia, Prussia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, which shaped its urban landscape. Russia, territorially the largest of these empires, experienced something of an urban revolution at the end of the century - the bourgeoisie was growing in strength, and urban centers were developing in terms of urban and social development. At the same time, this area was inferior to Western Europe in terms of urban development, and the nationalities inhabiting it tried to construct their own narratives about modernity, in which cities played a fundamental role. Is a transnational history of urban modernity in this vast area possible in these circumstances? Or  maybe, on the contrary, they are basically different stories interpenetrating each other. The answer to this question will be the subject of my report. I will consider the opportunities and limitations in examining various aspects of urban modernity in such a diverse area. I will also point out some areas that could be the subject of comparative research in areas such as urban discourse, architectural history, flows of ideas and people, as well as regional identity.

This paper focuses on outlining the issue of female wage labor and the dynamics of gender relations in the economy of pre-modern cities from the perspective of historiography from the 1980s to the present. We attempt to summarize the main themes that have emerged in this research and present key works by historians who have addressed or are addressing these issues.

My paper aims to reveal how often, with what intention, and under what circumstances women involved themselves in private annuity transactions, demonstrated via the late medieval Viennese example.

The region east of the Elbe is still under-represented in the literature on medieval financial and economic history, an imbalance my research seeks to correct. The goal of my study is to enhance our understanding of how the newly developed financial instruments and institutions of late medieval Europe impacted upon the life of the urban people, particularly women.

Data has been gathered from extensive archival research, and the collected dataset includes heritable and life annuity transactions issued by private individuals in late medieval Vienna between 1367 and 1450.

In this paper, I propose to present three main outcomes of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data. First, my research has revealed a notable decline in women's participation in private annuity transactions during the first half of the fifteenth century compared to the preceding decades of the fourteenth century. Secondly, the collected data suggests that women, through their significant level of participation, played a crucial role in the establishment of private annuities as a form of borrowing in the first half, while during the second half of the period facilitated religious organisations to become large lenders. Lastly, I also wish to cover that women, who participated in private annuties, were from mainly the upper classes of the urban social structure, although the financial product would have also provided access to credit for women from lower social positions.

Based on such analysis, my paper provides an important avenue of inquiry for understanding the full impact of high medieval economic growth, integration on society and more particularly the transformation in the social and economic position of women.

This conference paper deals with the involvement of women in the labour process within the craft guilds in the territory of the Bohemian Kingdom in the Jagiellonian period. In the same time with the Jagiellonian dynasty comes significant changes in attitudes towards women's work and the organisation of work. Individual regulations had territoriall diferences. It is thus necessary to examine the influences of urban law, the churches and, not least, the cultural shift within society. The paper tries to point out the possible influences on the issue and highlights the limits of research on the topic.

How capable were women in business? In what professions could they be involved? Which female occupations were considered honorable, and which were considered less respectable?

Information about women, including their business ability and the jobs they engaged in, can be found in various sources, such as civil and criminal records, marriage records, wills, statutes, censuses, lists of grain buyers, registers etc. In Istrian towns during the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, women were frequently mentioned as sellers of food products in markets, laborers in fields and vineyards, domestic servants, and most notably, as midwives – an occupation that was predominantly female in the pre-modern era. This presentation aims to explore the business skills and occupations that women were involved in within the Istrian towns during the pre-modern period.

The Ankang Interrogation and Detention Center has been a major tool for the implementation of the authoritarian regime of the KMT, from the beginning of the 1970 up to the end of the Martial Law in 1987. Since then it has been left unused, and has almost preserved all its original features, including the video-recording system.

Its unique value lies in the fact that it has been designed has a prototype for the very purpose of interrogating and detaining the most sensitive political dissidents, especially the suspected communists, and later the leaders of the democratic movement known as the Formosa group in 1979.

Its architectural design and features seems an application by the book of the principles and techniques of mind coercion and submission detailed in interrogation and torture manuals of the 60', such as the KUBARK. More a machine than a mere building, Ankang, can be described as part of a powerfull "dispositif" to destroy the psyche of the persons detained and interrogated here.

Located in the mountainous suburbs of Xindian district, south of Taipei, it consists in four main buildings. The interrogation takes place in the "working area", then the detainees are sent to the "resting area" where there are left in solitary confinement cells. The two building are linked by a tunnel. If not two miradors which indicate the purpose of the architectural complex, its appearance not differs from the administrative buildings of that time.

The interior architecture alternates very mineral and resonating corridors, with sound-proofed interrogation rooms and detention cells, filled with sound and video recorders concealed in the walls and ceilings. The walls are covered white snow-white acoustic boards, and light is left on night and day.

The preservation of such an architectural complex is of great value for the new generation who have not experienced authoritarian regimes, to understand the shift that the "brain warfare" during the post war cold war, imposed in the conception of interrogation and detention centers for political dissidents. From the testimony of the detainees themselves, the level of terror that such an architectural "white terror" creates, overwhelms physical violence and torture.

Since the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland and the city of Belfast have encouraged an urban policy intended to attract visitors and investors. With the help of private developers, the development of tourism is taking place in a context of monopolization and increased competition between cities, through the rehabilitation of central urban spaces, and more particularly former industrial wastelands. In that vein, a corner stone of Belfast peace process has been the opening of what is presented as one of the only true shared spaces of the city, the Titanic Quarter. This new gentrified neighbourhood is said to be open to everyone with no regards to their religious background. However, the silencing of nationalist divisions was also accompanied by the commodification and erasure of working-class memories relating to the Harland and Wolff shipyard. Problematically, through the rehabilitation of this space, the shipyard which had been a vector of sectarian violence in the city, now stands as a symbol of peace and transition. In this communication, I would like to examine the changing representations and interpretations of the shipyard since the peace agreement. More specifically I want to assess the changing definition of its two cranes: Samson and Goliath. Through photographic analysis in addition to various interviews I completed with developers of the Titanic Quarter, but also with former shipyard workers and other residents of East Belfast, I want to highlight the processes that led these uncomfortable industrial artefacts to become symbols of an urban renaissance, symbols of citywide transition from conflict. I also intend to demonstrate how this process of redefinition is perceived and challenged by former workers and other residents of East Belfast who are still emotionally attached to the industrial character of the cranes. Mobilizing the theories of haunting and hauntology, I argue that by claiming the cranes as part of their history, former workers are recuperating a form of agency and enable a denunciation of the gentrification of their memory.

During the Cold War, the nuclear issue was a prominent feature in the politics of the opposing sides. In the Soviet Union, under the doctrine of the 'peaceful atom,' not only were research efforts for nuclear energy undertaken, but also the development of nuclear weapons. Therefore, in my report, I would like to explore the nuclear landscape of Ukraine as a holistic complex, encompassing nuclear research institutions, power stations, including several unfinished projects, and a system of nuclear shelters. Several methodological discourses will be applied. For example, environmental history will help us study this landscape as a part of the Anthropocene, with many researchers starting with the nuclear era. Postcolonial studies enable us to consider the control of resources as a form of colonization. Last but not least, I will apply the heritage discourse and the definition of 'uncomfortable heritage.' First and foremost, this pertains to the persistent ideology present in the Ukrainian urban space. Secondly, it relates to the ecological problems that Ukraine is still grappling with. Finally, the full-scale invasion by the Russian Federation has brought to the forefront the issue of nuclear terror, as the Zaporizhzhian nuclear power station remains under occupation. Another issue related to the uncomfortable heritage here is dark tourism and the representation of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in mass culture.

After the revolution of 1848/49 a fortress building programme was launched in the Habsburg Monarchy which was designed to suppress further rebellions and to keep the state together. Most of the realised fortifications are still existent today and constitute a difficult heritage for the respective local population. By looking at the cities of Cracow (Kraków, Poland) and Lviv (L'viv, Ukraine), it will be examined how the material remains of the former Habsburg policy of suppression are treated today and what role they play in urban and regional identity discourses in the 21^st century. The comparison between these two biggest cities of the former Habsburg province of Galicia is high in contrast due to the different sizes of the fortifications, they importance for the urban development of the respective city in subsequent decades and the meaning of the political system of the Habsburg monarchy, with which the buildings were tightly connected, for the history of today's national majority inhabiting the city. Therefore, this paper seeks to analyse the dynamic interaction between the concrete conditions of the material remains in historical and topical perspective and the heritage discourse around them. Furthermore, this paper will illustrate the regional limits of these discourses in opposition to the historical embeddedness of the initial fortification projects into wider trans-regional considerations. Accordingly, it will be analysed how the meaning of architectures, once trans-regional in their meaning and creation process, is reduced to a regional or even local level.

