Zlín


Zlín

(zlēn), city (1991 pop. 84,522), E Czech Republic, in Moravia, on the Dřevnice River. It is the center of the Czech shoe industry, which was founded in 1913 by Thomas Bata. Under the Bata family, the city grew into an almost self-sufficient factory community, influenced in its design by the garden citygarden city,
an ideal, self-contained community of predetermined area and population surrounded by a greenbelt. As formulated by Sir Ebenezer Howard, the garden city was intended to bring together the economic and cultural advantages of both city and country living, with land
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 movement. Branches of the Bata shoe company opened throughout the world. Nationalized after World War II and then privatized, the former Bata facilities are no longer associated with the Bata company. Shoemaking has decline in importance; tires and other rubber goods, machinery, and animated films are also produced. There are museums on shoemaking and a university. From 1949 to 1993 Zlín was called Gottwaldov in honor of Klement GottwaldGottwald, Klement
, 1896–1953, Czechoslovak Communist leader, b. Moravia. After World War I he helped found the Czechoslovak Communist party and served on the party's central committee from 1925.
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, Czechoslovakia's first Communist president.