Event Cities. Editorial ERA21 #02/2025

Lenka Štěpánková

We tend to think that the cities we live in are mostly the result of systematic planning and design by architects and urbanists—and that this is basically how cities come to be. But that’s not the whole truth. In fact, there are many other forces that shape cities in significant ways: everyday life, people’s interactions, ordinary, day-to-day events. And sometimes, exceptional events leave extraordinary traces on the city’s material form.

In some cases, a single event can have such a profound influence that it changes the city—and the lives of its inhabitants— for decades to come. I first realized this while discovering the history of the Brno Exhibition Grounds, and later I came across many similar examples from both past and present in other cities. It’s fascinating to realize how much our everyday lives are still affected by events that happened decades—or even centuries— ago. And of course, events don’t always happen by chance. They’re often carefully planned and deliberately organized. It follows, then, that the impacts of the events we organize today will, in many cases, still be felt by future generations—people who will relate back to our current actions and priorities.

With this in mind, both the study of events and their impacts on cities, and the planning of events themselves, emerge as disciplines grounded in a sense of responsibility toward the future. They inevitably lead us to a number of important questions: What kinds of events can we organize in cities? Can we use them deliberately to shape the city—and how? Are international examples fully transferable to our own context? Do we want to find our own Czech approach—and are we ready to do so? Who is really the main driver of urban change through events? Is it public authorities? The general public? Professional communities and experts? And when we talk about cities, do we really think of them as communities of people—or do we unconsciously limit our definition to the residential environment alone?