Jana Šiftová Spilková

Charles University in Prague | CUNI · Department of Social Geography and Regional Development

This paper aims to fill the gap in literature concerning community gardens in post-communist countries by focusing on the situation in Prague, Czechia. It introduces Prague′s newly emerged community gardens and presents the results of a first representative survey of these gardens. Information was gathered about eleven of the sixteen larger communi...

Abstrakt: Geografie jídla zkoumající potraviny jako geografický i společenský fenomén nabízí pro výuku zeměpisu řadu možností, jak jídlo využít jako didaktický prostředek. Např. názvy potravinářských produktů lze využít k procvičování orientace na mapě i k prohloubení znalostí reálií konkrétních regionů. Pochopení rizik potravinových cest a výhod l...

The aims of this study are to provide momentum to research on homophobic prejudice in Czechia and to identify the significant factors influencing or mediating homophobic attitudes in Czech youth. The paper first contextualizes homophobia within the context of the Central and Eastern European countries and then refers to the role of schools and educ...

Child overweight and obesity represent a serious health problem worldwide. The Czech Republic now ranks the fourth most obese country in Europe and obesity and overweight is becoming more and more frequent in children and teenagers. This pilot study estimates the prevalence of obesity and overweight among Czech teenagers aged 14–15 years in terms o...

Prague, the capital of Czechia, has a long history of allotment gardening, however, since 1989 allotment gardens are diminishing at a considerable rate. Allotments are being transformed into recreation sites, permanent residences, or used for the construction of residential projects, transportation infrastructure or commercial facilities. Often, th...

The health risk behaviour (HRB) of teenagers, especially substance abuse, is one of the most serious problems of today’s public health arena. The aim of this paper is to assess the extent of the multiple health-risk behaviours within the teenage population and to analyse the role of the individual and family structure as well as educational and geo...

This paper aims to reveal the relations of risk behavior and its contextual factors, including the perception of risks that substance use may bring. Statistical analysis is based on the data from the European School Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) [200714. ESPAD. 2007. The 2007 ESPAD Report. Stockholm: The Swedish Council for Information...

A youths’ neighborhood can play an important role in their physical, health, and emotional development. The prevalence of health risk behavior (HRB) in Czech youth such as smoking, drug and alcohol use is the highest in Europe. To analyze differences in HRB in youth residents within different types of Prague’s neighborhoods in relation to the perce...

The study examines the relationship of family, school and geographic factors in relation to the prevalence of different health risk behaviours among Czech adolescents (aged 15-16 years) based on cross-sectional study design. Risk behaviours such as cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking and marijuana use among adolescents have often been shown to co-o...

The shift toward post-productivist agricultural production in developed countries in recent decades has brought a growing focus on local sustainability and quality food production. This trend has been reflected in the development of a variety of alternative food networks and short food supply chain initiatives. In Czechia, the local and good-qualit...

In Central and Eastern Europe (CE), alcohol consumption, smoking, and substance use have become a substantial problem mainly among young people as well as changes of their leisure time occupations. The paper uses the binary logistic regression to measure the association between a certain type of leisure occupations and health-risk behaviors to show...

The paper aims to critically evaluate the potential of alternative food networks (AFNs), mainly the farmers' markets (FMs) in Czechia (or post-communist countries with similar experience and development). First, it describes geographical and historical context of AFN development in post-communist Czechia. After an overview of the current situation...

The paper discusses the ‘Regional Brand’ initiative as the regional quality certification with potential to build links with viable rural tourism products. This branding system is explained in the context of a multi-functional paradigm in the development of viable rural economies. A questionnaire survey of certified producers conducted for the firs...

The quality of life may be threatened by various health risk factors, among those most serious is the risk behavior and substance use. In the Czech Republic, the transition period brought changes in the life style and behaviour, including higher alcohol consumption, drug use, and cigarette smoking which become a substantial problem among young peop...

The democratization of the society and economic freedom was one of the most important steps for the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, it had some negative consequences. The objective of the paper is to report the development of risk behaviour during the transformational period, based on data from the ESPAD study. We focus mainly on the issue of availab...

Background: In Czechia and other post-communist countries alcohol consumption, tobacco use and use of illicit drugs are very frequent among adolescent. This means a serious situation which is not changing, the public education campaigns are not effective and there is also weak law enforcement within the Czech Republic. Methods: Aim of this pres...

