Making the Ghetto at Luník IX, Slovakia: People, Landfill, and the Myth of the Urban Green Space

The prevailing public perception of Lunik IX, a Roma district in the Slovak city of Kosice, is that it represents the story of an originally green urban space, one of the best for healthy living given its fresh air and proximity to the forest, that was destroyed by naive decision-makers and irresponsible Roma. This article, based on a combination of qualitative sociological and historical research, questions this narrative and deems it a myth. The district’s proximity to a landfill and the consequent environmental effects of this played a decisive role in its ghettoisation, yet these factors have never been systematically analysed and discussed. Although Lunik IX was not officially and originally designed as a ghetto, it became one as a result of structural, social, and environmental factors. Utilising the conceptual and theoretical framework of environmental justice, the article focuses on the spatial distribution of the adverse environmental effects in relation to social and ethnic factors. The case of Lunik IX, with its roots in the period of a centrally planned economy, provides a unique opportunity to make a comparative study of the social processes from a historical perspective. It allows us to analyse the mechanism of decision-making in an avowedly non-capitalist society, where in reality we see many similarities in how income inequality between richer and poorer neighbourhoods, together with ethnic/racial factors, has shaped the city.