The game for urban space continues. Are we about to lose one of the most important players in this skirmish? It looks like it, in several Polish cities, due to the amendment of the Law on Planning and Spatial Development, Municipal Urban Planning and Architectural Commissions will be dissolved by the end of the year.
TheMKUA or GKUA, or Municipal Urban Planning and Architectural Commission, is an internal advisory body established in local government units on planning and zoning matters. Their existence, as Prof. Rafał Matyja wrote, makes sense primarily as a procedure for objectivizing decisions - according to the assumption, a group of experts is to express opinions on space, give opinions on decisions and advise the local government on possible directions of development. However, reservations have so far been raised about the lack of transparency in the activities and access to the opinions of the body.
Municipal Urban Planning and Architectural Commissions are perceived as professional support for the city government, rather than as support for the municipality (community of residents) and collegial guardian of the public interest. Therefore, a fundamental change leading to the strengthening of the public interest defense factors would be to make their work more transparent, as well as to give them the character of a public advisory institution, unrelated solely to supporting the executive branch. A necessary change is the introduction of the principle of making public the agendas, opinions of the MKUA, and - in contentious cases - also presenting the position of the minority of the commission, the authors of the report "Strengthening the social and substantive factor in the shaping of urban space" urged.
Read more about the role of the MKUA in the debate on urban space in the November issue of A&B: Game for the City
The amended law of July 7, 2023 introduced a sizable change regarding the composition of the members of the Urban Planning and Architectural Commissions - from now on, only people with educational and professional backgrounds directly related to the theory and practice of urban planning were to be members, which - presumably - would exclude the participation of sociologists or environmentalists, for example.
Meanwhile, in several Polish cities, instead of giving the commissions the role of guardian of the public interest, they have been put in limbo, informing their members that the advisory teams have been disbanded. Will new members be appointed? Will another body with similar tasks and responsibilities be established? For now, we await developments and further decisions.