The Walled City of Nicosia is surrounded by the Venetian Walls, a well-preserved fortification that constitutes architectural heritage for Nicosians and Cypriots. It reflects diverse cultural influences and collective identity of people. At the same time, Nicosia is the capital of both the Republic of Cyprus and the de facto state of Northern Cyprus and therefore remains the last divided capital of Europe. The common, collective memory and identity reflected in the Walled City, co-exists in great contrast and contested terms with the antagonistic, ethnic division between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. This division is highlighted by the Green Line that shapes antagonistic viewpoints, memories, and identities. The geographical, socio-political, and cultural division of Nicosia leads the two communities to ambiguous, contradictory heritage strategies. On the one hand, there is the Authorised Heritage Discourse that favours ethnocentric heritage interpretation and use for in-group unity. On the other, a universalist discourse attempts to create reconciliatory narratives and interventions in the field. Bicommunal projects attempt to (re)shape a cultural identity of Cypriotness through common heritage preservation and use. These strategies correspond to contradictory identities. The former is linked to the dominant narratives of the "motherlands" and the latter to Cypriotness. These strategies also reveal an uneasy coexistence between the shared past - Walled City and the divided present - Green Line in Nicosia. They create competing identities and ambiguous, ineffective, and fragmented policies, and also obscure the imagined futures, vision, and planning of heritage and identity politics of the two communities for the city. This paper suggests that Nicosia is at the intersection of division and attachment, reflecting the contested heritage use in Cyprus. Walls of the Old Town follow the divided parts of the capital where people live parallel lives in division.

My presentation aims to explain the role of the Soviet war memorials and monuments in post-socialist countries after 2014, Russian annexation of Crimea, and especially after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since the fall of communist regimes, the perception towards Soviet war memorials changed radically, as well as the relationship of former Soviet satellite states with the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Russia's aggressive policy and invasion of Ukrainian territories caused a huge upheaval of protest. The colours of the Ukrainian flag appeared on several Soviet war memorials in Europe as a gesture of disagreement with aggression and sympathy with Ukraine. Many public debates and various initiatives occurred in former Soviet satellite states to remove or demolish war monuments. Objects glorifying the Soviet Union's merits in the Second World War generate today contradictory and confused approaches in these countries. The principal objective of this paper is to analyse Soviet war memorials as places responsive to geopolitical relations on an international scale rather than as places of memory, despite their original permanent memorial role.

The paper will present the case of Gorizia, a multinational and multi-confessional city on the border of the Habsburg monarchy , and  a city on the front line, all of which had an impact on the dynamics of urban life during the First World War. The interplay of historical events reflected the chronology of the First World War and the Isonzo front, and triggered a number of processes which were similar to those elsewhere in the monarchy (mobilisation, arrival of the first wounded, arrests, internments and confinations of the civilian population), on the other hand, the new Italian front triggered the processes typical of frontline towns and cities (imminent danger of war, refugees, disease, deprivation). The 12 Isonzo battles, had a significant impact on the demographic picture of the city - before October 1917, the city reached demographic point 0, and during the war, the city experienced demographic/refugee fluctuations, which had economic and social consequences. The special position of a border and multinational city was reflected in the political persecution over potential opponents of the monarchy (in the first year of the war) and the Italian-speaking population after the beginning of the war against Italy. The Italian occupation (August 1916 - October 1917) systematically Italianized the city in preparation for the post-war annexation to the Kingdom. The period after the withdrawal of the Austrian-Italian front was a period of chaos, since the provincial and city authorities did not return from the refugeedom. One the other hand the refugees were returning and already during the war the reconstruction of the city began. The end of the war brought rapid changes of power, as the military units of the State of SHS (established on 29 October 1918), took over the city, but according to the terms of the truce between Austria and Italy on 3 November 1918, the power was taken over by the Italian army, which marked a beggining of the Italian era of the city.

As recent research into the geography of urban space during the First World War has shown using the example of imperial, royal as well as provincial capitals of the Habsburg monarchy, the war has substantially shifted the symbolic as well as practical use of streets, squares and alleys across Central Europe, often creating both new meanings or altogether new physical spaces in the urban environment of the Habsburg home front. Using the example of a provincial town, the paper aims at following these changes a level below this traditional optics, looking at how the war has changed the practices of (re)building and using space in the Moravian town of Olmütz/Olomouc. Here, while the wave of building military installations peaked in 1914, war has brought an abrupt halt to any further public infrastructure projects, while at the same time it has re-purposed to further military use both public space (numerous barrack-hospitals) as well as existing public as well as private buildings (schools and association centers). The war has also brought massive changes in the nature of street traffic, all the while completely erasing existing patterns of spatial awareness (the gradual disappearance of markets) and creating new ones such wherever soup kitchens and ration-issuing stations sprang up. As the paper would like to argue, this complex process led to a complete symbolic as well as practical re-mapping of much of the urban space during the war years.

The Crimean War changed the European system of alliances profoundly. For the Habsburg Monarchy this entailed the rising international tension with Russia which could easily result in a military confrontation. The border province Galicia, however, was not prepared for this case. Fortification strategies after the Revolution of 1848 had focused on internal security rather than external threats. Accordingly, Galicia remained what militaries had hitherto feared: a plain terrain impossible to defend. However, the consolidation of the state in the 1850s also introduced a change in the self-understanding of the state. Henceforth, no part of its territory was considered dispensable. Therefore, Galicia had to be prepared to counter a possible Russian attack.

This paper analyses on the one hand, how perceptions and fears by the imperial political elite caused alterations in the physical environment of many Galician cities. It shows what measured and what resources were at disposal to the central state to protect remote parts of its territory against an overwhelming military power. On the other hand, it sheds light on the limits of the central state in implementing its planned activities "on the ground". It asks how local actors were involved in the taken measures and how they could influence the outcome of politics followed by the central state. At last, this paper asks for the lasting effect these hastily undertaken fortification projects had on the development on the larger fortification strategy of the monarchy and on the appearance of the towns and cities in which they were exercised.

Built near the Carpathians, Sibiu was for several centuries on the geographical and political border of powerful empires, almost always in conflict.

Sibiu was the capital of Transylvania (1692-1791), and the seat of the commanding general and the Habsburg government (1703-1717, 1732-1790). The town became the military headquarters of Transylvania. The War Chancellery, the War Commissariat, the War House, the Military Court, the Main Supply Office as well as the District Defense Directorate functioned here. In 1914, the town had around 20 military facilities, including barracks, warehouses, training centers and a garrison hospital.

Over the decades, modernization, urbanization and systematization, spread in all aspects of the town's life. What began with the incorporation of Transylvania into the Habsburg Empire was not only the change of a suzerainty, but the connection to modern Europe.

The establishment of the army and the imperial administration in Sibiu led to many structural, cultural, economic, but also mental transformations. The most numerous buildings were erected during the Habsburg and then Austro-Hungarian administrations, the city tripling its area in those 230 years.

The Austrian and Austrian-Hungarian period influenced the urban evolution of Sibiu, not only through the large number of soldiers who required accommodation, situation solved by building barracks, but also through the creation of a true new town, with public facilities, administrative and bourgeois buildings, craft workshops and factories, cultural, religious and social settlements, creating a generation of educated and open-minded townspeople.

The paper will present the conclusions of the project The Moravian Compromise as a Laboratory for the Nationalization of Politics and Law: the National Partitioning of Moravian Towns in 1905-1914. In historical memory, Moravian industrial towns (Brno/Moravian Ostrava/Vítkovice/Olomouc etc.) became a symbol of the Czech-German national conflict at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

As an attempt at reducing national conflict, the Moravian Compromise has thus far been explored as a Moravian phenomenon (mitigating tension by means of personal national autonomy) and as a Cisleithanian one (the culmination of nationalisation). Wholly neglected has been the impact of the Moravian Compromise at local level, in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Thus, we have chosen to tap the abundant primary source material for the largest of Moravia's linguistically mixed towns. The society of these towns is the main actor of our story. A story in which the mandatory national classification enacted by the Moravian Compromise is both cause and effect. It is an undeniable consequence of the intensifying process of nationalisation of politics, culture, and public life. The view "from below", from the communal level, should enable the perception of both causes and consequences where, from the view from the centre, only the consequences are recognizable.

