Divided twin towns in the Visegrad countries and Germany

Abstract

The paper compares three divided twin towns at river borders: Komárno/Komárom (SK-HU), Cieszyn/ČeskýTěšín (PL-CZ), and Görlitz/Zgorzelec (DE-PL). Our fundamental question is: are twin towns separated urban entities in a close neighbourhood, or do they represent reunited townscapes and local societies? First of all, we discuss the essential concepts concerning borders, transborder regions, twin towns and divided twin towns, based on papers by David Newman (2006), Tamás Hardi (2001), Helga Schultz (2003), Jan Buursnik (1994) and Christoph Waack (2000). The second part of the paper focuses on the process of integration. It focuses on subjects which determine the everyday actions of urban society. Firstly, we present the facts which frame everyday contact between people: history and topography. We make the claim that the river, the breadth of bridges and patterns of urban structure determine the manner and frequency of people’s mobility. The natural topography of Komárno/Komárom makes social interaction between the two parts difficult. In the cases of other towns, it is less the river itself than the last hundred years of urban planning that creates disintegration in the townscapes. We also discuss language barriers, which are not separate from national identities. Ethnic relations and language barriers are the most important factors as to why two sides fail to integrate. The linguistic networks of national minorities (Hungarian in Komárno, Polish in Český Těšín or the new Polish minority in Görlitz) cannot operate effectively because of inter-ethnic stereotypes and spatial distances. Finally, we examine everyday interaction through a very simple but important research question: why people would visit the city on the other side of the river. The empirical results show that the interactions in twin towns are reduced mostly to non-personal actions: shopping or taking a walk. Summarising the results, we argue that divided twin towns are far from being integrated and “reunited” urban structures. From a sociological point of view, the borderlines and frontier zones of the present urban places more or less overlap the mental (ethnic and language) zones of their inhabitants, as well as the economic differences in both sections of the twin town. Key words border regions, culture heritage, minority studies, urban sociology, space and society, Central European studies