Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, tried like other larger cities to address its housing needs in the 1960s and 1970s by constructing a new district outside the city center. The Petrzalka district was built in only a few years where nothing had stood previously, on the right bank of the Danube. This housing development of prefabricate, high-rise apartments was conceived as a model of a modern socialist city, but from the outset, the development proved unable to fulfil the expectations placed in it. The author of this essay analyses the city planning decisions that surrounded the creation fo Petrzalka, the relationship this new part of the city has had to the older urban core of Bratislava, and the changes that have occurred during the last decade and under new political conditions.
