Units of Military Fortification Complex as Phenomenon Elements of the Czech Borderlands Landscape

Jiří Kupka, Adéla Brázdová and Jana Vodová
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Jiří Kupka: Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Mining and Geology, VSB–Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 2172/15, 708 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic
Adéla Brázdová: Department of Building Materials and Diagnostics of Structures, Faculty of Civil Engineering, VSB–Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 2172/15, 708 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic
Jana Vodová: Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Mining and Geology, VSB–Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 2172/15, 708 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-28

Abstract: This paper is focused on selected units of casemates with enhanced fortification in the military fortification complex of the Czech borderlands landscape as specific forms of brownfields. They represent a functional system that interacts with surrounding nature, landscape character, and human society. Four approaches were chosen to study the function and potential of selected individual abandoned casemates with enhanced fortification, where each of them corresponds to one of the four landscape layers: genius loci, socio-economic sphere, functional relationship (between human and the landscape), and natural conditions. There is a corresponding research method for each of the landscape layers (guided interview with respondents, data analysis on abandoned casemates with enhanced fortifications as brownfields, analysis of their landscape functions, and zoological survey of interior). The main results could show that abandoned casemates with enhanced fortifications can play important roles in all landscape layers: stories and genius loci, abandoned casemates with enhanced fortification as a special type of military brownfield but also as a semi-natural ecosystem, and the same time as a habitat for invertebrates. The analyses and surveys conducted clearly demonstrate that abandoned casemates with enhanced fortification as units of military fortification complex of the Czech borderlands landscape perform several hidden important functions in the landscape for which they cannot be viewed as brownfields. This hidden functional potential is most likely best described by the concept of hidden singularity, which offers itself for integration into basic approaches to brownfields.

Keywords: brownfields; military fortification brownfields; casemates with enhanced fortification; historical and fabricated stories; semi-natural ecosystem; hidden curriculum; butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera); land snails (Gastropoda); hidden singularity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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