Pushing the envelope
The threat of sprawl looms as Praguers look to greener pastures
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New housing developments like this one in Prague 8-Dablice are pushing into areas that were fields and forests a few years ago.
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By
Margot Buff
For The Prague Post
(February 19, 2003)
Prague is growing, but its population is not.
The number of people living in the city dropped by almost 6,000 in 2000, with residents leaving Prague accounting for nearly a third of that number, according to the Regional Development Ministry.
At the same time, the number of new dwellings being built in Prague jumped last year by 50 percent. The central Bohemia region, which surrounds but does not include Prague, saw the highest share of new dwellings under construction in the Czech Republic.
The numbers point to the beginnings of urban sprawl. Many Praguers are taking advantage of low interest rates to buy homes outside the city center, and developers are stepping in, creating new housing developments and shopping and business centers to support the shift.
But with a stable population spreading out over a greater area, and with residents moving outside the city limits to new satellite communities, Prague is facing the symptoms of sprawl that plague major cities from Frankfurt to Rio de Janeiro.
Growing pains
One of sprawl's most obvious repercussions is the stress it creates on the environment. Booming development means that fields and forests are built over even as available urban space remains unused -- both in central industrial sites and in open spaces on the periphery. Low-density settlements and patchwork land use make public transport less viable, and suburbanites waste time and resources in long commutes. The city's spread requires the extension of roads, water and electricity at increased financial and environmental cost.
The social toll of urban sprawl can be high as well. As wealthier residents flee to the suburbs, people, money and activity drain out of the urban center. One architect and town planner, Ivan Plicka, points to the housing estates of Jizni Mesto in Prague 11 as an example; he warns that flight from the communist-era panelaks to suburbs like Pruhonice south of Prague is leaving the housing estate like a ghetto, desperately in need of money for urban renewal.
For the city's part, Deputy Mayor Jiri Paroubek says some of these housing estates are receiving attention to ward off urban decay. In Repy (Prague 6) and Jizni Mesto, he says, money from the district assemblies has been set aside for renewal efforts such as building reconstructions. "The revitalization will improve the quality of life there," Paroubek said. But with those plans stretching out over a seven- to 10-year period, they might not do much to stem the loss of residents and vitality.
The shift from the estates affects those who move as well as those who stay. Jana Mullerova, a spokeswoman for the environmental coalition SOS Praha, says home-buyers often don't know what they're giving up in leaving the city.
"People assume there will be social services in new developments," she said. "There aren't." Buyers all too often find themselves in neighborhoods without schools, shops or services and with no plans for parks or public spaces.
Officials and developers join architects and environmentalists in warning that Prague's growth must be carefully directed to avoid exacerbating existing problems. But representatives of different interests are naturally at odds on the best ways to change the trends. And all groups concerned are running up against the problems of effecting change amid a tangle of private interests, market forces and government regulations.
Master plan
The Strategic Plan for Prague, adopted by the Municipal Assembly in 2000, lays out a series of ambitious goals for the city's development. The document calls for accessible public transportation, a balance between development and conservation, and the eventual establishment of pleasant new district centers offering a range of job opportunities and services.
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Land being readied for new houses is an increasingly common sight.
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But another document, the master plan, details the planned use of all of Prague's territory over five-year periods. Although the plan also represents efforts to preserve green spaces and prevent urban decay, it is coming under criticism from all sides for failing to envision solutions to the problems of urban sprawl.
According to environmentalists, the plan is weak. In the first wave of revision of the current master plan, more than 100 changes were approved, and the Office of the Chief Architect is considering many more, according to SOS Praha. Those changes free up plots for uses that were not planned out as part of larger visions for the district and the city.
Representatives of SOS Praha say the city government cannot closely consider the impact of the hundreds of requested changes that come before it. Moreover, they say, officials are too easily swayed by private interests. The group emphasizes that the first wave of changes to the master plan led to the loss of 36 hectares (about 89 acres) of green space.
SOS Praha says that even when strictly observed, the plan does little to control sprawl. Planners earmark for development far more land than they anticipate will be used in a given time frame to avoid driving up demand and, therefore, land costs. The result, environmentalists say, is random development scattered over unused space -- exactly the type of sprawl that planners want to avoid.
