This project focuses on the ecology of mining towns in Central Europe and aims to determine how the natural environment, society and urban space shaped each other. To answer this, it is necessary to analyse elements of urban ecosystems in mining towns, incorporating natural environment, mining technology, social organization, and the urban fabric alongside human perceptions of these towns and nature. All these elements can be studied through the urban ecology approach which connects natural environment and human material culture aspects, including symbolic culture. In this context, the main questions of Urban ROOTS – agency and perception – are the key issues. To better understand the urban ecology, it is necessary to establish who had agency in shaping a mining district: the town (independent commune), groups of inhabitants, single people or external factors? Actions performed by these agents influenced the natural and built environment. This leads to questions about how people perceived these changes in their surroundings.

Castle in Kutna Hora (photo: P. Cembrzyński).

Traces of a medieval mining landscape in Bohemia (photo: P. Cembrzyński).

--------------------------------------
Project by Paweł Cembrzyński pcembrzynski@roots.uni-kiel.de