The new town center of Velenje, early 1960s (Velenje Museum)
Socialist towns in Yugoslavia: Ana Kladnik discusses with Andreas Guidi the case of Velenje in Slovenia
After 1945, Yugoslavia aimed at fostering its industrial infrastructure by bringing factories closer to the sites where natural resources were abundant. The “new town” of Velenje in Slovenia was planned in this context in order to provide good housing for the coal miners previously living in surrounding villages.
In this episode, Andreas Guidi discusses with Ana Kladnik (Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam) the impact of this urban experiment in the socialization of its inhabitants, the decision making process in its planning, mobilization in form of voluntary work, and the exposure of an urban model to foreign visitors. All these topics are examined in a comparative perspective, focused on another “new town”, Havířov in nowadays Czech Republic, but expanding to a transnational framework beyond the socialist bloc.
This is an excerpt of a longer episode produce within the series The SouthEast passage. The entire podcast in available for download here .
The Southeast Passage is a podcast about the history and the society of the Balkans and beyond. Researchers from various countries present their ongoing projects and discuss about the relevance of their topics inside and outside academia.
