Running projects
Do-It-Yourself culture and its importance for Czech national and cultural identity: Current situtation in social, cultural, historical and political perspective, typology and potential for regional development
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Grant project supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. The project started in 2018 and will be finished in 2020. The head of the project is Petr Gibas, MSc.
At present, Do-It-Yourself culture (DIY) is generally understood as part of the Czech national identity and a Czech national feature, which reflects the nation´s specific historical experience and national memory. Although DIY as a Czech national feature refers to the everyday experience under state socialism and particularly normalisation (1970s and 1980s) its roots are deeper. The goal of this project is to render and map the present forms of DIY and its history locating DIY in its broad social, cultural, historical and political context. The outcomes will subsequently be presented to the general public. At the same time, the project aims at assessing the DIY potential for developing local communities, raising their historical and local consciousness, and developing tourism.
Between home and nature: urban political ecology of allotment gardening in post-socialist city and its urban impacts
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Grant project supported by the Czech Science Foundation, no. 16-06077S. The project started at 1.1.2016 and will be finished at 31.12.2018. The head of the project is Petr Gibas, MSc.
Aims of the project: To establish practices of urban gardening and their changes from socialism to post-socialism; to analyse how the changing practices reflect changing experience of home, nature and city; to provide an empirically based analysis of developments in the politics of urban nature over the given period.
Abstract: The project focuses on Prague allotments as an empirical example of the changing approach to urban nature and urban planning after the fall of socialism. Allotments represent spaces of affection and care. As urban nature, they are spaces of intense political negotiations. The project aims to analyse how allotments reflect changes in urban developments and nature, politics of urban space as well as the experience of the city and home. Combining the micro and macro perspective in a multi-method research (Burawoy’s (1998) extended case method), the project will (1) produce detailed understanding of practices/experiences of urban gardening and their changes in the transformation from socialism to post-socialism; (2) explore how changes in imaginaries and experiences of home, nature and the city manifest; and (3) analyse negotiations over the spaces of allotment gardening. The objective is to show how the transformation from socialism has affected the complexities of the politics of urban nature, and what its impact is on everyday experience of home and nature in the post-socialist city.
Housing Based Welfare: Risks and Implications of Release of Housing Wealth to Support Retirement Income
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Grant project supported by the Czech Science Foundation, no. 16-06335S. The project started at 1.1.2016 and will be finished at 31.12.2018. The head of the project is Martin Lux, Ph.D.
The project focuses on the future role of housing as an asset for supplementing retirement income, sometimes called asset- (housing-) based welfare (ABW). The interest in this subject is motivated by the process of population ageing. The partial shift from public to private welfare provision is assumed to take place due to unsustainable public pay-as-you-go pension schemes; and housing wealth forms the major part of European households’ wealth. However, the future consequences of ABW on social inequalities among the elderly and social inequalities in general (as a result of changes in inter-generational solidarity ), as well as efficiency and sustainability of ABW itself for future generations against alternative housing market trends, are empirically unexplored in recent research. Situation in post-socialist societies has remained wholly outside the scope of existing research. This project aims to fill in these gaps in existing research, by applying both qualitative research and microsimulation and agent-based modelling.
Market failure in the context of social housing provision as a service of general economic interest
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Grant project supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, no. TD03000050. The project started at 1.1.2016 and will be finished at 31.12. 2017. The head of the project is Petr Sunega.
The project aims to develop a certified method serving for identification of local housing market failure and its quantification. The method will be applied in municipal applications for state subsidies on social housing investments as a service of general economic interest. Market failure is defined as an inability of household to get adequate (by quality and size), financially affordable and spatially integrated housing under standard market conditions. The employment of the proposed methodology should guarantee the effective use of public sources for social housing investments; i.e. the subsidies will (1) fit with EU rules, (2) optimise the public expenditures, and (3) will not create housing market distorsions.