Divided Towns, Integration and Cross-border Cooperation. The Cases of Cieszyn/Český Těšín and Słubice/Frankfurt (Oder)

ABSTRACT

Divided towns are specific urban units that were once single cities before their subsequent division through the drawing of new state borders based on arbitrary political decisions. The specific nature of such towns thus originates primarily from their common history and their location on a border. This article focuses on two examples from Central and Eastern Europe, one situated on the Polish-Czech border (Cieszyn and Český Těšín) and the other on the Polish-German border (Słubice and Frankfurt an der Oder), in order to provide a comparative analysis of cross-border cooperation. Based on an analysis of secondary data and literature, we explore the factors deemed most essential in the literature for the integration of and cooperation between divided towns today – namely historical legacies, cultural and political factors, (a)symmetries and border/periphery locations – to investigate what similarities and differences can be observed in the analysed towns.

KEYWORDS:

• Divided towns
• borderland
• European integration
• cross-border cooperation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Narodowe Centrum Nauki [UMO-2018/29/B/HS6/00258]. Publication of this article was partly financed by the ”Excellence Initiative - Research University” program for the University of Wroclaw.