The new zoning plan for Prague will be approved by the next council

Prague - The new Prague zoning plan will be approved only by the next city council, which will emerge from the elections in the autumn of next year. The leadership of the capital wanted to have the new zoning plan completed still within this electoral term. Jitka Cvetlerová, the director of the city zoning department, told ČTK that the current city council could approve the concept of the zoning plan, but not the final version.
    Cvetlerová stated that the discussions have been delayed partly because the city hall allowed municipal districts to submit their suggestions contrary to original intentions. Some of these suggestions, however, provoked public criticism, for example, Prague 5 sent proposals that would allow the construction of green areas in Vidoule Park or Dívčí hrady. Prague 6 allegedly proposed to intervene in the Šárecké Valley, while Prague 4 aimed at green areas in Kavčí hory. The urban development unit (ÚRM), which is responsible for the zoning plan, rejected all these suggestions.
    The office discussed the suggestions with each of the 57 municipal districts. "It was a standard above what's usual. However, we agreed that it would be worth extending the discussion period," Cvetlerová noted. According to her, the city expects that the new zoning plan will not need to be changed as frequently as the current one.
    The capital is still processing hundreds of proposals for changes to the zoning plan from 2006 and 2007. Requests for changes to the plan from 2008 were directly submitted to the ÚRM for inclusion in the new zoning plan. About 60 of the most important proposals have been earmarked, and these are now being discussed separately as city-wide significant changes to the zoning plan. They concern, for example, Masaryk, Smíchov, and Nákladové nádraží Žižkov, the Bubny - Zátory area, the prison in Pankrác, and the so-called Trojmezí.
    According to the director, the current construction law also complicates discussions about the new plan. "Every paragraph can be overturned by a court. And when you proceed according to common sense, you find yourself in contradiction with the construction law," she lamented.
    Cvetlerová expects that the ÚRM will have the drawings of the zoning plan concept completed by September of this year, but the discussion will last about another eight months. It will partly depend on how many comments the metropolis receives from the public. During the discussion of the Principles of Spatial Development, which plans development at the regional level and from which the new zoning plan will be based, the Prague City Hall received about 20,000 identical comments. "According to the court's interpretation, the council must vote on every comment from every citizen. These are issues that complicate our lives greatly," said the director.
    City officials are currently also working on the so-called Change 1000, which was canceled last year by the Supreme Administrative Court at the request of the municipal district of Prague–Suchdol and three landowners. It concerned the expansion of Václav Havel Airport and the completion of the northern part of the Prague ring road. The court criticized the city for not highlighting the differences sufficiently or for not addressing the comments of all citizens. "We have corrected all the criticisms," Cvetlerová noted. The city has removed the airport expansion from the proposal; this change will be addressed separately in the new zoning plan.
    According to the director, the proposal for Change 1000 is currently being reviewed by the Ministry of Regional Development, and during the summer holidays, the city plans to hold discussions with the public. "In October, we will attempt to present the change again to the council and have it approved once more. We will likely end up in court again, but I believe we have corrected everything and the court will not overturn it again," Cvetlerová added.
    Prague is not the only city where the discussion of the zoning plan is delayed. For instance, Brno will not have a new plan until at least 2012, although it had originally wanted it two years earlier.