<Praha> will begin preparing a new <územní plán>

Prague - The Prague City Council will begin preparing a new urban plan for the metropolis. The representatives decided on this today. The plan determines how individual plots of land can be utilized. The current building code requires municipalities to develop new urban plans by 2012. Prague could have the document two years earlier.
    Some representatives requested that the vote on the preparation of the new plan not take place today. "The proposal lacks principles of spatial development," stated Jiří Witzany (SNK ED). He expressed concern that the new urban plan would add a number of building plots that would otherwise never be approved. A similar opinion was shared by councilor Petr Štěpánek (Green Party). "There should be a shift to meet the principles," he said.
    According to Mayor Pavel Bém (ODS), a new urban plan is necessary. "This debate is a fall from heights for me, which I might have needed," Bém noted, who returned on Monday from a two-month stay in the Himalayas. In the high mountains, he conquered the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest.
    The current urban plan for Prague has been in effect for seven years, during which hundreds of changes have been made. The approval of the document was accompanied by protests from environmental and civil organizations, and some proposals were opposed by the Ministry of the Environment and several city district councils. The plan is valid until 2010.