The paper will provide answers to the following questions:
Why did Moravian towns become a symbol of the ethnic conflict between Germans and Czechs?
Why did it escalate in the industrial towns? Why did the resolution of the ethnic conflict become a priority for Social Democracy instead of dealing with public health issues?
Did the conclusion of the Moravian Compromise (1905) lead to ethnic reconciliation in Moravian cities?
What were the actual effects of the Moravian Compromise on the coexistence of Czech and German ethnic groups in the urban societies studied?

Pilsen, the second biggest city in the Kingdom of Bohemia, experienced significant growth and transformation during the second half of the nineteenth century. An old medieval town evolved into one of the most important industrial centers of the Habsburg monarchy and home to its largest armament plant, as well as the world-famous Pilsner Urquell brewery. The history of industrialization was in this case also a history of gradual nationalization, as Pilsen became another arena of the all-Bohemian Czech-German national struggle.

In my paper, I want to investigate the intersection of these two phenomena. I will analyze strategies the local industry employed to minimize, overcome, or use the national conflict to pursue their own economic goals. On the other hand, I will discuss how nationalist activists from both sides perceived the industrial city and used its resources to implement their agenda. I will also look for specific areas of friction or cooperation facilitated by the industrial environment.

On the theoretical level, I will build on the conceptual framework of critical security studies. I would like to emphasize the importance of notions such as security and threat in the national conflict and analyze, whether all-Bohemian patterns apply to the specific industrial setting of Pilsen. The same can be said about theories regarding the interconnectedness of nationalism and industrialization – the goal of my paper will be to check them against the reality of this particular nationally contested city and show the variety of strategies employed by different actors.

The City of Drohobycz and its surrounding were the only example of a modern industry in Habsburg Galicia. Due to Galicias characteristic ethnic structure, Drohobycz (and neighbouring Boryslaw) became a contact zone of three ethnic-religious groups: Poles, Ruthenians and Jews. While the city of Drohobycz could be described as the administrative center of the oil industry, Boryslaw was the place were most of the mines existed. The mulitethnic enviroment and the pre-modern structured society led to an ethnicly-split labour market in which curtain ethnicities were connected to curtain jobs; a phenomenon which accelerated the national self-identification of those etnic groups towards nationalism. All of this is heavily influenced by the fact, that galicia was seen by the polish elites as something like a polish proto-nationstate and as a room where poles could "practice" how to gouvern a more or less modern statehood. In my talk I want to discuss how discourses on security influenced the transformation of the peoples self-identification, from fluid language and religious groups to stiff national groups, what supsequently led to fights between Poles and Ruthenians/Ukrainians after WWI where both sides tried to conquer the region as an main industrial hub for their building up national states (although the ukrainian state did never materialize). I want to ask which groups could identify an issue as an security issue and which methods were used to conect those issues to an nationality. Another question will be how the construction of the jewish group was influenced by antisemitism, an ideology which was just getting its modern form and would be allready very popular within the polish elites, who saw "The Jew" as an "Enemy within". Finally I want to ask whether the example of Drohobycz is not an ordinary example of an language and national conflict in a multicultural region, where while establishing the own national group "the other" was always described as a threat.

Within a few decades, the rapidly growing city of Łódź went from a small village to a multi-ethnic boomtown, which, as a heart of the labour movement, was shaken by numerous social and political upheavals since the 1860s. In this industrial city of more than half a million inhabitants, various Jewish groups were offered a home — the Hasidic population (among others) from the surrounding area of the growing city, Reform Jews from the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Litvak population, that had begun to arrive in the 1880s for example. These very different, sometimes conflicting groups found themselves at the centre of social unrest and thus became the target of violence during those. This included physical attacks by the police and anti-Semitic legislation in the Tsarist Empire, amongst others, but also riots against Jews by demonstrating workers and anti-Semitism of the Polish nationalist labour movement. The perception of the Jewish population as a threat by workers and the authorities is analysed. (In)security and threats that were particular for the Jewish community and the organisation of self-protection measures as well as the common stand together in case of danger beyond the borders of the Jewish groups will also be examined.

Research on the suburbs of French cities has extensively covered the medieval and contemporary periods, yet the period between the XVIth and early XIXth centuries remains relatively understudied. The population's relative prominence in suburbs compared to enclosed central areas varies significantly from city to city and region to region. Historical maps also reveal the differing sizes and densities of suburbs in any given city.

Existing literature typically attributes divergent developments to three main factors. Firstly, topographic constraints often lead to the emergence of smaller suburbs. Secondly, economic specialization, driven by specific resource demands (e.g., water), need for open spaces, or legal advantages (reflecting the barrier effect of the city's juridical boundaries, such as the ocroi tax), can foster rapid and spatially significant growth. Thirdly, the flows on the main axes, which link the city to its more distant systems, would polarize housing in varying degrees according to their importance. However, these factors overlook the interdependence of suburbs and urban centers, especially in terms of distance, a crucial component of city dynamics.

This study hypothesizes that disparities in the size and density of suburbs within a city are also contingent with their accessibility to the urban center. The communication aims to test this hypothesis through spatial analysis methods, using data of ten northern French cities in the early XIXth century, i.e. Compiègne, Ham, La Fère, Nesle, Noyon, Paris, Péronne, Roye, Saint-Quentin, and Soissons. These cities have diverse historical origins and positions within the political-administrative framework of the territories, and are also representative of the diversity of the demographic urban hierarchy at that time. Initial spatial data is derived from military maps, offering the advantage of detailed, harmonized 1:40,000-scale representations of the area under study.

This paper examines how the urban expansion of Jakarta, Indonesia since the seventeenth century demonstrates a strong preference for tabula rasa development. While the sprawl has influenced the people's relationship to the urban centres (including how they move and commute to/from the city centres) it also suggests a planning attitude that relies heavily on land consumption and how land is viewed as abundant and almost seems to be a renewable resource. The analysis takes into account the urban expansions from Batavia (present-day old town Jakarta) in the mid-1600s to Weltevreden since the mid-1700s, going further south to Meester Cornelis in the 1800s, and to the Kebayoran Satellite City developed at the cusp of the power transfer between the newly independent Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1948. It also takes into account how the 1905 Decentralisation Law influenced how Batavia's boundaries were defined and how the city/districts were managed. At the same time, it will also show how the city's boundaries are defined and redefined throughout time until the absorption of Kebayoran Satellite City to Jakarta's administrative boundary after 1950.

Historic linear settlements are characteristic of Vienna's outer districts - not least because they represented a thoroughly common form of settlement agglomeration in large parts of the area of influence of the Austrian Habsburg monarchies. On the basis of a morpho-analytical approach within a clearly defined research area, the paper examines the extent to which the location and conception of these historical villages were formative for urban development (end of the 19^th century to the present) and what role the linear settlement structures play in today's cityscape, which nowadays is characterised by polycentricity and patchwork structures.

Vienna has an extraordinarily compact and clear structure - but the boarder districts to the left of the Danube, called 'Transdanubia', present a completely different, heterogeneous pattern: an urban sprawl, a seemingly incoherent juxtaposition of many different building typologies.

Until the second half of the 19^th century, Transdanubia was mainly characterised by agriculture and small-scale, scattered linear settlement structures. The typology of these linear compact village agglomerations, with their many subtypes, followed precise planning guidelines. They created a loose, large-meshed settlement network that cultivated and at the same time shaped landscape and territory alike.

With the regulation of the River Danube in 1875, which until then had historically represented a natural border with its marshy floodplains and its many small side arms and drifts, Vienna was finally able to expand to the north-east - to Transdanubia. As a result, very different urban planning approaches have been pursued here up to the present day, guided by various political and economic phases as well as diverse urban planning concepts. But in all these efforts of development and re-densification, the historical network of the linear settlements has always remained formative. Their basic structure has persisted and constitutes to form local centres with different characteristics.

The paper shows in what way the network of historical linear settlements influenced urban development on the periphery of the city - an inquiry that so far has not been conducted in the historical setting of Vienna. A special focus is placed on the second half of the 20^th century, when motorisation in particular introduced new building forms and infrastructures: What were the connections, interactions and consequences for the historical typologies? Furthermore, the centres that are vital to Transdanubia's daily existence will be investigated, as well as the part that linear settlements play in the debate over local centres in the modern cityscape.

