Abstract
On the basis of ethnographic research into the environment of Prague's urban development agendas, I will try to demonstrate that the progressive approach represents a tricky domain which paradoxically raises awareness of the limits of contemporary urbanism and participatory planning. Un-black boxing (Graham 2001), which (0) remind us that current urban paradigms and practices were not and are not neutral or inert (Lefebvre 1991).
At the same time, these black boxes (1) reveal the existence of alternative expert views on urbanism, leading to situations where (2) these competing conceptions undermine the willingness of city representatives to involve the public and to assign inductively conceived ideas of urban environment research. (3) Parallel to these phenomena, absolutely fundamental actors of urban development remain black-boxed - developers and investors. The situation thus freely corresponds Stein's effect of "capitalist-democracy contradiction" (Stein 2018), a sitation in which the public, politicians even scientists fail to disrupt the hegemony of the so-called "vested interests" of owners and investors ( Slater 2021).