COP and the city - modernity and heritage
September 8 – October 31, 2017.
Curator: Katarzyna Zarzycka
Coordination: Lucyna Mizera, Wojciech Chudzik, Aneta Garanty
80 years ago, more than 90 cities and towns located in today’s provinces of Podkarpackie, Małopolskie, Świętokrzyskie, Lubelskie, Mazowieckie and Łódzkie were given a great historical opportunity for development. That chance was the construction of the Central Industrial District. And all of a sudden, somewhere in the spring of 1937, it seemed that some kind of miracle had occurred in all those Kozienice, Rzeszów, Niska, Końskie and Sandomierz towns (source: Józef Radzimiński Budujemy Polskę, Główna Księgarnia Wojskowa, Warsaw 1939, p. 160) – described the atmosphere accompanying the reaction to the government plan announced by Deputy Prime Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. CID stood for modernity, it was a hope for a better life, unfortunately squandered by the outbreak of World War II. For the “CID cities,” however, it still remains an important, and sometimes, as in the case of Stalowa Wola, a basic building block of local identity and an element of cultural heritage – both tangible and intangible.
The remnants of the CID are city buildings, residential and public buildings, factory edifices, basic components of urban infrastructure such as water and sewage systems, roads and green spaces. And also, and perhaps above all, a certain ethos, a spirit, an unfinished story, which today is interpreted and developed through various initiatives, with which the terms innovation, entrepreneurship, progress, invention, sustainable development, among others, are associated….
The exhibition “CID and the City – Modernity and Heritage” is intended by its title to encourage reflection on the dialogue between these two seemingly completely separate concepts and fields. Above all, however, it is intended to encourage the search for answers to the question, how does the construction of the CID relate to today’s world? What analogies and differences exist between what happened 80 years ago and is occurring today? This time we don’t want to talk about CID-related figures and facts. We invite you to wander through the area covered by its construction, but we will leave big industry on the side (or at least we won’t talk about it directly), we will also cross the period in which the CID was created. We will go back to the past, to the 1930s, to see how the CID cities then functioned and developed, a bit like tourists, observers, curious people tempted by press reports, eager to see with their own eyes how and where everything the public talks, reads and lives about is played out.
And since it’s good to have a guide on every journey, we’ll take someone with us to guide us. That someone will be… a woman (characteristic that we usually get to know the CID from the point of view of men!). Stanisława Kuszelewska-Rayska made an expedition to the CID in the summer of 1938. She was interested in what women usually pay attention to, which she described as the external framework of life. In short, it can be described as the quality of life of the residents. Apply today’s vitriol to her account, and today the term quality of life is combined with the concept of a “smart city.”
For years, in the rankings of the quality of life in Polish cities and smart city in the forefront appears Rzeszow, Kielce – COP cities also rank high. Other centers of the former district are implementing smart solutions in their area in the field of communications, security or energy management in buildings. I wonder what preceded these efforts? Do today’s modernity and that of a few decades ago present themselves quite differently? Can Stalowa Wola, for example, be described as a smart city of the interwar era, and in what respects?
