Martin Kontra

Martin Kontra is transforming public space from commercialized and fragmented to community-focused, environmentally friendly, and integrated. By creating a support network of community spaces, engaged citizens, and leadership, Martin inspires collective idea exchange and action.

Martin addresses increasing social fragmentation and poor quality of life that is the result of rapid urban development and unmet basic needs, such as unemployment and the lack of supportive government and municipal leadership. He has developed a vast network of community centers, known as Bajkazyl; unique open spaces that foster community growth, entrepreneurial collaboration, and an improved support system for citizens across Europe. Bajkazyl is only a tool, however, in the long-term process Martin empowers the individual as an active agent of change in cities across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). He brings members of communities together as a powerful voice to propose change in inner cities. Martin uses the force of a mobilized group to create good management of cities.

By creating a space for connections to be made between city-based entrepreneurs, such as honey producers, herbs planters, community-based artisans, or architects, Martin helps improve their entrepreneurial capacity to work together to sell and promote home- and hand-made products and services. He is proving that individual citizen creativity, resourcefulness, and informal social capital actually benefit a city’s urban development. Bajkazyl creates opportunity for collaboration between citizens in advanced stages of their entrepreneurial life with those still crafting action plans, which over time has proven to government leadership that supporting local creativity and initiative can actually support the city center, rather than drain its resources. In addition, he is disproving the myth that city centers are only for wealthy and powerful people and that ideas for change should be internalized, rather than shared within the community.

In addition to creating the actual space for citizen collaboration in city centers and redefining what the city center means to citizens, Martin has designed community activities that revitalize this space. Even though each city has its contextual challenges, Martin is proving that a method for transforming public space can be universal: It is important to create space for dialogue and exchange, and then connect authorities, professionals, decision makers and citizens in the process so that they can engage and participate in citizen ideas for change.

Modern theories define contemporary cities as both the fixed elements (i.e. infrastructure) and the variable elements (i.e. people moving constantly to meet one another and accomplish tasks). The shift toward contemporary cities that occurred in the West over the decades in the post-war era was put into hyper-speed in the former Soviet Union. After the fall of the Soviet Union, CEE cities entered a period of transition characterized by rapid urbanization, reorganization, and wide attempts to generate city income. Tourism was rapidly prioritized within transition cities, attracting companies with modern technologies and creating a unique juxtaposition of modern and historic, in terms of landscape, architecture, and culture. Although there are economic benefits to cities from this rapid urban development, it has also pushed citizens into the peripheries, compromised community development, and lessened citizens’ quality of life. In addition, socially-oriented initiatives and opportunities, such as community centers that are seen by government and municipal officials as contradictory to potential revenue generation from tourism or other commercial use, have been disregarded by government officials or pushed into city outskirts.

These circumstances lead to citizens’ loss of belonging and identity with their cities. In addition, the culture among citizens is becoming increasingly fragmented and too heavily focused on the individual versus the community. In post-communist countries where democracy is still fragile and citizens have grown to distrust politicians, citizens often withdraw from public life and focus solely on developing private affairs. In fact, there is a phenomenon known as “kitchen social capital”: Much of the discussion of personal challenges, concerns, or ideas takes place during the preparation and consumption of meals within the home, rather than in public or neighborhood settings. As a result, people focus on their individual initiatives and efforts to make incremental change.

Another negative repercussion of urban development is the lack of transparent management of city property and an exclusion of citizens in urban planning. Urban planning is currently in the hands of politicians and decision makers who favor business presence and automobile traffic, rather than support activities that improve a city’s environmental quality, diversity of landscape, or economic opportunities.

Despite the lack of initial social support and the disbelief from his peers that change is possible in urban Prague, Martin launched Bajkazyl in 2010. It took two years of struggle with local authorities to bring together various partners to create a space where fragmented groups of citizens can gather, share their social and economic ideas for change, and participate in improving the quality of life for themselves and others. In the first summer season, Bajkazyl brought together hundreds of people through bike repair workshops and alternative transportation activities. This physical space created the communication platform for public debates on city infrastructure, opportunities for other community activities, and the promotion of local services and products. In autumn 2010, Martin opened a second center and three more in 2012.

Central to Martin’s strategy is ensuring people see their own potential to change their communities and reclaim public space in city centers. He employs several mechanisms to carry out his strategy. Through cycling, environmental education, recycling, and empowering niche producers to work within the city, Bajkazyl provides a network for support and promotion for small-scale entrepreneurs with ideas for change. By bringing together their different activities under one roof he is decreasing their costs of market entry and more importantly, he excites and empowers people to launch their own ventures in other urban locations. Through cycling-focused initiatives, Martin believes that people can better manage work, school, social life, as well as discover new places and people while remaining environmentally friendly. He invites people to produce goods from used materials such as bags, clothes, purses from used tubes of bicycles, room lights made from old washing machine parts, and growing herbs in used cans. He is also inspiring those with ideas to sell commercial products. For example, honey producers now set up beehives in Prague’s historic city center gardens. Small-scale merchants sell fair trade coffee in the city center that is roasted locally but grown in Africa. In addition, Martin creates a space for publishers, freelance writers, and journalists to promote non-conventional lifestyles, do it yourself (DIY) concepts, and friendly urban architecture (using online and offline magazines CityBike, ERA 21, or 7th Generation).

