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Andrew Cook
This article explores the influence of international financial capital on the production ofexclusionary housing markets and spatialities in the city of Prague, Czech Republic. Itfocuses on the regeneration of Karlín, a district of Prague increasingly defined by thepresence of luxury housing and high-specification office developments. Through acritical discussion of two private companies heavily implicated in the renewal of thedistrict, it is possible to examine the ways in which these actors are contributing to thisregeneration. I argue that the regeneration of the district is intimately bound up withprocesses of capitalist uneven development that couple networks of foreign investorswith local municipal authorities through an asymmetric set of power relations. Theserelations are heavily skewed in favour of the private sector, and the complexity of thelinkages between these actors makes meaningful regulation of foreign investmentextremely challenging. I also suggest that such practices should not be seen as atransitory position between state socialist planning mechanisms and mature ‘Western’practices of regeneration, but rather as explicitly post-socialist in nature, and only as apartial reading of a number of different post-socialisms, instead of being seen asrepresentative of a singular ‘post-socialist condition’.
