Prague has published the draft Metropolitan Plan on the IPR website

Prague - Prague has published the latest version of the Metropolitan Plan. People can view it on the Institute of Planning and Development website (IPR). City and IPR representatives informed journalists today. The new version includes height regulations for buildings and has increased the limit for potential population growth. The plan is currently being assessed in the SEA process, which evaluates its impact on the city's sustainable development, and the shape of the plan may still change. Discussions on the plan will begin in the spring of 2018. The Metropolitan Plan should dictate all construction in the capital from 2023.

"We are halfway through the process. The plan has been in preparation at IPR for several years. Afterwards, it will be reviewed by city districts, landowners, and citizens. The plan we have reflects the thinking about the city in the 1990s, and we are in the 21st century. The review process is crucial for the final form of the document, which is why we are publishing the proposal now," said Deputy Mayor Petra Kolínská (SZ/Trojkoalice).

On the website, people can find a browser for individual drawings. An orthophoto map can be activated under them for better orientation. All documents are also available for download, including their justifications. Interested parties will find a schedule for the preparation of the plan or answers to frequently asked questions on the website.

Compared to the version published in the past, height regulations for construction have been added to the plan. "We believe it is necessary. During the discussion, there was a variant that it would be completely removed, but we all rejected that," said IPR Director Ondřej Boháč. According to him, this regulation is a new tool for the city that it still needs to learn to work with. IPR is now seeking the degree of its detail. "It must not be too detailed or too general," he said.

The second change concerns the capacity of the plan. "It has increased, and hypothetically, there is not space for 400,000 but for 600,000 people. But that number is purely theoretical," Boháč said. The capacity was increased primarily in the outskirts of Prague. According to Boháč, the buildable areas were not expanded, but the number of possible floors in buildings was increased. The approach to so-called transformation areas was also changed, which were divided into smaller parts.

However, this version of the plan will not go into discussion yet, precisely because of the SEA process. It assesses the impacts on the environment and social and economic development. The parameters and results of the evaluation will be reflected in the proposal intended for discussion. "Only details will be fine-tuned," Boháč said.

IPR is now preparing a comparison of the Metropolitan Plan with the current one. According to Boháč, it cannot be compared side by side since each was developed using a completely different methodology. "However, we are preparing guidelines on how to read the plans, and we will publish that before the public discussion," he said.

The territorial plan is a key document that determines where construction is allowed in the city and to what extent. The current one has been in effect since 1999. In addition to height regulations, the Metropolitan Plan will also halt the expansion of Prague into vacant land in its surroundings. It is also intended to give city districts the opportunity to further regulate their areas by creating "small" plans with more specific restrictions.

In the past, there were disputes surrounding the new territorial plan, which led to the departure of Petr Hlaváček from the head of IPR and temporarily also the main author of the plan, Roman Koucký. Prague and other large cities were originally supposed to have the new plan by the year 2020; however, the lawmakers extended the deadline by three years.