Folia Geographica 10. sējums - Latvijas Universitāte

DEVELOPMENT OF PLACES AND REGIONSeconomic development between 1870 and the beginning of World War I and on the destructiveeffects resulting from World War II.An enormous economic prosperity had developed in the thirty years before as well as thefifteen years after the turn of the 19 th century in Riga, which was essentially fostered by Germanand Russian merchants and industrialists. This period is architecturally represented by the factthat not only in large part were the medieval buildings in the Old Town replaced by imposingmulti-story habitats and businesses, but also by the fact that the way was cleared to establish amuch more architecturally impressive centre for the city – with broad right-angled streets builtin direct spatial connection to the newly designed recreation parks. The owners were for themost part members of the upper middle and upper classes, and the apartments and firms weremostly established as lucrative properties for lease. The current world-wide reputation of Rigaas a metropolis of Art Nouveau architecture was founded at that time. The newly formedboulevards leading around the Old Town and the routes running axially in a northeast directionin the new City Centre were at that time already equipped with modern retail trade outlets on theground floors, with appropriately wide shop windows.Unfortunately, the old part of the city was not spared by the destruction of World War II.The quarter around the City Hall Square (Rātslaukums) was gutted by flames in the Old Townof Riga (see Figure 3). A substantial problem concerning the quarter destroyed in the war arisesout of the fact that it was restructured afterwards with architecturally inappropriate buildings(e.g., the Technical University), changing its function drastically. A very lively area of the citybefore the war, shaped by trade and handicraft, became a small public-oriented administrativecentre. St Peter’s (Pēterbaznīca) had already been reconstructed during Soviet times and servestoday as a concert hall as well as a museum. The reestablishment of the House of Black Heads(Melngalvju nams), which was blown up by the Red Army shortly after the end of the WorldWar II, was started in 1995 and became a major fixture in the 800-Year Anniversary of Riga inthe year 2001. An old city hall on the City Hall Square will also be rehabilitated in the form of ahistorical model, but this reconstruction will not bring back the importance of this area in termsof the retail trade that it had before World War II.It can thus be noted that today the structure and function of the existing buildings andtheir possible use for retail trade in the traditional shopping streets of the Old Town of Rigaseems to indicate rather poor prospects due to inadequate consecutive use. The only street thatwas able to regain some importance was Audēju iela, but many streets in the Old Town arecharacterised by the constantly growing number of pubs, bars and restaurants located there. Theconditions in the main traffic axes in the centre of Riga (Brīvības, Tērbatas, K. Barona andMarijas/A. Čaka and the connecting side streets, e.g., Elizabetes and Matīsa) are extremelygood. Perhaps the number of outlets is even a bit too high there for the still quite low averageincome and purchasing power of the inhabitants of the city. One indicator is the high rate offluctuation in the use of these business premises, although the general accessibility to most ofthe locations in the City Centre is very good.A second, likewise very important influencing spatial factor, which is determining thechange of the retail trade structures in the city to a considerable degree, is the competition withother retail trade locations inside and outside the city. The doctrine of Soviet urbanarchitecture (following the standardised planning ideology of socialism) neglected not only thehistorical bourgeois centre of the city between 1945 and 1990, but formed new, highlymonotonous satellite cities in the suburbs. The large housing areas (in the west and the east ofthe city), constructed by the slab method, exist in all cities of the former Eastern Bloc; they wereusually built as pure living and sleep settlements. At the same time (at least in theory) each ofthese settlement satellites should, depending on their total capacity and the number ofinhabitants, have received one or more central service and supply centres. Although they wereconceived as such during the town planning, for the most part no adequate sub-centres arosefrom them. In practice a striking situation of an under-supply of goods often plagued theinhabitants of those monotonous settlements. In addition to the search for non-food items,residents often had to travel into the central city in order to procure quality fresh foods in themarkets. Regarding the quantitative and qualitative equipment of the new ribbon developmentswith grocery shops and general stores, the situations failed locally and regionally in different85