Before the war, many of our capital’s city neighbourhoods today, such as Gocławek or Młociny, were also suburban summer resorts. As the city grew and public transport developed, many of yesterday’s wilegiaturas were transformed into year-round satellite housing estates, termed – often with a fair amount of exaggeration – a ‘garden city’. The brochure Osiedla i letniska w okolicach m.st Warszawy (Neighbourhoods and Resorts on the Outskirts of Warsaw), published in 1931 by the monthly magazine Dom-Osiedle-Mieszkanie (House-Neighbourhood-Flat), warned against the interwar forefathers of today’s pathological developers:
A garden city – how many times have settlements been created under this attractive name, which bring to it utter shame, having nothing in common with either a city or a garden. A cluster of houses and cottages scattered among fields in a disorderly fashion which, thanks to the practice of subdivision, were turned into wasteland, devoid of conveniences, sanitary facilities, often even roads – this is what people today call a garden city on the outskirts of Warsaw.
It starts with a more or less capable geometrician drawing up a plan to divide the area into plots of land, cut in such a way as to make as many plots of land for sale as possible; then advertising in newspapers, posters wherever possible and a sign saying ‘garden city’ in the midst of a barren field.
The advertisements envisage transport every dozen minutes from the centre of the capital, the speed of the envisaged transport is reminiscent of the fastest metropolises in the world, the settlement is soon to become a centre of culture…
Another article from this publication warned of yet further unfair practices:
Only when the date of the lease agreement commences do the sorrows of the buyer begin. […] It turns out that the subdivision plans are neither approved by the relevant authorities nor lawful. The property is burdened by various mortgages and easements. Unfortunately, the entrepreneur of the lot has vanished, and it is unclear whom to take to court to recoup losses.
It is little consolation, then – in the midst of complaints about ‘price tags from hell’, new housing estates advertised as ‘green nooks’ while built in a bare and remote field without the provision of any infrastructure or even lacking a scrap of shade on the urban arteries – that we may consider ourselves to be unwilling participants in a multi-generational relay of grift.
Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski
Sources:
Kita, Jarosław. ‘Wilegiatury: moda na dziewiętnastowieczny “urlop”’. In Moda i styl życie. Edited by Jarosław Kita and Maria Korybut-Marciniak. Łódź, 2017.
Łupienko, Aleksander. ‘Miejskie parki publiczne zaboru rosyjskiego i austriackiego jako przestrzenie publiczne w drugiej połowie XIX wieku’. In Przestrzeń publiczna w miastach ziem polskich w “długim” XIX wieku, vol. 2 of Architektura w mieście, architektura dla miasta. Edited by Aleksander Łupienko and Agnieszka Zabłocka-Kos. Warsaw, 2019.
Olkuśnik, Marek. Wyjechać z miasta… Mieszkańcy Warszawy wobec podróży, turystyki i wypoczynku na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. Warsaw, 2015.
Szurek, Agnieszka. ‘Obraz podwarszawskich letnisk w prasie dwudziestolecia międzywojennego’. Kultura Popularna 47, no. 1 (2016).
