Brno has approved the guidelines for the preparation of the draft urban plan

Brno - The new spatial plan for Brno is expected to be approved at the turn of 2021 and 2022. Today, the councillors approved the guidelines for drafting its proposal, which should be completed in a year. It will then undergo a process for comments. Brno has had a spatial plan since 1994, and it is outdated. The city has been waiting for a new one for several years. The law requires municipalities to create a new spatial plan by the end of 2022 at the latest; after that, the current plans will cease to be valid.

The guidelines for the proposal were approved by 36 councillors, two were against, and four abstained. The guidelines were created based on comments on three variants of the conceptual spatial plan that began to be developed in 2010. In 2013, work was halted because in 2012, the court annulled the superior Principles of Spatial Development of the South Moravian Region.

Brno considered whether to produce an entirely new plan or continue with the current draft concept. It chose the second option; however, according to Deputy Mayor Martin Ander (SZ), it will essentially be a new spatial plan. Development areas were designated for different uses in each concept, and according to the approved guidelines, one use should be selected for each area.

"However, the new spatial plan will mainly be different in that the regulations for construction will look different than they do now. Instead of the floor area index, which determined the maximum number of building floors and some developers tried to circumvent, a type of building and its maximum and minimum height will be specified for each area," said Ander. It will thus be clear where family houses, blocks of flats, or scattered housing will be located. At the same time, there is an effort to make the plan more flexible so that it does not need to be updated for every minor detail.

When the proposal is completed next year, it will go to public discussion, which will likely be repeated multiple times. "In addition, we expect an update of the regional principles of spatial development, which will also need to be incorporated," said Ander.

In the following year, the Office of the City Architect of Brno will also work on materials for some problematic constructions in the city that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved. These include the underground railway, the so-called New Urban Boulevard, the cemetery in Soběšice, Juranka, and tunnels under Úvoz.