Concrete fences in Czechia: how they change streets and neighbors

On the outskirts of towns and in villages, high concrete fences, really more like walls, increasingly replace wooden pickets and wire mesh. Their supporters cite the right to privacy. Critics, whom the author of the weekly newsletter Pod čarou writes about in Seznam Zprávy, say appearance is the smallest problem: in their view, such barriers damage shared space and relations between neighbors.

What is wrong with concrete fences

The drawbacks were recently listed on social media by Kristýna Drápalová, an art historian and public space specialist. According to her, solid fences “kill” public space and cut off contact with neighbors, turn a walk down picturesque streets into a trek through a dreary gray corridor, create barriers for small animals and needlessly heat up the surroundings. In many places the line between private and public space is blurred, and a concrete wall destroys this important zone. The proven compromise is also forgotten: an open front garden and a more enclosed yard behind the house.

“Fences you cannot see through create a poorer and duller public space,” says Drápalová, pointing to research on how the number of impressions along the way affects our perception of distance.

The owners’ arguments

In online discussions, a large share of Czechs think differently. The most common line is the “right to privacy.” People complain about “snooping,” the attention of neighbors, envy and gossip, and some simply do not want to greet passersby. Others say everyone may do whatever they like on their own plot, and that chatting with neighbors takes time away from work.

The newsletter author disagrees: private houses and gardens also shape public space, and its boundary is not defined by a fence. Municipalities can partly regulate the height and look of fences through zoning and regulatory plans. The Prague building rules, for example, limit the height of opaque fences, but, as the author writes, this limit can be circumvented in many cases. In his view, unwritten customs also play a role, along with the informal social control that is as inseparable from village life as greater anonymity is from life in the city.

Drápalová adds that people are entitled not to want contact, but a good life is impossible without relationships with others and belonging to a community.

An Eastern European phenomenon

According to the author, the boom in fences and gated housing complexes is typical of post-communist Eastern Europe: not only Czechia, but also Slovakia and Poland, where such complexes spread even more widely in the 1990s. Polish sociological studies show that a solid fence is seen as a status symbol and a sign of separation from lower social classes. Residents of such complexes praise their neighbors but are even less inclined to socialize with them.

In the West the picture is different. According to Drápalová, in the villages of many Austrian, Swiss and French municipalities there are no fences at all, or a traditional look is prescribed for the whole community. In the U.S., the author writes, most houses have only symbolic fences or none at all; the low white picket fence became the symbol of the suburban idyll of the 1950s. In some places the absence of high fences in front of houses is backed by local rules and informal norms. The backyard, meanwhile, can quite reasonably be fenced off more tightly.

What can be done

Drápalová advises taking local traditions into account: mountain villages usually have no fences, interwar villa districts typically have fences with a brick base and wooden slats, and villages have low fences made of boards or mesh. For those who insist on seclusion, she suggests alternatives to concrete: a hedge, a high wooden fence, or a stone base with wooden slats.

But, the author stresses, this does not solve the core problem: behind a pretty fence the same mentality remains. In his view, a person behind a wall ends up staring at that wall for years, which affects the psyche, and isolation makes people lonelier, more anxious and more susceptible to manipulation. He recalls that when preparing for natural disasters and crises, people are advised first of all to build good relations with their neighbors. A high opaque fence, he concludes, is the main symbol and amplifier of distrust and fear.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz