Adaptable Nowa Huta

Abstract

The research in this master graduation focuses on Nowa Huta, a neighborhood located in the Krakow Metropolitan Area (Poland). Nowa Huta was designed and build as a socialist ideal city in the socialist era, complete with its own steel plant where the majority of the inhabitants worked. The Lenin steel factory provided work, but it also financed social services in the town. The mono-product economy resulted in a working class society and was a political counterweight to Krakow, the intellectual city of the bourgeoise. Nowa Huta is incorporated in Krakow and is now a neglected neighborhood in a historic and vibrant city , attracting many foreign investors and tourists. The collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 was not only a shift of the political regime, it was also the starting point of globalization in Poland. The steel plant got exposed to the international market and the production of steel shifted partially to other countries such as China. The steel plant and the Nowa Hutians suffered not only financially but also socially from this. The mono product economy, once so powerful, turned out to be vulnerable.
Nowadays, the inhabitants of Nowa Huta still suffer from socioeconomic problems relating to the image of the city, the deindustrialization and the urban neglect. This also resulted in high levels of socio-spatial segregation and social inequality within the region. Current trends do not seem to solve these problems, in fact, these trends only enlarge the segregation and inequality. Without interventions and redevelopment, the once so promoted neighborhood Nowa Huta will soon suffer from intergenerational segregation and inequality. This also negatively affects the metropolitan area as a whole. The overall aim for this research is informing powerful governmental stakeholders in Krakow about the problems
involving Nowa Huta and giving them a possible strategy for regenerating and revitalizing the neighborhood. This research tries to discover and describe potentials for design interventions by utilizing local stakeholders. This research does not generate a blueprint masterplan, but instead it generates handles for a revitalization strategy and process.