These multiple strategies communicate an empowering message. All these activities create opportunities for those who would otherwise live on the expense of the state. By bringing together citizens with ideas that are already making a profit (like bike workshops, or jewelry made of recycling) and the ones that have potential to generate income (e.g. city honey producers, producers of clothing, independent music bands, publishers, filmmakers, or food producers retrieving old recipes) Martin proves that supporting the creativity and initiative of local people can bring monetary value and be a source for an alternative economy. In addition, he develops open offline markets for long-time producers of niche goods that together create a competitive force to serve local people living in the city centers as well as the broader community through the Internet.

The economic activities are accompanied with a number of community activities revitalizing city centers (e.g. “guerilla gardening”—greening of unused land in city centers) that through its simplicity attract neighbors who otherwise would not have a chance to meet, exchange their offerings, and engage in transforming the city. Each city has specific problems, but the method to transform public space is universal: It is important to offer an example and to connect authorities, professionals, decision makers and citizens and engage them in discussions to offer practical solutions. One recent example is the decision of the Prague city hall, under pressure from the public to change the system of space rental to one that is highly transparent. This space now publishes its tenders on the website and opens it to citizen organizations (COs) to rent the space. This idea is now appearing in other districts of Prague.

Martin is promoting his approach in other locations in the Czech Republic and beyond. Various citizen groups from other cities in Czech Republic (i.e. Brno, Pardubice, Ostrava, Hradec Králové, or Ústí nad Labem) that face similar challenges in their cities are reaching out to Martin. He is successfully employing his weekly magazines Respekt and CityBike to encourage these various citizen groups to engage with and ultimately influence local authorities to join this movement. With the publicity achieved through Respekt, CityBike, and physical community spaces, Martin has launched public discussion around the concept of urban development and has empowered citizens to engage in the planning process. Over the last six months Martin has participated in a number of TV debates with politicians and citywide decision makers, discussions with business entrepreneurs in clubs, and has held many more informal meetings with local community leaders.

Over the next year, Martin plans to strengthen the activities of the two existing centers and prepare the launch of new locations in Prague and the Czech Republic. Because he is concerned with employment issues of marginalized communities, he is actively engaging with citizen groups and organizations that offer economic opportunities to join the community space. Martin is creating an atmosphere of real change in urban centers by including the voice of disenfranchised people in the debates on urban development, strengthening the dialogue with local leaders and professionals from many disciplines to pressure authorities for transparency in management of city property, and city politics that will lead to action. Eventually, Martin will set up a sustainable network of community spaces to bring together fragmented citizen groups with a united voice.

Martin’s success has already raised attention outside of the Czech Republic, from CEE transition countries that share similar urban development trajectories, where local communities are being pushed out by growing business and corrupt authorities. Martin has met with the leaders of groups coming from Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Romania who welcomed his ideas of empowered and income-generating community spaces with great enthusiasm. Within the next two to four years, Martin will share and scale to other cities best practices on how to transform public space and communicate with business and political elites, and how to include individuals and groups in decision-making processes.

Martin was born in northern Czechoslovakia (current day Czech Republic) during an era of the communist decline. During his upbringing, he became fascinated with alternative music and art culture and its influence on cities of transition, such as Prague. Martin organized music festivals showcasing what historically was “prohibited” Western music, leading him to realize the power of mobilizing masses through communication and collaborative efforts. He has been inspired by the urban evolution of Western European cities, and their methods of solving issues of transportation, pollution, and accessibility, while creating city spaces for citizens to lead healthy and productive lives. When communism was slowly losing the battle for democratic changes, Martin was very much engaged with alternative music bands. His first transforming experience took place when he mobilized his colleagues to organize a music festival with alternative rock, punk, and other types of Western music, which was strictly prohibited during communism, like any other trends and ideas that were coming from the West. Despite the festival being interrupted by teachers, Martin realized that when one mobilizes others toward a common goal, it is possible to change existing structures and influence others.

In 1987 Martin wanted to study medicine, as he thought it important to help people, especially during communism. From his safe-fun-rebellious high school environment he was thrown into a setting with maltreated patients. He began to see how power relations (doctors over patients) were abusing basic human rights. Once communism had retreated, Martin felt the need to study a subject that provided more freedom. He focused on sociology. This study expanded his horizons and reminded him of his experiences as a young person mobilizing others through music.

After a degree in sociology, Martin joined a group from the opposition movement that was establishing a progressive, pro-democratic weekly magazine, Respekt. He wrote about the most unpopular, yet important, topics: Corruption among police, drugs, privatization of state properties and its negative impact on people’s lives, and the prevalence of unemployment. Using his position as editor, he published articles about the transformation of inner cities to mobilize other citizens to action. As a journalist, Martin was able to explore politics and business, to observe the powers of decision makers, while also experience change from the bottom-up. His efforts were not well received by the authorities in Prague. Martin was determined to reintroduce the community back into the city center—something people considered impossible—and based it on a grassroots movement.

In 2007 Martin moved with his wife and two children to Berlin. He became intrigued and excited with life in Berlin—local bazaars, community life in the streets, people talking freely, and less tension in the air. He also realized that this can be done without great resources, if allies who support change, exist. After returning to Prague, Martin did not want to be an activist engaged in random actions without lasting impact, and he began to work on Bajkazyl. Martin now perceives himself as mediator and one who connects government, decision makers and citizens to ensure that the ownership of the city is in the hands of the citizens and that public space is conducive for both work and leisure. He sees government as key to enabling this to exist.