More than a quarter of the population lives in apartment buildings, the largest housing estate is Jižní Město

Prague – Panel buildings still form a natural part of Czech cities, and despite all the changes after 1989, more than a quarter of the population of the Czech Republic lives in them. Panel construction provided a relatively quick solution to the housing crisis in socialist Czechoslovakia, albeit at the cost of often low-quality buildings and a resignation to any urban planning solutions, especially in recent decades. The largest panel housing estate in Prague and the whole Czech Republic is often referred to as Jižní Město, where nearly 80,000 people live according to the Czech Statistical Office. The panel buildings in the cadasters of Chodov and Háje began construction in 1971, and on June 18, 1976, the first residents of the estate received decrees on today's Hviezdoslavova Street.

The first attempts with panel buildings on Czech territory date back to the years of World War II and are associated with the Baťa company, which in 1940 experimented with prefabricated houses made from large concrete blocks poured directly on the construction site. During the war, it built several such experimental duplexes. After the nationalization of the company, the development workshop gradually moved to the Institute of Prefabricated Buildings in Prague. However, the first house made of solid wall panels was erected in Zlín (then Gottwaldov) in 1953 in just four months according to the design of architects Hynek Adamc and Bohumír Kula, and it was designated G40 (Gottwaldov 40 apartments). That same year, the construction of panel buildings also began in other cities of Czechoslovakia, including Prague.

The first Prague panel building, into which tenants began moving in July 1955, was built in the middle of family houses in Old Ďáblice. The reinforced concrete skeleton was expensive, and there was a lack of capacity and technology for mass production; the skeletons and panels were produced directly on the construction site. They were replaced by types G40 and others, which already utilized structures made of prefabricated panels. In Prague, the first larger estate of these buildings was constructed in Pankrác Na Zelené lišce between 1954 and 1955.

Suitable areas for the construction of a larger number of large apartment buildings in Prague began to be sought by Czechoslovak authorities due to the housing crisis as early as the mid-1960s. Attention was focused on the mostly vacant cadastres of Chodov and Háje, which were still located outside the borders of the capital city. The area had good prerequisites for easy supply of electricity, natural gas, and water. At that time, the construction of a water supply system from Želivka was being prepared, and the route of the planned highway also crossed it. The land-use plan for Jižní Město, approved in 1968, was developed by the authorial collective of Jan Krásný, Jiří Lasovský, and Miroslav Řihošek. Construction began in the early 1970s.

After the handing over of the first decrees, the cadastres of Háje and Chodov quickly filled with gray multi-story panel new buildings, alongside which family houses also grew. Gradually, facilities such as schools, kindergartens, shops, health centers, and garages were erected here. In 1980, the extension of Metro Line C from Kačerov to Háje (then Kosmonautů) contributed to the transport accessibility of Jižní Město.

The construction of Jižní Město and the lives of its first inhabitants were depicted in the expressive tragicomedy Panelstory from 1979 by Věra Chytilová.

Panel buildings were initially decorated with various details, house signs, arcade entrances, and mosaics. Such buildings were erected not only in Zlín and Prague but also in Ostrov in Karlovy Vary. However, these details quickly disappeared with the mass construction. Panel buildings also flooded the historical centers of some cities, with the town of Benešov in Central Bohemia being a particularly discouraging example. Another case was Most, where the historic center had to make way for coal mining and a whole panel city was created in its place.

By 1990, approximately 62,500 panel buildings had been constructed in the territory of today’s Czech Republic. More than half of them were built in the 1970s; between 1971 and 1980 alone, about 33,000 panel buildings were constructed. There are nearly 1.2 million apartments in panel buildings, in which approximately 28 percent of Czech households live according to sociological surveys from 2023 and 2024. In apartment buildings outside panel estates, 26 percent of households live, and in family houses, 46 percent of households live. The highest percentage of households living in panel buildings is in the Ústí Region (44 percent), in Prague (43 percent), and in the Moravian-Silesian Region (41 percent), while the lowest is in the Vysočina Region (12 percent).

From a general perspective, estates regarding the education level and socioeconomic status of their inhabitants do not differ much from the average (for example, 15 percent of residents of estates have a university education, while this figure is one percentage point higher for the entire population). The average age is reduced by the fact that apartments in panel buildings are mostly cheaper than those in brick apartment buildings or new constructions (which applies to both purchase and rent), and thus they often serve as starter housing for young families. Over the past three decades, most panel buildings have undergone renovations, including insulation; estates offer accessible civic amenities.

Some estates, however, have gradually turned into ghettos, with the two most well-known cases concerning northwestern Bohemia. The Mostá Chanov and Litvínov Janov, located away from the centers of both cities, have become socially excluded areas with all the negatives that accompany such conditions. Some panel buildings in these estates were so devastated that the city councils had them demolished, affecting a total of about a dozen Janov and Chanov panel buildings. Otherwise, however, only a few panel structures were demolished after 1989, for instance, in 2011 in Havlíčkův Brod, where a four-story building obstructed the view from the historic Havlíčkov Square.