In the closest vicinity of many important cities over the course of time another urban centres emerged. Situation in Warsaw, which served as the early modern capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was no exception. From the beginning of the 17^th c. the importance of Warsaw as a royal seat, place of parliamentary meetings and of important urban and economic activities grew. This was associated with significant urban development and territorial expansion. In the 17^th and 18^th c. around Warsaw dozen of very small urban or quasi-urban localities were established. Such settlements were called most often "jurydyka" in sources, but were also sometimes called simply towns. These jurisdic­tions, characterized by diverse socio-economic structures and governance systems, played a vital role in shaping the city neighborhood's spatial dynamics. At the beginning of 1790's all those localities were united with Warsaw in one urban centre.

In our paper we would like to stress a chosen aspects of those small urban centres' existence. We will focus on the spatial and social conditions of those settlements. Did they develop organically or urban fabric was regulated? How big were they? Did they have typical urban facilities like e.g. town halls or market squares? How they related to Warsaw's urban and suburban space? Is it legitimate to call them towns?

A nawawil (pl. nawwala) is a house of rammed earth with a pitched thatch roof, a type of residence built in rural areas of Morocco. This informal structure reads as a marker of rural identity, and it also indicates processes of urbanization as well as contestations of urban identity. Nawwala appeared on the outskirts of Fez in the late nineteenth century, and the term nawawil currently occurs twice as toponyms in the imperial city: a neighborhood in Fez el-Jedid and a street located on the edge of the Jewish quarter. These place names memorialize rural-urban migration. This presentation examines the Nawawil’s buildings, textures, surfaces, and transformations to illuminate spatial pressures and shifting identities. Rural migrants flocked to Fez after a series of devastating droughts and plagues and built nawwala. These newcomers to Fez were branded as ‘uncivilized’ and were stigmatized for supposedly engaging in nefarious activities as political instability increased and colonial occupation loomed. The subsequent development of the Nawawil destabilized the definition of Fez even as it showed its potential for growth and diversity. Ostracization of nawawil residents and their homes reflects the difficulty of migrants faced in coming to Fez and their struggle to integrate into society. Yet, the neighborhood and its population were undoubtedly transgressive - the presence of vice and conviviality between Jews and Muslims potentially undermined the city’s existing social order. Nawwala gradually gave way to more urban types of buildings; hybrid architectural forms reveal the ways in which residents sought to display modern Moroccan identities during the colonial period (1912-1956). Examination of the establishment of the Nawawil as an exceptional village in the mid-to-late nineteenth century and its incorporation into Fez in the twentieth century provides insight into the mobility of one marginalized, rural, architectural form and the resilience of its makers and users.

Drawing on field surveys and archival research, this contribution explores the emergence of so-called Ruralisme in Morocco as a technical and ideological approach to rural planning and village design during the second half of the 20^th century. A peculiar combination of determinist regional planning models and rudimentary participatory practices based on localist principles, Ruralisme proved widely influential in Morocco and the Maghreb region. Yet, its scattered practical applications show its ambiguous, if not contradictory, nature. Our hypothesis is that this was related to a deliberate attempt by architects to extrapolate the rural-urban divide, both in representations and in the experimental projects implemented, with the aim of preserving the rural habitat specificity, which can be perceived as a contradiction with the inhabitants' "desire for the city".

With this contribution, we seek to uncover both continuities and changes in the discourse and methodologies of Ruralisme, spanning from the late colonial period to the post-independence era. How were these discourses translated, if at all, into the design of rural villages? What insights do these initiatives offer into the representation of the rural/urban divide? What was the role played by foreign architects in shaping representations of rural environments and architecture?

We discuss the practical implementation of these principles in different villages within the Gharb Valley, which were part of the extensive Rural Housing Program initiatives during the 1968-72 plan, and which had already been a priority area for the Service de l'Urbanisme before independence. We examine how the concept of Ruralisme emerged from theoretical frameworks, such as the "Précis de ruralisme", to practical experiments such as the Atelier Mobile surveys conducted by architect Elie Mauret and the activities of the Bureau Central des Etudes Rurales. Several experiments that played a pivotal role in shaping the discourse on rural planning and village design in Morocco, as part of a broader ambition to "modernize the countryside", encompassing both agriculture and ways of life.

In Bosnia, at the beginning of the Ottoman period (15th-17^th centuries), a singular phenomenon can be observed: at regular intervals, vakf structures were founded in rural areas, leading to the emergence of settlements. In most cases, these settlements developed to the point of being characterized as "towns" or "cities" by the contemporaries, their administration and later by historiography. Very soon, as exemplified with the case of Sarajevo, the history of these establishments had to be grasped from the teleological perspective of "becoming a city" (Šabanović 1960; Handžić 1975; Zlatar 1996). This bias has allowed several generations of researchers to disregard a precise observation of urban trajectories over the Ottoman period: from the immediate foundation to the "city's fully-accomplished development", the intermediate evolution and its stages are usually not traced. Similarly, no mapping of urban development is proposed, nor questioning of the actors and their means. Finally, the regional economic or strategic context is also rarely taken into account.

This presentation is based on the comparative study of four settlements undertaken within my PhD. dissertation in Islamic Archaeology, relying on an examination of both remaining architectural material and archival documentation (tahrir defter-s and vakf inventories). Thus, this presentation propose to investigate the transition from rural to urban spaces in Early Ottoman Bosnia. Without considering "becoming a city" as an end towards which these vakf foundations necessarily tend, the aim is to clarify the graduality involved in the development of these spaces, often spread over several decades. This allows therefore to establish a spectrum of rural-urban transition forms, going beyond the duality of "failure"/"success" inherent in the "town founding" pattern.

Located on Tunisia's Mediterranean coast about 100 km from Tunis, Enfidaville was developed as a colonial agricultural settlement on land owned by the French Société Agricole et Immobilière Franco-Africaine. Set amidst fields of olive trees and vineyards, the city center hosted the typical elements of a regional colonial town built during the French Protectorate (1881–1956), including a train station, school, post office, a mosque, and a Catholic church. Capitalizing on the area's rich Roman history, Church officials saw that Enfidaville's Church of Saint Augustine was designed and built to house 49 Early Christian mosaics unearthed nearby at the site of ancient Uppenna within the building. The landmark building was inaugurated in 1907 and became a site of Christian pilgrimage. This strategic exploitation of antiquity and early Christianity was common in the country's capital and adjacent Carthage, but less so in its far-flung villages and towns where church buildings were typically more utilitarian in their service of European residents.

This case study of Enfidaville's church offers an opportunity to consider built environments outside Tunisia's major urban centers and how they were—or were not—woven into the self-aggrandizing historicist narratives articulated by elite colonizers. As the paper illustrates, this single structure is revealing in its manifestations of the complex socio-political and architectural links between Paris, Rome, Tunis, and Enfidaville during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as interactions among the town's various European and Tunisian residents. In the church's design, decoration, and function, one comes to understand the expansive history of colonial occupation and sacred spaces that supported the image and agenda of the French Empire in North Africa.

The proposed paper will explore how the criteria of urban quality were negotiated in the discourses about smaller towns in the first half of the twentieth century in Central Europe, with particular focus on small towns in Czechoslovakia and Germany. More specifically, it will analyze arguments that were formulated in various efforts to promote small towns – or develop them – as places that (potentially) provided commensurable if not in some respects better sense of urbanity than big cities, with the objective of a) finding key indicators of urbanity that were rendered important, b) identifying distinctively small-town assets, such as better accessibility of nature, c) assessing the role of big cities and metropolitan urban life as both a normative yardstick and a referential sphere, and as the Other to define against. Contrary to the prevailing narratives about small towns as obsolete places in the age of high modernity and economy of scale, the paper will argue that small towns often managed to assert their niche in the urban ranking and capitalize on new trends and changing values, such as the growth of leisure, turn to nature, discontent with centralization and overgrown metropolises, or the valuation of the historic landscape, while stubbornly contesting the assumptions that demographic or spatial size were vital condition for an urban settlement to provide fully-fledged urban qualities. In a broader sense, the paper will make a case for a more differentiated concept of urbanity, unlocked from its implicit association with big cities. The proposed paper is part of a broader and long-term research on smaller towns in the Czech Lands and Central Europe and builds on analysis of an extensive sample of texts that promoted particular towns, such as individual or collective town-portrait books, as well as on exploration of more general debates about small towns in the respective countries.

