Where in the city can you find nature? And not just the kind that brazenly invades every space, but also the rare and even protected kind? And why are there more protected areas in Prague than in protected landscape areas far outside the city? Is nature and peaceful recreation in the city a luxury for which there simply isn’t room, or is it more complicated than that? What kind of city do we actually want, and what kinds of open spaces does it offer for our relaxation, as well as for animals and plants? Are the city and nature really such stark opposites as we think?

Let’s take a look at the city from a different perspective. Let’s set aside ingrained stereotypes and exercise our urban imagination together, developing realistic visions of a city in an attainable future where everything can be a little different.

As a social anthropologist and ecologist, Radan Haluzík focuses on the study of the social life of things, architecture, and the inner peripheries of cities, as well as contemporary armed conflicts. He is interested in general questions regarding the relationship between politics and aesthetics. He drew on his many years of field research on conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and the Caucasus in the book Why Do Men Go to War (2018). At the Center for Theoretical Studies of Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, he led a team focusing on empty spaces and the new wilderness of our cities, which resulted in the book The City Inside Out: Vague Terrain, Inner Peripheries, and Places Between Places (2020). His book Turbo-Countryside: Full Landscapes and Empty Houses (Not Only) in the Balkans, which explores the crisis of the global countryside and the search for its new architectural and urban form, was recently published. He works at the Center for Theoretical Studies at Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, and at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Venue: Tyrš House – TYRŠ the human lab