Joanna Danuta Pierchala

Transforming Bytom: Reconquering the Post-industrial City Joanna Danuta Pierchala

The research project is a closer look into the complex phenomena of developing urban growth and decline in the Upper Silesia region, which is changing from the industrial to the post-industrial area. The main issue is, as for an urban designer, to develop and test new ways of action in transforming territories, when working on a site-specific case: peripheral city of Bytom. The binding and framing method for such an experiment is landscape urbanism. In the wider perspective the discussion of the tendencies and the directions of the development in the Upper Silesia are addressed. The project outcome is also seen as the polemic and contribution to the overall debate on the shrinking cities phenomena and shrinking tendencies in the Upper Silesia. The book is addressed to all urban and landscape designers, who approach the postindustrial territories and want to utilize concepts of landscape urbanism to re-conquer these voids into the urban structure.