The fragility and the resilience of the smaller elements of the settlement is one of the greatest challenges in Europe. Its theory and practise are widely researched and disputed in macro level. Most research focuses on the extremes: metropolitan areas and depopulating villages. The importance of the research is that by examining the development paths of small towns, we can better understand how typical or atypical this change is. The Janus-faced character of the small-town in Carpathian basin* concept is further exacerbated by the current pandemic and requires a rethink. The prestige of rural life is rising, and this creates the opportunity for formal small towns to be filled with functions.

Liveability is synonymously identified in recent studies with the definitions of success, effectiveness, competitiveness, supportiveness, good functioning, agility and resilience. The criteria for successful/liveability settlement, can be defined based on the research carried out so far in four main points: natural and cultural resources, local society - local elites, stability of the institutional system (the mayor and representatives), financing. These factors can be linked to both objective and subjective measures of success. Furthermore, the study examines the concept of vulnerability in a functional sense in Carpatian small towns and seeks to answer the question: what dynamics have been observed in recent years with regard to the quality of life in small towns. The model presented focuses on the impact of five main factors: population dynamics (since the beginning of the 19^th century), infrastructure (human, physical, health, digital), impact of public administration (legal status, central role), economic power, attractiveness.

* I use the term Carpathian Basin to refer to the neighbouring parts of the territory of the historical Hungarian settlements outside Hungary; Austria: Burgenland, Slovakia: Felvidék, Ukraine: Kárpátalja, Romania: Transylvania and Partium, Serbia: Vajdaság, Croatia: Drávaszög, South-Baranja-Slavonia, Slovenia: Muravian region.

Cities appear as counterintuitive entities when it comes to the realization of 'liveability': they concentrate infrastructure and industries, accommodate dense population groups, and stand in juxtaposition with the natural environment, both within and outside its boundaries. In this respect, rating and ranking cities according to their presumed liveability can be seen as rather paradoxical: despite all counterarguments and seemingly adverse characteristics, some cities nevertheless receive recognition for fulfilling certain degrees of liveability. This contribution uses the theoretical perspective of 'paradox research' as starting point to investigate and reflect on various initiatives that have measured and indexed urban liveability, particularly during the 20^th and 21^st century and in contexts of increasing global urban competition, such as the Global Liveability Index, the Happy City Index and the OECD's Resilient Cities. Based on a set of modern urban liveability indices, this contribution aims to raise questions regarding the composition of indices, their changes over time, and to what extent these signal broader shifts in defining and recognizing liveability as an empirically measurable urban characteristic. This will be further connected to the related concepts of urban 'health' and 'well-being', in order to reflect on how these indicators do or do not overlap with liveability, and can or cannot be measured and compared differently. Ultimately, this propels further questions about the definition of liveability in urban contexts and the, potentially paradoxical, interrelations with health and well-being: is a top-ranked liveable city by default also a healthy city? And how could urban populations' social well-being weigh in on comprehensive liveability measures?

Adaptive reuse is essential for heritage buildings, including those in old industrial areas. The implementation of urban regeneration projects can make a real difference in the vitality and sustainable development of cities. This is all the more important in Romania, where the de-industrialization of the last three decades has been a real social and economic challenge, with industrial areas seeing a large and rapid process of destruction, while the legislative vacuum has led to irreparable losses of industrial architecture.

This study aims to analyze the use of industrial heritage and its role as an engine of urban revitalization, using the city of Iasi as a case study. The research is based on official statistical data from 1912-2022, supplemented by qualitative data extracted from our own investigations, press information, and the use of images from Google Earth.

The results highlighted the predominant use of former industrial areas for real estate purposes, without concern to preserve buildings with real architectural value. However, there are also some successful examples, in which former factories dating back more than 100 years have been rehabilitated and integrated into the urban landscape.

The conclusions are generally valid for many cities in Eastern Europe: industrial architectural heritage must be used by creating new functional cores with a catalytic role, as the rehabilitation of these spaces contributes to redefining cultural identity and bringing back the sense of belonging to the inhabitants. In this regard, we hypothesize that in Romania (with a few notable exceptions) and especially in the city of Iasi there is not a clear trend of preserving the urban industrial heritage, but rather a fast and profitable capitalization from a financial point of view. The existence of a quality public space leads to an increase in the quality of life and to the creation of sustainable communities.

Research on urbanisation of industrial agglomerations carried out by the Methodological Centre for Industrial Heritage (MCPD) is carried out systematically: by analysing and then synthesizing natural conditions (mineralresources, water courses and their energy potential), individual industries, transport infrastructure and settlement (residential development). In the case of research on individual industries, including mines, the research is based on precise location (identification of historical data from a particular location), analysis of technological developments and subsequent appreciation of preserved material remains, including the use of archaeological methods. The findings are placed in the context of the development on the territory of the Czech Republic and based on this comparison, historically, technically or architecturally the most important objects, technical equipment or archaeological sites are designed for protection under the Historical Preservation Act. Research on technical and industrial monuments for the purposes of monument care seems to us to be a useful partial view for the understood overall process of urbanization especially in the case of industrial agglomerations. Examples include publications and maps with expert content in the case of Ostrava, Karviná, Brno and Kladno.

The electronic maps proved to be a valuable and easy tool in process of researching the industrial heritage. Maps provides register of survey results focused on industrial heritage of Ostrava showing layers of particular segments: mining and metallurgy. It provides the searching according the place, industrial segment, status of protection (cultural monument, national cultural monument, without protection) and more detail sublayers in each segments. The maps also complements the most recent publications about Ostrava industrial heritage and deepens knowledge of its research by findings of original surveys at industrial heritage in Ostrava from 70' and 90' years of 20^th century. The aim of the paper is to  explain the process of creating a map (data collection and analysis, revision of previous findings) and a practical example of its use in the survey of industrial heritage.

Brno as an important industrial centre, mainly associated with textile production and engineering, underwent intensive development during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In particular, the development of textile production led to its rapid growth, the development of existing and the creation of new suburbs. Large areas of the industrial suburbs were occupied by textile factories and the character was maintained until the end of the 20^th century. The disappearance of the Brno textile industry at the turn of the 20^th and 21^st centuries triggered the need for a systematic survey of buildings and areas of textile production. It was necessary to evaluate them from the perspective of heritage management, and also to try to protect selected objects. At the same time, however, demolitions in former industrial suburbs opened the way for industrial archaeology to learn about the older (extinct) layers of this development, especially those associated with the industrialization of factory operations. This process can be best documented archaeologically, especially through research into the energy facilities of the factories (steam boilers and steam engines). Given the scarcity of surviving historical building plans of Brno's factories, the archaeology of Brno represents an irreplaceable source and contributes to the understanding of the industrialisation of the city and the woollen industry centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The beginnings of the medieval settlement of Bruntál are connected with the exploatation of gold. The town of Bruntál was founded in the immediate contact with the panning sites in the valley of the Černý potok river before 1212, and its inhabitants were the first in the Czech lands to be governed by Magdeburg town rights. The presumed close relationship between mining activities and the the foundation of the town of Bruntál is evidenced by the results of montanist research, archaeological findings and also by new knowledge about the Romanesque building phase of the Church of Our Lady in the neighbouring site Staré Město. The extraction of readily available gold deposits then led to the reorganisation of the local settlement and the relocation of the town to its present location. The results of the new research allow Bruntál to be included among the model sites that show the close connection between the urbanisation of the mountain and submontane areas of Central-Eastern Europe and mining activities and cultural influences from Western Europe.

The paper will explore the changing character of Catania by exploring the planning practices and the changing image of the city in the past 100 years, by focusing on the plan for Librino by Kenzo Tange from 1972. The plan, embracing the principles of the metabolism movement, contributed to the ideas of the expansion of the city in its periphery and had an impact also on the overall organisation of Catania. Designed to house 70,000 inhabitants, Kenzo Tange's project for Librino aimed to create an ideal model of a neighbourhood where housing units, district centres and public amenities, parks and sport facilities were spatially adapting to the complex topographies of the site. A green axis and a green corridor represented central design principles for the spatial organisation of Librino, surrounding the housing units but also spatially connecting them. These open spaces of Librino were also designed to accommodate the everyday life activities of the local communities in the neighbourhood.