SPREADING OUT
Increase in housing starts in 2002
• Czech Republic 10.5 percent
• Prague 53.4 percent
Breakdown of dwellings under construction in Czech Republic in 2001
• Family houses 48.7 percent
• Enlargement and reconstruction of family houses 23 percent
• Apartment buildings 15.4 percent
• Enlargement and reconstruction of apartment buildings 5.1 percent
• Dwellings created by reconstruction of nonresidential buildings 3.2 percent
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According to at least one developer, though, the plan is rigid rather than weak. Anthony Caine, head of the Acred Group and a former planning consultant, points out that the master plan for Prague is slated for revision every five years, but the needs of the city change much more rapidly than that. "The plan is out of sync with the public's de-mands," he said. By the time the next plan is overhauled, a different set of trends and demands will be on the horizon. Caine notes that in New York, for example, the city plan is constantly under revision, with a strong mechanism for public participation. But here, he says, the planning process fails to pay enough attention to public and private interests.
Not surprisingly, the city government is more optimistic about the master plan and the means for changing it. Paroubek says changes made twice each year are debated in Prague's 57 district assemblies, where citizens can present their opinions on proposals. And those hearings are an effective forum, Paroubek says, noting that in the Prague 6 neighborhood of Suchdol, residents have postponed indefinitely the planned construction of a highway.
Still other officials say the master plan is simply too easy to sidestep. Jan Kasl, Prague's former mayor and one designer of the strategic plan, says that companies seeking green space for housing and commercial developments need only go outside the city limits. In the many small municipalities bordering Prague, projects are easily approved by municipal authorities eager for local investment, and land is cheaper as well. Kasl says sprawling development outside Prague, not within the city's large borders, produces dispersed communities of car-dependent commuters. And, he says, there is little or no planning cooperation between Prague and its neighbors.
Greenbelt
In one anti-sprawl initiative during his term as mayor, Kasl launched an effort to establish a greenbelt around Prague over the next decade, linking a long stretch of existing green areas by restoring fields and forests in the spaces between them. The plan, conceived in cooperation with the Environment Ministry in 2001, stalled over the past year but has reached a final planning stage under the leadership of architect Plicka.
The greenbelt concept combats one symptom of sprawl, the loss of green spaces, by consolidating those areas and protecting them for recreational use. The plan would ensure Praguers access to a large contiguous region of wilderness within (or just outside) the city limits. And further development in the protected belt, beyond biking and walking paths, would not be allowed.
Plicka, who has mapped out a route for the greenbelt, says the benefits go beyond wilderness conservation. Noting the lack of cooperation between Prague planners and those in outlying towns, Plicka says efforts to consolidate adjoining land provide a platform for cooperation; the common goal of conserving the greenbelt would allow officials from separate councils to unite their own development plans as well as to air disputes.
Moreover, the greenbelt could help thwart the outward expansion of the metropolis by providing both a physical and conceptual border to Prague.
Kasl says the planned green territory would disconnect the urban center of Prague from the sprawling new development just beyond its borders; the division would become visible, and developers and commuters alike would be less likely to view the suburbs as just another part of the city.
The effects won't be seen anytime soon, though. The timeframe and the high cost make the project's success uncertain, and Kasl, now a party leader and member of the Municipal Assembly, is no longer spearheading the plan. With the planning stage coming to a close, the next step is the daunting work of contacting landowners and local officials along the greenbelt's route and starting the process of consolidating the necessary land.
Brownfields
Other opponents of urban sprawl say solutions lie not only in the city's green spaces but also in its industrial ones. SOS Praha last autumn launched a project uniting several environmental groups with representatives of Prague's largest developer, Skanska, in promoting the use of brownfields -- abandoned or underused industrial sites in the urban area.
The brownfields coalition, conceived as a lobbying and research group, advocates the use of these urban sites as an antidote to sprawl that allows the redevelopment of space within the city center before new open spaces are exploited. The group called for a focus on areas like rail yards and unused factories as development sites that are central and accessible by public transportation. Participants also identified one success in brownfield development: Construction of a hockey stadium is under way in Vysocany, on the site of a former machine factory, within reach of an existing metro station.
But efforts to promote brownfield development are likely to hit as many obstacles as plans for a greenbelt. Industrial sites require major investment toward cleaning up pollutants and rebuilding infrastructure.
Government officials and developers are naturally divided on who should bear the burden of getting the sites suitable for construction.
And while advocates say developers should have economic incentives for brownfield development, the actual economic terms are anything but favorable; the added risks and long turnaround time for cleaning up a brownfield mean that funds are more difficult to secure, not easier.
Red tape
Developer Caine points out yet another difficulty of achieving urban planning goals: The Prague government, he says, doesn't have the power to drive planning through economic incentives. Tax incentives could help persuade developers to choose brownfield sites instead of green space in some cases, but the authority to reform taxation lies with the Finance Ministry, which has no particular interest in reining in urban sprawl. "The hands of the city government are tied," Caine said. And with no efficient means to direct the course of urban growth, planners and activists are finding themselves equally powerless.
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