Public (Mass) Transport – A 19th–21st-Century Phenomenon

The international conference Public (Mass) Transport – A 19th–21st-Century Phenomenon, organised by the Prague City Archives in cooperation with the Prague Public Transit Company, the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the History Department of the Faculty of Arts at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, the National Archives (Prague) and the National Technical Museum (Prague), will take place on 7 and 8 October 2025 at the City Mayor's Residence (Mariánské náměstí 1, Praha 1).

Programme

The year 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of horse-drawn railway in Prague (23/9/1875) as well as the 100th anniversary of Prague public motor bus transport (21/6/1925). These upcoming anniversaries merit all the more attention since the topic of urban transport has been often sidelined in both the traditional historiography and urban history, despite its considerable importance for the development of larger modern cities. As such, the conference provides a link between the essentially isolated treatment of the history and technology of public transport and the broader historical context. After all, the creation of urban transport networks lies at the intersection of several historical disciplines and specialisations (e.g. administrative, economic and social history, sociology, history of science and technology, industrialisation, energy, urban planning, architecture, régime propaganda, art, etc.). The conference aims to take a closer look at public transport in Prague, in the Czech lands and Central Europe from the 19th to the 21st century as a continuation of the earlier ‘horse-drawn carriage’ era in a comparative and multidisciplinary dimension, so as to highlight both its universal constants (still evident in the 21st century) and its historical singularity in individual cities.