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This article is mainly future oriented, i.e. concerned with the potentials and limits of Prague’s future development, and with the most probable developmental trajectories of the city in the coming years. To make such an assessment more realistic, a considerable part of the study pays attention to the past changes in the position of Prague within the system of Central European capital cities. The study proves that the status, political power and economic role of Prague has been closely linked to societal changes and to the changing geopolitical contexts of the Czech community. The evaluation of the so-called endogenous potential of the city shows that the strongest developmental potentials are: cultural, geographic, economic and human potentials. The category of middle ranking potentials include general and municipal, political and infrastructural ones. The weakest potentials, or expressed in another way, the factors Prague’s limiting future development are environmental and demographic. Czech Sociological Review, 1997, Vol. 5 (No. 1: 23-38) The aim of the following study** is, on the one hand, to analyse past changes in the position of Prague within the Central European and Czech urban system, and on the other, to find out how this position will be changed by the recent transformations of Central European societies, as well as by the possible integration of Prague into the European urban system. Although the paper is mainly future oriented, i.e. concerned with the potentials and limits of the city which define the possible future developmental trajectories of Prague, a part of this study, however, pays attention also to the past. This part is concerned with the long-term evolution of the Central European capital cities system – i.e. with the positions of Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and Warsaw. Such a historical analysis enables a more reliable prediction of Prague’s future functions and positions in the Central European and European urban system. To make the prediction of Prague’s future more reliable, the paper starts with a review of the most probable changes in European urban futures as estimated by experts. Until recently, most studies which analysed the consequences of the collapse of state socialism on cities paid attention mainly to the effects of these societal changes on individual large cities or on urban systems of individual Central European countries. There is a lack of comparative sociological studies on urban transformations in this region. Those few analyses which have applied comparative approaches, such as György *) Direct all correspondence to: Professor PhDr. Jiří Musil, Central European University, Prokopova 9, 130 00 Praha 3, phone +420 2 27 75 47, ext. 533, fax +420 2 27 75 47, ext. 526, E-mail CEU.Prague@ecn.cz **) The article presents the main results of a study which was a part of the seminar ‘Capital cities of Central Europe: adjustment and strategy in the new Europe’ sponsored by the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation in 1994. The author’s thanks also go to M. Hampl and M. Illner for their valuable comments which improved the study. Czech Sociological Review, V, (1/1997) 24 Enyedi’s [1992, 1996] studies, have used economic geography or regional science perspectives. Some other studies which have applied comparative methods use the 1990 or 1991 census data, as for example S. Conti [1994]. In other words they surveyed the situation of large Central European cities in the last phase of state socialism and were unable to see the important changes in urban systems as caused by the post-1989 developments. Still other studies – even though using for example explicitly comparative sociological models such as the stimulating books by Jürgen Friedrichs [1978, 1985] on the development of some Western and Eastern European cities – were concerned with the period before 1989 and with the similarities and differences between “capitalist” and “socialist” cities, and not with the effects of the return to market economy and political pluralism on urban systems in post-communist countries. Our study compares five capital cities of Central Europe, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin and Warsaw, from a sociological perspective, using mainly morphological analysis approaches as defined recently by such authors as Jürgen Friedrichs [1981, 1995], Bernd Hamm [1982, 1996], Jiří Musil [1991], Zdravko Mlinar [1997] and others. Standard comparative sociology procedures are used as well. To the comparative and ecological approaches, which form the core of our methodology, are added two other instruments, which enable us to make some tentative predictions as to Prague’s future, i.e. the concept of potential and the concept of limit. The concept of potential, “endogenous potential” or “developmental potential” has been used mainly by German, Austrian as well as Swiss regional scientists for describing endogenous developmental qualities or conditions of regions (see the studies by Ernst A. Brugger [1984], Rainer Thoss [1984], Hans Elsasser [1984] and others). The term hints at the latent, or even hidden developmental qualities of a region, which can be, however, mobilised and exploited by regional policies. In this study the concept was transferred to urban studies to enable us to see the cities observed here in a future oriented perspective. 1. Changing Patterns of the European Urban System The following review tries to summarise the main recent as well as future changes in the interurban structure of Europe. The review is based primarily on studies written by Jürgen Friedrichs [1993], Peter Hall [1993], Martin Hampl [1996], Jiří Musil, Michal Illner [1994], Klaus R. Kunzmann [1996], W. F. Lever [1993], Ian Masser, Ove Svidén, Michael Wegener [1992], Martine Meijer [1993], Jiří Musil [1992], Saskia Sassen [1994] and Jan Van Weesep [1993]. The predictions as to the future of Europe’s urban system is here used as a frame of reference for our reflections on Prague’s future. This means that it is necessary first to operationalise the summary of the predicted urban system changes into a number of concrete statements, and subsequently we shall compare the potentials of Prague with these concrete statements. This will allow a more dynamic and at the same time more realistic assessment of the developmental qualities of the city. From the perspective of the above-mentioned urban experts, the main future changes in Europe’s urban system can be summarised as follows: – Large cities are becoming more and more service centres. This is due to the continuing processes of tertiarisation of European economies. – The capital cities and some large cities are – in a growing measure – becoming decisive nodes of international co-ordination activities of trade and finance. Jiří Musil: Potentials and Limits of Prague’s Future in the Context of Long-Term Development 25 – A pronounced hierarchy of such command and co-ordination cities is being formed. Some of them have a global role, others a continental function or a European subregional role. – The present and future changes of the European urban system are to a great extent influenced by the processes of spatial specialisation, regionalisation and polarisation. All of the mentioned processes can be observed to function on a continental, state and regional level. The processes of polarisation between European macro-regions will be intensified by the construction of high-speed railways. – Due to the three above-mentioned processes, the differences and inequalities among large European cities and regions will continue to grow. – European integration processes are already at present changing the national urban systems and they will continue to have such an impact in the future as well. Very often cities in the border regions are improving their economic positions, whereas other cities and regions – due to the processes of regional specialisation and differentiation – are becoming peripheral and are losing their status. At present, some European cities which were important in the past are becoming a part of the periphery and are losing contacts with the main growing European urban regions. – The most difficult is the situation of old industrial agglomerations and of smaller cities in isolated or peripheral locations. – It is generally expected that, in the future, capital and large cities of Central Europe will be reintegrated into the European urban system. The concrete, as well as the spatial forms of such a reintegration are as yet, however, not clear. – The political and economic changes in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 can be seen as a factor strengthening the position of those western cities which before 1989 belonged to the peripheral parts of the European urban system, for example Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Nuremberg. These cities can regain the role they performed before World War II. – The European integration processes can enhance the leading role of the capital cities of the largest European countries, such as Berlin, and Paris. – The strengthening of market economy systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will stimulate the growth of their capitals and large cities due to the fact that it is in these where there are the best conditions for the expansion of services, and also due to the fact that the most modern parts of industry are often concentrated in metropolitan areas of capital cities. – The quantitative population growth of European cities, especially of large cities, will be slow in the near future. This is caused by the low natural growth rates of the population in most European countries and also by the restrictive measures leading to the curtailment of immigration from non-European countries. – The growth of large cities will be stimulated in the future to a growing extent by the increasing role of cities as culture centres, such as tourist centres, and as places of international cultural and sporting events. A trend towards a growing urban bo

Potentials and Limits of Prague's Future in the Context of Long-Term Development