These ideas from 1972 formed the spatial structure of Librino, and also helped in defining the directions for the future growth of Catania. Building on the plan from 1972, this contribution will focus on the innovative approaches of Kenzo Tange's plan for Librino by analysing the original planning documents for the neighbourhood and through interviews with residents, tracing the origins, urban morphologies and structuralist approaches employed by Tange. The research will highlight the crucial role of international exchanges instilled in Librino by Kenzo Tange in 1972 and his involvement in the project. Furthermore, the research seeks to discuss the legacy of the original plan for Librino based on primary data collected through field investigations in Librino.

From the Tokyo Bay Project to the Masterplan for the Osaka Expo, Kenzo Tange's work has deeply influenced urban design on both sides of the Iron Curtain, redefining the image of cities in the Northern hemisphere as much as of those in the Global South. Among his most relevant projects, Skopje (1965-) and Bologna (1967-) stand out. Being only a couple of years apart, these two only partially completed projects offer an interesting opportunity to address Tange's peculiar approach to urban design and to evaluate his legacy in the field of both architecture and urban planning.

Using previously unpublished documents and after extensive archival research, the paper aims at investigating urban design according to Kenzo Tange from a transnational perspective. Peculiar to the professional and intellectual milieu of the "affluent society", Skopje and Bologna's case studies clearly exemplify the pivotal role of history and images within Tange's production. In fact, Skopje's "gate" and "wall" and Bologna's "porticoes" and "piazza" are not just references to characteristic local architectural and urban elements but are rather to be intended as metaphorical bridges capable of bringing together the past with the present, and then with a future yet to be built. This approach, the origin of which can be traced to Japan and to the interwar period to say least, met with great success in the second half of the 20^th century, consolidating Tange's popularity well beyond the borders of his homeland.

Taking into consideration the context in which Kenzo Tange's ideas originated and investigating them then through the selected case studies, my paper identifies in the "future past quality" of his approach a crucial issue for contemporary urban debates and the very reason why he became accepted as part of the Western-dominated avant-garde of architects.

This experimental paper takes up the idea of "parallax view" (the reading of authors/ideas through a different lens), which comes from Kojin Karatani's Transcritique (2003), as method to approach Kenzo Tange (1913-2005) and his urban ideas through Vienna and its architects Carl Pruscha (*1936) and Johann Staber (1928-2005) and vice versa. The aim of this endeavors is to rethink the limits of control, that are envisioned and experienced in the futuristic ideas of urban structures and buildings, based on two sets of case studies.

First, viewed through two art exhibitions regarding Tange's Plan for Skopje displayed in Vienna, namely "No Feeling Is Final. The Skopje Solidarity Collection" (at Kunsthalle Wien) and "A Revisionist Model of Solidarity" (at Secession) the contemporary Vieannese contextualization and interpretation of Tange's Reconstruction Plan for Skopje (1965) is analyzed. Second, based on the works "Global Linear City" (1963) by Carl Pruscha and "Vienna International Centre (UNO-City, Vienna)" by Johann Staber (planned 1968, built 1972-1979), the Kenzo Tange's 1960 Master Plan for Tokyo is revisited as an inspiration for coeval architects in Europe as well as an instance of the global landscape of urban ideas in the postwar era. By doing so, this paper tries to provide a close reading from a distant place of Kenzo Tange's urban master plans from the 1960s with a critical emphasis on the limits of control imposed by real life to these overarching plans.

In my presentation I would like to discuss the conclusions drawn from the forthcoming volume focused on the issue of community that I edited (to appear in 2024). The nineteenth-century city was a complicated multi-polar and multi-cultural organism that evades simplifications offered by the national narratives. In understanding what a city really was at the time of the emergence of the phenomenon of cities as we know it today (especially in the (East-)Central Europe), it is instructive to ask the question of urban communities. Most obviously these included communities based on ethnic components that were reinvented as nations shortly before and during that time, but trying to see cities as national, belonging to a nation in one way or another, one has to adopt an ideological perspective, which obscures more than it reveals. By studying communities tied by religious, professional, estate-oriented or imperial bonds – beside or within the new national ones – the researcher can be able to conceive of the society as an aggregate of groups rather than a synthesis, which in fact it has never been. The case study of Lviv (Lwów, L'viv, Lemberg), the capital of the Habsburg crown land of Galicia with its multi-cultural inhabitants is a good illustration of these theoretical premises. Perceived by many Poles as a Polish city, the object of symbolic appropriation (or taming) by Ukrainians, in fact it evades simplifications. I will show the discourse produced by different social actors in relation to the space of Lviv to argue that the urban society was an aggregate rather than a synthesis.

The city of Vienna is an example of a dense, historically developed city, that expanded outwards from the city centre as the population and the demand for space increased. There is, however, one area that was not included in this otherwise uniform development: The area on the left side of the Danube known as Transdanubia. The river, which in its unregulated state was a wide floodplain dividing the landscape of Vienna into two parts, was a natural border that the growth of the city could not overcome for the longest time.

Even until the 19^th century, the polycentric network of different streets and villages in this area was still very rural in nature until regulation measures of the river were undertaken and several new bridges were constructed. These interventions made Transdanubia a focus point of urban development. The following increasing urbanisation of the settlement structures represents a trend that has been growing even more rapidly – especially alongside traffic axis – since the increasing motorisation in the 1960s. One of the consequences of this shift in the relevance of Transdanubia in the urban context, was a significant change in the population, both in numbers – from only 12 per cent in the 19^th century to currently over 30 per cent of Vienna's total population by current area – but also in occupation – away from farmers living off their own land towards workers. In connection with these processes changes in village structures and settlement patterns can be observed. The village cores were densified and transformed, and the surrounding fields were used for new development.

The visible and invisible historical developments, which are spatial, social, political and technological in nature, have a strong influence on the development of the city, they manifest themselves physically in the city and their traces are still ecident today. This contribution aims to comprehensively examine these transformation processes in the context of Vienna's Transdanubia.

The aim of the paper is to attempt to show the changes in Cieszyn and their dynamics through the prism of the social divisions of its inhabitants and the surrounding population, as well as the division of the city along the Polish-Czechoslovak border in 1920. The divisions of the community living in the city (since 1920, two cities – Cieszyn and Český Těšín) took place mainly on the basis of nationality (Germans, Poles, Czechs) and religion (Catholics, Protestants, Jews). The national and religious groups living in the city competed with each other, which resulted in the intense social development of Cieszyn, which came to be called "little Vienna" (mainly due to its architecture), less often "little Athens" (due to the number of schools) or "little Rome" (due to the number of churches and location on the hills). The situation changed in 1920, when the historical center of the city, previously managed by the Germans, found itself in Poland and retained the name Cieszyn, while the less urbanized areas west of the Olza river, along with some strategic infrastructure (especially the railway station), were included in the borders. Czechoslovakia, giving rise to Český Těšín. Deprived of an economic base after the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Cieszyn quickly transformed from "little Vienna" into a "provincial hole". The new Polish rulers of the city tried to reverse these changes throughout the interwar period. The situation was different in Czechoslovakia, where a new city was practically being built. Due to cold relations between Poland and Czechoslovakia, both parts of Cieszyn developed in isolation from each other. Throughout the period in question, external factors also played an important role in the transformation of Cieszyn (and later two towns) – especially extensive migration processes and the development of industry in the Ostrava-Karvina Basin and the Bielsko subregion, where Bielsko, Polish (since 1919 Silesian) Ostrava or Karvina joined the race for the title of the most significant city in Cieszyn Silesia.

The grid of Barcelona's Eixample designed by Cerdà in 1859 is known today by its high density of inhabitants and its high intensity of uses. Despite the homogeneous layout, the blocks that configure the grid are composed by property units varying in shape and size due to the permanence of embedded historic traces of the agricultural plots that preceded the extension of the modern city. Therefore, the morphology of the resulting buildings, but also the configuration of the membranes that separate the vies [roads] from the intervies [inter-roads] – terms Cerdà used to designate streets and blocks – are determined by invisible imprints that once corresponded to watercourses, paths, or the first tree-lined promenades. Moreover, due to its magnitude and ambition, the grid has been completed over more than 150 years, so the succession of construction ordinances over time has contributed to transferring the boundaries between plots to the three dimensions of the built environment. The limits between Barcelona's Eixample and the once independent municipality of Horta constitute a rich laboratory in which it is possible to find the imprint of traces of the past in the configuration of the grid. Based on the reading of six historical maps and the morphological dissection of the architectures that compose six urban blocks, the paper explains (1) the reasons for the permanence of the agricultural plot structure in the current urban form; (2) the disruptions in the built continuity due to different ordinances; and (3) the architectural outcome of these distortions. The research argues that the permanence over time of the plot structure determines the architectural form which, in turn, shapes the relationship between the public and the private; the balances between fixed and transient activities; and the ways of living, working and occupying the city at ground level.

