When Urban Planning Tries To Destroy an Entire City

What was Czechoslovakian urban planning like, and why was it a crime against humanity? Let's find out.

[lkrnpk]

- What should we do with the historic buildings? I mean, we could restore them like in Prague or Warsaw
- Yeah... so anyway, I started blasting...

[RADkate]

the lidls are being build so that germany can reclaim the land lidl by lidl ;)

[JuanCLeal]

"Oh wow, the war spared this city!"
*Bombs it to oblivion.*

[שמערלעשעקעלשטיין]

My grandmother was expelled from Aussig after the war. When she returned decades later to visit her home city again, she could not recognize anything. I guess now I know why.

[lukfi]

I have to admit, I'm Czech and didn't know all of this. Another city, not so far from Ústí, has a similar and more widely known story: Most. It was a beautiful city with a historic center. The problem? There was coal under it. So in 1965 the government just blasted the city to hell and built a new one next to it, in the same vein as the new buildings in Ústí. Although such mass atrocities stopped after 1989, acts of barbarism against architecture are still way too common, sadly.

[maddyg]

I can understand the city planners of a European city largely flattened by bombing during the war wanting to rebuild the whole place in a relatively cheap, quick and egalitarian Modernist style.

But to start with an almost intact city and demolish it themselves - and then replace it with either some awful monstrosities, or plain old, nothing - is just criminal.

[andrewv.]

imagine surviving the Nazis only to watch your city get blown up for like no reason holy shit

[AsbestosMuffins]

its like if you loaded somebody else's City's Skylines save and didn't like what they did.

[lucareato]

Same thing in Bratislava. Part of the old town (including a Sinagogue) was destroyed to build a highway just below the castle, dividing the city centre in half.

[pigeoncubes]

"destruction of historic buildings on this scale outside the US" reminds me of when i went looking for a building of historic importance in my city (in the US) that was built in the 1890s only to realise that not only was the street it was on completely being wiped off the map, the building site itself now lies under a highway, and there are current political actors trying to destroy more of that area to widen the highway instead of expand the train into that area. i think the closest train station is about a 25 minute bus ride away, despite being about a mile out of downtown, and the area is effectively ghettoised by just building three separate mega highways around it. oh, and the new building that was built to replace the original building i was looking for is also demolished, under super luxury apartments. hate it here

[HeckaLives]

Yikes. Those old buildings looked really good too. Perfectly usable too. If you're going to build a city from scratch, then build one from scratch. Or do what Nowa Huta in Poland did. Build a new district, entirely from nothing on the edge of the city.

[MrStabby]

My city demolished its medieval quarter in the 60s and replaced it with a grey box of a shopping mall. Which only lasted 30 years before being replaced

[viacheslavzemlianski]

After moving to Czechia from Belarus, I must speak in its defense. Czechs did an astonishing job preserving architecture compared to ex-USSR. Just look at Kaliningrad.

[dmark]

I'm always impressed how city-planner types heap praise on Japanese cities (usually for the transport system) but never mention how hard it is to find even one building more than 60 years old. Even in Kyoto, the only truly old buildings are preserved national treasures. However, this is nothing new; it's basically how the system has always worked.

[jcgabriel]

Reminds me of the Palace of the Parliament of Bucharest...

They demolished an old city centre to construct a building so vast, that, up to this day, despite housing several government institutions, most of the palace remained unused and even incomplete.

[markopaabel]

Finally someone with an European point of view on things. Fresh air!

[WhiteNight]

The city of Most, near Ústí nad Labem, has been blown up and moved a few kilometers away, so the communists had better access to a coal mine. They even moved the old church on rails lmao

[clutchyfinger]

Disgusting. Here in America, we only demolish historical buildings to make room for Amazon Facilities.

[metodiusm]

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen destruction of historical buildings on this scale outside the US” then you didn't see what Ceausescu has done to Bucharest, Ploiesti and Barlad...

[FilFee]

My city had a few empty blocks available. Guess what is being built there...
That's right...
*A L I D L*

Edit: The Lidl is now done and I love those pastries.