Commentary on the amendments to the Law on Planning and Development
The article is from A&B issue 11|23
A few weeks ago we all woke up to a new reality, although we will still have to wait for the actual change in the view outside the window. It's all due to the amendment to the Spatial Planning Law, which came into effect on September 24 and, according to many, turned the table on the previous rules on planning and spatial management in Poland.
Below I will try to list the biggest pros and cons of the new regulations, taking into account that I am a practicing architect who has been struggling with the Polish planning system (local plans and WZ decisions) for many years when designing buildings; I am an advisor and attorney for investors for whom I prepare analyses of sites (even before purchase) and apply forinterpretations of local plans and for zoning decisions; I am a co-founder and member of the ArchiPravo Foundation, which aims to actively participate in the legislative process and to protect and improve the quality of architecture and public space; I am a co-shareholder in companies: K3BAU and M3 System, implementing residential projects at home and abroad. All this gives me a broad perspective and various, often different points of view on the same issue.
Now to the point - the biggest pluses of the amended law are:
- the introduction in all municipalities - in place of the Conditions Study - of general plans, which will have the rank of "act of local law" (the Study did not have it) and will be the basis for the development of detailed local plans and (this is new!) the content of zoning decisions;
- introduction of a nationwide digital urban planning register, accessible to all, containing "spatial data sets" and spatial planning acts (including draft local plans) and WZ decisions (including submitted applications for such decisions);
- maintaining the validity of previously enacted local plans and final WZ decisions (as indefinite), and introducing the principle that vuzetas for which the procedure was initiated before the law came into force will be processed under the "old" rules;
- the introduction of a new, previously unused category of land, described as "areas of development replenishment" - having a key impact on the issuance of new zoning decisions and preventing - in the intention of the Legislature - "spillover" of investments in the area. Here, however, I also have to put a considerable minus (about which further on);
- the introduction of a new procedure called "integrated investment plan," which was previously (albeit in a slightly different form) available only under the housing speculative law (not very popular among investors, and even less so among municipal authorities);
- defining - already at the level of the law - planning zones with specific functions to be included in the content of each Municipality's General Plan, as well as introducing the obligation to establish "municipal urban planning standards" within such a Plan;
- linking the designation of new building sites in the Municipality's General Plan (within planning zones) to the actual state of the municipality's investment and its further demand for residential development.
The biggest downsides of the amended law are:
- far too short a period (only 15 months) given to all municipalities to enact the Municipal General Plan, which poses a gigantic risk of investment paralysis throughout the country as early as 2026, or hasty and sloppy preparation of the aforementioned document - crucial for the development of any locality;
- lack of implementing regulations for the amended law (as of the date of this article, no ordinance with implementing regulations has been enacted - they are still under development/consultation);
- the lack of any timeframe for municipalities with regard to the implementation of technical infrastructure (primarily networks and roads) in areas where they adopt a general plan, and primarily have adopted or will adopt "detailed" plans, i.e. local plans;
- exempting municipalities from the obligation to designate in the general plan "development addition areas" and (in the case of urban municipalities) "downtown development areas" - in favor of voluntariness in establishing them (which will significantly dilute the idea of stopping urban sprawl and will not end disputes over developer investments located in dense housing);
- Lack of clarification of the provisions on "access to a public road," which will continue to result in the issuance of defective WZ decisions by municipalities, in which confirmed access to a public road will not guarantee the investor a later building permit decision (due to substandard parameters of such access that do not meet technical and construction regulations);
- unfortunate provisions on how to measure the distance of investment areas from the elementary school and public green areas (in the "municipal standards of accessibility of social infrastructure"); already heralding numerous attempts to circumvent them.
To sum up: the assumptions of the amended law are good, but as usual they were affected by the typically Polish sin of omission. It was supposed to be like in Switzerland (and I mean that literally, because many provisions remind me of that country's planning solutions), and it came out as usual - with understatements, loopholes in the law, the prospect of not implementing technical infrastructure for years to come (because municipalities will not be forced to do so by any statutory deadlines) - while at the same time rushing through implementation, to top it off without implementing acts. So what will be the new view out the window? I'm afraid no one knows.