In this presentation, I will introduce the key actors responsible for shaping the municipal policy related to the city's "beautification" and their arguments regarding the arrangement of green spaces. I will also explore how their ideas correlated with the urban policies in late 19^th century Lviv.

The broader frame of my research includes several groups of actors who participated in these processes. The first group of actors consisted of the city authorities, specifically the deputies of the Lviv city council who worked at the particular sections. In this case, my focus lies within the building section. The second group comprised the executive body, the Magistrat, whose specialists were involved in the planning and executing parks, including architects and gardeners. The next group included those who used the parks and left their impressions, reflecting on the actions taken by the first and second groups of actors towards the city's greening. Finally, though often invisible to research, the suburban landscape plays also a significant role in my study. However, this presentation will primarily concentrate on the first two groups of actors.

My current research is mainly based on the transcripts of the plenary meetings of the Lviv city council's building section, which have not been analysed in Lviv's historiography before. These documents shed light on the discussions and communication between deputies and the Magistrat.

Using Stryjski Park as an example, which was not the first public park in the city but was perceived by local city authorities as their finest achievement and something to be proud of after the city gained its self-governing status in 1870th, I will explore how this specific milieu aroused the concept of creating a green belt, the "Corso", to unite the city's green areas. Finally, in accordance with this, I will address the following questions: Were there precise strategies for implementing the "Corso"? Was it a unique plan or influenced by examples from other European cities?"

Thirty years after the signing of the Belfast Peace Agreement, Belfast is no longer the site of assassinations, bombs, and sectarian riots. However, the city remains on permanent war footing – because the British Army designed it that way. Divided by so-called 'peace walls' and carved up by other hidden architectures that are the result of the British Army's usurpation of municipal planning decisions during the Troubles, Belfast is a city unable to rise above its past because it is literally planned to fail.

Using primary source material extracted from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, the Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, UK, and the National Archives at Kew, my paper illuminates the ways building codes were weaponised for political and military/tactical advantage, which irrevocably altered the morphology of Belfast. Research shows that features that are considered 'typically Belfast', are in fact the result of the security service's demands on the building code: one-way streets, cul-de-sacs, lack of trees and street landscaping, and empty lots were all deliberate choices to advantage the British Army and disadvantage ordinary citizens of Belfast, particularly the Catholic community.

I argue that resulting unattractive features – such as derelict homes and overgrown lots – were intentional attempts to further devalue Belfast's real estate, thus making the city even more reliant on London for its survival.

This paper expands the historiography of the urban history of an important European city, as well as pinpoint the interference of the UK army in what should have been ordinary municipal issues, a subject that has been rumoured for years but never investigated fully.

I submit that as long as Belfast remains stamped with the legacy of the British Army's design, Belfast will never reach its full potential as an open, modern city.

Modern building codes have been introduced into Austrian legislation since the beginning of the 19^th century. The Prague one in 1815, the Vienna one at the end of the 1920s. The building regulations merged the existing fire regulations and lay down the basic conditions for how houses should be built to be safe and their construction durable. The physical form of the houses is gradually regulated by partial additions to these regulations. These stipulate that modern cities in the first half of the 19^th century are not to be lavishly decorated and that facades are to be kept simple.

Similar alterations in both cities diverged significantly after the middle of the century. The Viennese legislation has been responding to the rapid growth and the need to redevelop the city centre since the 1950s, and the new building codes are thus written to allow for more significant redevelopment and expansion. In Prague, this legislative adjustment and expansion would not occur until the century itself.

In both cases, the new legislation will regulate storeys, street widths and other basic parameters that will affect the overall urban design of new and redeveloped neighbourhoods. In various forms, however, the nature of the legislation will also affect the appearance of the buildings themselves: it will affect the number of balconies, bay windows, but not least the sheer variety of styles (from Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic and Neo-Baroque to Art Nouveau and Wagnerian Modern Architecture).

This paper will attempt to show that building codes do not only affect the overall urban regulations, but extend to the design of the building detail itself. These examples will be developed mainly on Prague and Vienna, but will also peripherally touch upon other Austrian cities (Brno, Cracow, Lvov).

This contribution presents participatory, mapping-oriented research endeavors in Katendrecht, a neighborhood in Rotterdam, the Netherlands' main port city. Throughout Rotterdam's modern history, Katendrecht has occupied a unique position, as an artificial peninsula created during early 20^th-century port expansion plans and housing a Chinatown and red-light district in the ensuing decades. Ultimately, Katendrecht saw its long-lasting status of marginalized port area overturned in recent decades, as the neighborhood became the emblematic example of capital-intensive gentrification processes in the port city. Based on apparent tensions between its past and present, experiential ambivalences in and about Katendrecht have been explored with local residents. Initial research set up in Katendrecht comprised the organization and visual mapping of walking interviews with residents. The methodological aims of these interviews were to both construct a substantial sense of 'shared authority' between researcher and participant (particularly, by letting interviewees determine the walking routes themselves), and to bridge objective and subjective data indicators (particularly, by linking interviewees' neighborhood recollections to meaningful 'standstills' during the walks). Resulting in a map that linked together temporal and spatial dimensions of the conducted walks, this visual outcome subsequently formed the starting point of a new participatory research project, aimed at mapping residents' experiences of sound in Katendrecht's public spaces. Currently ongoing, the project's main output, an interactive sound map, will be presented and discussed, both in terms of its methodological underpinnings (linked to ideas of 'deep' and 'mental' mapping) and its potentials and pitfalls in establishing a historically grounded conversation with Katendrecht's community.

Layers of London (layersoflondon.org) is a participatory mapping project which aims to bring together the overlapping layers of experience and community heritage within the city through the paradigm of web mapping. The project was funded by the UK Lottery Heritage Fund from 2017 to 2020. It enabled partnerships with key national heritage organisations, the majority of London's local borough councils, and many independent community groups and schools. There are now more than 400 georeferenced historic map 'overlays' to explore, and more than 14,000 user-contributed mainly photographic 'record' pins. The project also catalysed the development of the HUMAP mapping platform, which now supports numerous other projects and digital library resources.

Layers of London was a major departure from traditional research project approaches for the Institute of Historical Research, and fostered new approaches to community collaboration and partnership. Naturally, this involved both successes and challenges, and prompts reflection on how map-based visualisation can connect academics and communities. Participation worked at many levels and attracted different communities, from crowdsourcing georeferencing of aerial photographs, which attracted a dedicated enthusiasts; to community archiving workshops; and perhaps actually most powerfully community mapping days with chalk and blackboard! Layers of London now continues to grow during its maintenance phase, as we reflect on how best to target our limited continuity resources, and consider future developments in digital infrastructure for community-led place-based histories.

Over the centuries, important towns and cities around the world have been the subject of a significant number of drawn, painted, engraved, but above all printed representations. Partial or general urban views made between the two 'cultural revolutions' (printing and photography), i.e. from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 19^th century, were printed in books and/or have circulated as prints.

Showing intellectual elitism, cultural historians and art historians have neglected this type of images considering them of low quality. But historical images are important testi¬mo-nies, recording on-the-spot observation of the events depicted, thus allowing us to imagine the past more easily. In fact, their role was to bring the public news, or even better, curiosities from the exotic world of others, be it with other customs, another language, another religion, other geographical location and so on. They satisfied the need for images from distant places felt by those who could not travel.

We are tempted to look at historical images only as valuable objects displayed in museums or kept in special cabinets, forgetting that their purpose was different. It is an error of the modern, dependent on technology people, who forgets that in another historical period people lived differently.

This paper aims to draw attention to the cultural, educational and historiographical role of historical images of towns, studying their role as a medium for transmitting knowledge; from teacher to pupil, from father to son, from author to reader, from artist to viewer.

The Öresund region is the area around the Sound of Öresund, between Denmark and Sweden. Before 1658 it was the centre of Denmark with Copenhagen, the capital and the political centre, from at least the 17^th century, on the western side and the centre of the Danish Church, from the early Medieval time, in Lund on the eastern side. Around Öresund, there were lots of trade activities and trade towns. And in the rural areas, there were lot of peasants and rich noblemen. It was the wealthiest and most important part of Denmark.

