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City strives to keep residents from leaving

Landlord disputes, lure of houses pose threat

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 29th, 2007 issue

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Every year, Prague’s population climbs. In 2006 alone, more than 6,000 people moved to the city. Despite this trend, the core continues to lose people as residents steadily migrate to the periphery.
This flight to suburbia has some in Prague concerned about its future.
“People make a town alive — you empty it of people and it’s dead,” says Ben Anderson, a realtor with Identity, Ltd., a firm that specializes in apartments in districts 1 and 2.
To prevent Prague from becoming like London, a city whose center largely empties at night, city councilors make it easier to get approval to build residences than to build commercial space, Anderson says.  
“It’s very difficult to get permission to change residential buildings to commercial use,” he says. “The local authority doesn’t want to decrease the number of apartments.”
Nevertheless, the number of total residents has dropped nearly 20 percent over the past decade, according to numbers provided by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ).
In 1996, about 38,000 people lived in Prague 1; in 2006, just over 31,000 lived there. Prague 2 also saw a decline, from 55,625 to 47,063.  Prague 3 dropped from 77,588 to 69,939.
The move to the outer districts is hastened by Prague 1 landlords who want to get those on state-controlled rent out of their valuable apartments.
Often, Anderson says, a Prague 1 or 2 landlord will outright buy an apartment on the outskirts and give it to a tenant as a way to free the apartment and make it available to rent on the market.
Other times, a landlord simply pays a tenant to leave. The going rate is 20,000 Kč ($978) to 30,000 Kč per square meter, according to Anderson.
Market rent is about 10 times higher than state-controlled rent, he says. In Prague 1, it’s about 15 euros ($20.70/424 Kč) per square meter, depending on the apartment’s location, views and charm. In Prague 2, the rate is about 13 euros per square meter, he says.
Furthering the problem is that the total number of apartments in Prague 1 is probably decreasing as more are converted into administrative buildings and smaller apartments are joined to form larger ones.
A home of one’s own
Still, the primary reason people are leaving the center likely has little to do with landlords. Many people, especially families with young children, are looking to have their own homes.
“It’s much more comfortable to live in a house with a small garden than to live in the center of Prague,” says Jitka Rychtaříková, a demographer at Charles University.
In central Prague, flats are pricey and there is not much play space for children, she says.
The districts of Prague that recorded the most new residents in 2006 were Prague 9 (974 people), Prague 13 (648), Prague 10 (620) and Prague 18 (604), while in 2006 Prague 1 lost 676 and Prague 2 lost 783.
“Migration is influenced by external factors,” says Eva Vojtová of the ČSÚ. “Mainly residence, housing development and job opportunities.”
The changing demographics of Prague don’t only put pressure on landlords and tenants tempted by better opportunities.
Living on the outskirts of town can make for expensive daily commutes to work — and more commuters means more pressure on the city’s transportation infrastructure.
In the mid- and outer areas of the city, traffic is increasing 5 percent to 7 percent annually, according to Ladislav Pivec, director of the city’s Institute of Transportation Engineering. Meanwhile, traffic density in the center has remained the same since 1998, he says.
“The solution lies in a series of measures — above all to complete the road network, [especially] both loops [around Prague], to give priority to public transportation and the restriction of cars,” Pivec says.
Others in the city want to encourage residents to stay in Prague 1 by fighting the number of shops that cater to tourists.
Prague 1 Deputy Mayor Daniel Hodek says residents of his district tell him they miss the convenience of having certain shops in their neighborhoods, especially butcher shops.
“At present, we are putting together a map of all shops in Prague 1. … We want to find out how many kinds of shops we have here and what they sell,” Hodek says.
— Hela Balínová and Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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