Temporary use and brownfield regeneration in post-socialist context: from bottom-up governance to artists exploitation

ABSTRACT

In recent years, both academic and political circles have paid much attention to the use of culture and temporary use in the regeneration of industrial brownfields. Nevertheless, existing records are based, in particular, on examples of cities and regions from long-established free-market European countries. This text uses a case study to provide an analysis and interpretation of the transformation governance of a temporary cultural use into a permanent one with the example of the Hlubina Mine in the traditionally industrial post-socialist city of Ostrava. The findings point to the inconsistency of cultural regeneration outcomes, which mainly stem from the weak public sector role and the unequal power status of all the participants involved. The study also documents the physical and functional discrepancies between temporary and permanent use, and warns of pitfalls resulting from the rapid for-profit exploitative permanent use of the originally organic temporary one.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• temporary use
• brownfield
• regeneration
• industrial city
• post-socialism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Katrin Großmann, Jan Ženka, journal editor and anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors and omissions remain the authors’ responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Luděk Krtička http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4028-0874

Notes

1 Economic problems are evidenced by the 84% decrease in Vítkovice's number of employees between 1989–2017.

2 For the regeneration of the LVA, including Hlubina, LVAA received a total of 48.79 million EUR.

3 In 2009 DIAMO donated the whole area of the Hlubina Mine to the Moravian-Silesian Region. Since 2010, the Moravian-Silesian Region has been renting the premises of the Hlubina Mine to the Lower Vítkovice Area Association (LVAA), and later in 2012, it donated it to the LVAA without any conditions regarding further use (Šústková, 2015). The book value of donated assets was 2.14 million EUR.

4 Provoz planned the following functions for Hlubina, which it could not implement as a consequence of limited space, rent level, and restrained grant support: a contemporary art gallery, music club, audio-visual centre, space for presenting artists in residence’ work and art lectures.

5 The rent, which was before the redevelopment set at 37 EUR/month, was increased to 8,100 EUR/month including maintenance and utilities.

6 Rent in Provoz rehearsal rooms is 117 EUR/month, while an average rehearsal room elsewhere in Ostrava is approximately 94 EUR/month. In the case of Provoz art studios, rent is 273 EUR/month, while elsewhere in Ostrava it is only 117 EUR/month.

7 A Provoz member listed the following deficiencies: (1) The buildings lacked heating, so activities were limited to the period from spring to autumn; (2) They were not secured against theft, and so could not be fitted with permanent equipment; (3) They did not comply with safety standards and therefore the responsibility for the visitors of cultural events was transferred to the Provoz as an organizer.

8 In 2016, the Provoz applied for a grant from the city in the amount of 103,000 EUR/year but was granted 11,000 EUR/year, which only covers one monthly rent and utility payments.

9 In 2016 the city and the region subsidized operating costs by a total of 680,000 EUR/year.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under Grant 18-11299S provided for the research project ‘Paths development in traditional industries in old industrial regions in Czechia: governance, actors, institutions and leadership’.