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OLD WORKERS ESTATES - THE ELEMENT OF THE UPPER SILESIAN CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN DANGER

A. Sulimowska

Abstract

The paper illustrates the role played by historic workersВ’ housing estates in the process of development of towns and cities of the Upper Silesian Agglomeration (Poland) and their current situation, as the most endangered element of the identity of the cultural landscape of this region. The paper provides the typology of spatial solutions of the housing estates, prepared on the basis of in situ studies. It demonstrates their distinctness from post-war block development of Upper Silesian landscape. The Upper Silesian Agglomeration was shaped as a result of intense development of the coal-mines and metallurgy at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. It lead to an amorphous urban structure, the most characteristic feature of which is interspersion of industrial and residential areas with post-industrial waste. In the ocean of this chaotic development there are, however, quite unique places - old workers estates. Constructed simultaneously with the development of industry since mid-19th century, they testify to the rich culture and tradition of the region of Upper Silesia. Today, in the period of restructuring of the Upper Silesian industry and the fall of their mother plants, they have lost the rational grounds of their existence, and they are in danger of disappearing from Silesian cultural landscape.

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