Prague Takes Steps to Fight Sprawl, But Not Everyone Is Pleased

[M II A II R II K]

Prague Takes Steps to Fight Sprawl, But Not Everyone Is Pleased


Oct 10, 2014

By FEARGUS O'SULLIVAN

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/1...leased/381335/

Could Prague’s skyline soon be spiked with flashy glass skyscrapers? The idea of what could be Europe’s most beautiful city turning into a Central European version of Pudong might seem ludicrous, but this is exactly the nightmare scenario now being splashed across billboards in the Czech capital.

- Above a banner shouting “Prague Under Hudeček” (the name of Prague’s mayor) a current advertising campaign show Charles Bridge cowering beneath a phalanx of pig-ugly towers, which seem to be slouching toward it like drunks at a urinal.

- The campaign’s shock tactics have sprung up in opposition to Prague’s new Metropolitan Plan, a set of regulations that seem like a guided tour of standard anti-sprawl urban policies. In the Czech Republic, however, they’ve been causing a storm of complaints, pitting the city against central government and prying the lid off of a spaghetti-like mess of vested interests—a textbook case of the intricate clockwork that ticks behind many cities' public decision-making facades.

- From the outside, the plan seems to check off whole list of the right boxes. Pushing densification over sprawl, new rules will prioritize in-fill and brownfield sites over city fringe development. High-rise buildings will be restricted to areas where they already exist, so towers would be banned anywhere near the Old Town or in low-rise neighborhoods such as the interwar villa district of Dejvice.

- Prague’s somewhat ramshackle sidewalks and street furniture will also see stricter control. From now on, all roads newly constructed or widened to 12 meters (39.5 feet) or more must be tree-lined. Narrower sidewalks will gradually be swept of street lamps and traffic lights (to be suspended from buildings instead), and will have a minimum width of 1.5 meters (just under 5 feet). Meanwhile big, shouty billboards of more that 6 square meters (65 square feet) will be banned the inner city. Parking rules will also tighten. Central Prague will see its parking-space allowance shrivel by 10 to 20 percent, while the more spread-out suburbs will get a 40 percent increase.

- The consortium against the city’s plans insists that the new guidelines could be a disaster. Encouraging in-fill could destroy the "genius loci" of some areas, critics say. If densification is the watchword, they ask, then what’s to stop the city from building on major squares? To drum this home, they’ve made another mock-up visual, of a squat glass cube dumped on the site of the popular farmer’s market in Jiřího z Poděbrad Square.

- They say the new ceiling-height laws will make new flats dingy, while parking restrictions will give spaces only to richer people with larger apartments. Worst of all, they say, the theory behind this push to wean the city center off cars comes from a U.S. study, making patriotic Praguers “victims of an American experiment."

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[mhays]

A well-run "pro" campaign would say "great news, here's what can't happen under our plan."

[mthq]

Wow, those opponents sure are flattering us Americans

[BnaBreaker]

I wish that was an American experiment!

[ardecila]

Interesting that they are regulating ceiling heights. Presumably this is to allow more buildable area in neighborhoods with a height limit, but there are serious psychological dimensions to low ceilings... I would not want anything less than 2.5m.

Are the aesthetics of low-rise neighborhoods worth the price of spoiling new construction in such a way, or is it better to relax height restrictions somewhat to allow an extra 1-2 floors?

[Crawford]

Prague actually has tons of highrises and almost no sprawl. It pretty much developed in the quasi-Soviet Eastern bloc style, with tons of commieblocks outside the beautiful core.

That's why this article is so strange. I guess they're talking about fighting a Dubai/Pudong type development? That has nothing to do with combating sprawl though.

[j korzeniowski]

huh, working from prague at the moment, and i have not noticed those. there is a documentary out here now, though, about how the previous mayor's plan (pavel bem is his name) is going out the window.

although i spend a lot of time here, i do not know enough about the mayors' respective plans. i suspect that that billboard is probably overstating the matter. just a bit. . .