In the middle of this area, a new border between Denmark and Sweden was the result of a war in 1658. In traditional history writing, this is the story about a hard borderline between the Danish and the Swedish states – between national laws and national identities. A border stopping the old contacts and the possibilities of making new contacts.

In our research group we are critical to this. The early modern states did not have those strong borders – not that strong states and not such fixed national identities. We want to look for a transnational region with contacts similar to those before 1658, but also contacts using new possibilities after that. This was of course equally important for all the towns and urban areas – they got a special and interesting position in this border region, which we will show.

With the urbanization that followed industrialization from the middle of the 19^th century, the old urban network at the Öresund developed into two urban regions on opposite sides of the strait. In the post-war period, consisting of the Danish capital metropolis on the western side of the Öresund with 1.7 million inhabitants and on the eastern side of the strait an urban belt from Trelleborg in the south to Helsingborg in the north and a few other cities with a total of 1 million inhabitants.

With the various proposals for fixed connections across the Öresund, different visions were drawn up for an Öresund metropolis of more than 4 million inhabitants. The vision initially did not become a reality, when the Danish parliament failed to ratify the Danish-Swedish government agreement on two fixed connections across the Öresund. The Öresund Bridge was only opened in 2000, but the question is whether the two city regions on opposite sides of the Öresund have merged into one city region: An Öresund metropolis.

Elsinore takes up a unique role in the Danish urban system. Situated in the North-Eastern corner of the island of Zealand, Elsinore has a more limited catchment area than most of the Danish towns, and in addition the hinterland has always been a well-wooded area. However, as the distance to Scania is just c. 5 kilometres, there has - probably since the Middle Ages - been much maritime traffic between Elsinore and the villages near the Western coast of Scania. And since Elsinore was much bigger and presumably had more trades than the towns in this part of Scania, we may assume that the tradesmen in Elsinore were able to attract many people from parishes east of Öresund at market days in Elsinore. It is, however, widely held that the relations between Elsinore and Scania were much reduced after 1658, when Scania was transferred to Sweden. From c. 1500 to the 1850s the development of Elsinore was strongly influenced by the towns' role as the place, where the skippers going through the Danish fairways on their journeys between Western and Eastern Europe paid the Sound Toll. This function laid the groundwork for different trade and service activities in Elsinore. Besides, it gave the town a much more international character than other provincial towns in Denmark. Thus many tradesmen from other countries, especially Britain, settled in Elsinore. Entries in the towns' books about trade licence show that Elsinore got many citizens from Scania in the 18^th century. Likewise, registers about passport examination give evidence of a rather large-scale immigration from Scania to Elsinore in the 19^th century, though many of these persons only used Elsinore as the first place of sojurn on their way to other parts of Denmark. In my presentation I'll point out several features making Elsinore to something special in the Danish urban landscape, but I'll also describe, how the town interacted with neighbouring towns and villages in Zealand and Scania.

Before and during the building period of the Öresund bridge in the late 1990´s, the diminished importance of nation-states was predicted. A new Europe of the border regions would emerge and more and more decision-making would take place at a supranational EU or regional level. The new transnational Öresund connection would, both symbolically and practically, be at the forefront of this development and be a growth engine for the entire new border region.

An important element in the marketing and identity building around the new region was the highlighting of a special form of Scandinavian state-led modernity in the region with an emphasis on high quality of life, open and democratic societies, with egalitarian ideals and with rationality as a guiding light. At the same time, this promotion was also aimed at international capital markets with an emphasis on high technological know-how and peaceful labor markets.

However, what was already clear during the bridge-building period was that the nation-states were not as weak as a certain form of rhetoric suggested. National differences in the perception of how the rational, modern society should be organized became clear when national regulations were to be adapted through regional construction.

The development since then with the refugee crisis in 2015, the introduction of border controls in Europe and the region shows that the national modernity projects have changed shape.

The border dispute and clash of ideologies that defined the Northern Adriatic in the aftermath of WWII, coupled with the geopolitical rivalry that made it one of the earliest Cold War hotspots, endowed this region with a specific spatial dispositive. In the northern part of this area, where a new border between Italy and Yugoslavia was established in 1947, Yugoslav authorities hastily began building the new town of Nova Gorica, just across the barbed wire from the old regional capital Gorizia, which remained in Italy. Instead of adopting typical forms of socialist realism, its architect Edvard Ravnikar applied Le Corbusier's principles of modernist urban planning and architecture to create an environment that would be presented as ideal for the "new socialist man". In the southern part of this area, where the border remained disputed until 1954 and the final agreement was only reached in 1975, spatial representation of power was imposed in a similar fashion through modernist interventions into the fabric of medieval Venetian towns. The counterpoising of these new tissues of socialism with more commercially-oriented venues along the length of the Italian-Yugoslav border increasingly reflected Yugoslavia's new, in-between position from the early 1960s onwards. Initially unassuming places of consumption evolved into enclaves of purely capitalist entertainment during late socialism, with glittering casinos only accessible to Italian and other western European visitors as the most obvious example. With a view on the massive shifts that Yugoslav political economy and culture underwent from the 1940s to the 1980s, my paper will explore the complex relationship between the socialist identity, values and urban governance, on the one hand, and the profit-oriented re-invention of borderland urban landscape, on the other. This transformation eventually resulted in changes to the prevailing aesthetic regime, the local labour structure, and the overall process of respatialization.

The architecture of the Kras Group (1976-1989), whose projects and achievements have been decisive for Slovenian architecture of the end of 20^th century, was inextricably linked to the socio-economic developments following the Osimo Treaty, signed in 1975 by the Italian and the Yugoslav governments. The Treaty put an end to the political tension lasting since the beginnings of the Cold War, paving the way for the economic cooperation agreements and the protocol for a industry and trade free zone. This extraordinarily animated moment, albeit destined to failure both in its economic and socio-political side, stimulated the entrepreneurial activity of the building firms, like the construction company "Kraški zidar" from Sežana, whose project office TOZD Projektiva Inženiring was joined by the architect Vojteh Ravnikar (1943-2010), together with his colleague Marko Dekleva (Postojna, 1943), Matjaž Garzarolli (Ilirska Bistrica, 1948-2018) and Egon Vatovec (Vremski Britof, 1944), who even designed the logo for the company. The architectural and planning work of the group may be interpreted as a sign of the economic boost given by the Osimo agreements, which gave a renewed impetus to the construction sector in a peripheral area of Slovenia. For a few years, in fact, the Karst area became the seat of the new architectural tendencies with several works in Sežana, Dutovlje, Nova Gorica, Fernetti, Kozina and Lipica, where the typological elements rediscovered by the Italian coeval masters, like Semerani and Rossi, merged with the lemmas of the vernacular architecture from Karst. The paper analyzes the architecture of the Kras Group as a concrete answer to the issue of redefining the identity of the border between Italy and Yugoslavia (scilicet with the Slovenian republic from 1991 onwards), by rediscovering the material and economic background of the "Kraški zidar" building firm, which has not been sufficiently considered in the previous studies.

The integration of the Upper Adriatic region, which had formerly been part of distinct imperial settings, into two states with differing ideological orientations following World War II - Italy, oriented toward the West, and Yugoslavia, initially pro-Soviet and later independently socialist - gave rise to various forms of collaboration, competition, and distinct strategies for valuing the pre-existing cultural heritage across various domains. Among these domains, architecture stands out due to its association with the diverse construction and reconstruction approaches employed in the border-adjacent areas. These dynamics were exacerbated, on one hand, by the fact that these regions had borne the brunt of the haphazard redefinition of border lines. On the other hand, these were also areas heavily affected by conflict, as seen in the case of Zadar.

With historians having already thoroughly examined the institutional and architectural aspects of this issue, the purpose of my paper is to delve into the usage of post-war architecture in the context of the Cold War. Such usage of architecture is primarily viewed as a symbolic contest between distinct political systems. By scrutinizing local newspapers such as "Il Piccolo," "Slovenski Jadran," "Nova Gorica," and "Primorske Novice," reviewing pertinent scholarly works and exploring relevant films and documentaries, my contribution aims to provide a foundation for discussion and future research. This research is essential for comprehending a crucial aspect of the Cold War's history at the Italy-Yugoslavia border, where capitalism and socialism, Venetian and Habsburg heritages, neoclassicism and various modernist architectural approaches intersect.