Retail transformation and changes in shopping styles are an inseparable part of the transition processes in the post-communist countries. Shortly after the revolution, multinational retail companies markedly reshaped consumption landscapes and Czechs quickly adopted “western” modes of shopping behavior represented in big shopping trips to out-of-ci...

Farmers’ markets are a relatively recent phenomenon in Prague, Czechia. The first of them was opened in the autumn of 2009, but the real boom started in the spring/summer of 2010. The survey introduced in this paper is concerned with the study of alternative food networks and farmers’ markets. It offers the results of methodological triangulation b...

During the 1990s, shopping habits and consumer behavior underwent many important changes in Czechia. Consumers started to prefer large retail outlets and shopping malls, and began to shop less frequently. Shopping has become not only an act of utilitarian economic exchange, but also a leisure activity. This article introduces the results of a pilot...

Geographies of children and youth are a surprisingly neglected research topic in the transforming (post-communist) countries, where many societal changes are taking place. This article introduces a research project that focused on teenagers and their leisure-time activities, concentrating especially on teenagers who spend the majority of their leis...

Smoking constitutes one of the main public health problems worldwide. In the Czech Republic, one of the post-communist countries undergoing societal transition, there was a significant decrease in smoking prevalence during 1985-1997, followed by certain stagnation in prevalence of smokers. The most serious problem is the smoking among young populat...

The transformational period and especially the second half of the 1990s meant a dynamic expansion of Czech retailing and its spatial structure. The uncoordinated construction of the recently emerging large-scale retail outlet has raised a question whether their construction should be regulated. Due to the non-existent regulation of retail developme...

The article develops general theoretical discussion on researches on second housing as well as concepts of the new regional, new cultural and behavioral geographies. The major focus is given on theoretical and methodological background of the process of formation of regional identity and identity of regions in the areas with considerable concentrat...

Czech Republic traditionally ranks among the countries with the highest alcohol, consumption. This paper examines both risk and protective factors for frequent of alcohol, consumption in the Czech population using multilevel analysis. Risk factors were measured at the, individual level and at the area level. The individual-level data were obtained...

The second half of the 1990s saw a dynamic development of Czech retailing and its spatial structure. Recent massive development of large-area commercial outlets in particular has revealed some problematic aspects and has also raised the question of whether their construction needs to be regulated. The role of local government in the decision proces...

It is suggested that limited access to appropriate care forces psychiatric patients towards forensic treatment or to the prison system. According to our data, the number of prisoners, the number of hospitalized psychiatric patients (from 1987 to 2007), the number of court ordered forensic treatments in the Czech Republic (from 1991 to 2007), and th...

This article examines changes in shopping behavior in two postcommunist countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, by replicating Bitgood and Dukes's study of pedestrian choice point behavior. It also extends the former study by applying the methodology to a different type of intersection and subjecting the results to a random resampling statistic...

The current emphasis on the research of natural hazards and risks has been widely recognized and possible mitigation of their effects is of crucial importance for the whole society. While many international activities concerning the risk management emerged during the last two decades and the international cooperation proved necessary in this field,...

The paper examines the role of a favourable milieu in the region and the notion of social capital, work ethics and mutual confidence. Results of an empirical survey conducted among the foreign entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic are presented in the paper. The survey revealed opinions of foreign investors on cooperation and communication with vario...

Foreign investment is of particularly importance in countries undergoing far-reaching economic transformation. Also the location of foreign investment throughout the country is very important for further regional development. Actual location decisions of investors are influenced by various factors, but it is rather obvious that behind these decisio...

Contact system is one of the basic conditions of successful functioning of each organization. The paper discusses the history of contact systems research with the heavy accent on the importance of the Swedish school and its most important studies. The paper then turns to presentation of the results of recent contact systems survey conducted among t...

The paper aims to grasp the character of spatial perceptions of foreign firms from some specific points of view in order to find out possible main factors influencing their location decisions in the Czech Republic. Particularly it tries to find out whether there are some significant differences in perception of Czech regions between foreign firms i...

So far, research on behaviour of foreign investors, their location decisions and contact systems and changing meaning of agglomeration advantages have been on the margin of both theoretical and empirical research in the Czech geography. This article is an introduction to these research problems that gain rising importance due to increasing foreign...

This article deals with the question of large-scale retail concepts and in particular with the phenomenon of shopping centres. First, the issues of location and management of large shopping centres are discussed and basic problematical aspects of shopping centres are indicated. The situation of shopping centres and hypermarkets and their developmen...