Ways of Self-identification of Zlín Residents with the City Space

Abstract

The text primarily focuses on the exploration of different ways of self-identification of the inhabitants of the urban space of Zlín. The author chooses the case study method for this purpose. She understands the city as a constructed unit, which, however, has its own individual parts, particularities that can be separated from each other to a certain extent. Meanings are assigned to the city and its space by its inhabitants in manifest and latent ways. In this work, however, residents are not viewed as exclusively active actors who would (re)shape the space in which they live. Even the urban space itself is understood as formative and then in its self-reproductive role. Residents’ identities are conceptualised as fluid and heterogeneous. The aim of this work is to answer the question of whether there is a difference in the forms of self-identification depending on the generation in which the research partner is placed. Self-identification is conceptualised as an ongoing process dependent on both internal and external factors. Even in connection with such an understanding of self-identification, the space is necessarily marked as changeable since it is also influenced and de facto shaped by the people within it.