Post-military areas as space for business opportunities and innovation

Abstrakt

One of the characteristic features of the transformation processes taking place in the post-communist countries of Central Europe is the emergence of unused buildings and sites - so-called brownfields. These can be divided into several kinds, according to their original function. One of these is also the so-called military brownfield. Most of such areas were transferred, after the most necessary clean-up, to municipalities, which approached and still approach their further utilization highly individually, in connection with the character of the site as well as that of the municipality itself. Equally individual is the respective successfulness or unsuccessfulness of the revitalization of post-military areas as measured by differing indicators. The functions which revitalized former military areas have acquired are varied. One of the most common is the production function (e.g. industrial zones), residential function (housing zones), production-residential (a mix of production and housing) and production-servicing (a mix of production and services). The following contribution will first analyze demilitarization in the Czech Republic from the point of view of systemic changes in the Czech military doctrine; in the second part case studies are introduced, illustrating the transformational changes in selected settlements, caused by the loss of their military function.