In the spring of 2021, Krakow authorities unveiled a plan to build a new district in the Rybitwy and Płaszów areas. "New City" will cover 677 hectares, and will include skyscrapers up to 150 meters high. The controversy surrounding the project and the ways in which the new districts will be planned and implemented will be addressed this coming Tuesday (June 8) at an online debate organized by SARP Oddział Kraków titled " How to design a New City?".
TheNew City is a planned Krakow City in the area of Płaszów and Rybitwy. The boundaries of the area are marked by the railroad, the fourth ring road and Sliwiaka and Christo Botewa streets. For many years, this has been a typically industrial and warehouse area, extremely important for Krakow. The newly developed zoning plan provides for service buildings 20 to 30 meters high along Sliwiaka and Christo Botewa streets. Further south, following the Drwina River, a 50-hectare park would be created, and on the side of the sewage treatment plant the city would create a forest. A green belt 300 meters wide would become a buffer zone of 15 hectares.
visualization of the New Town
il. Cracow City Hall
17 high-rise buildings and 107 thousand new residents
The most daring assumptions were envisaged for the central part of the plan. In its very center, space has been allocated for a city square surrounded by four skyscrapers 140 to 150 meters high. The construction of 13 skyscrapers 90 to 100 meters high was also allowed. In the south of the plan, developers could build blocks of flats 25 to 30 meters high. According to an analysis by magistrate officials, the New Town area could house more than 107,000 people in nearly 36,000 apartments. Sites for a minimum of two schools and a church were also envisioned.
This is what Jerzy Muzyk, Deputy Mayor of the City of Cracow for Sustainable Development, said about the New Town in an interview with Małgorzata Tomczak:
At the moment we are well advanced in the opinion stage of the internal draft of the New Town local plan. This is nearly six hundred hectares. We simply want to create a new district here, because the current Study, after the changes in 2014, gives us a lot of possibilities here. We don't see the need or necessity to take advantage of these opportunities one hundred percent, for example, in terms of the height of the designed buildings (the Study in some places in the New Town allows buildings up to 250 meters high), but it will certainly be something completely innovative compared to what has been designed so far. This is practically the creation of an entirely new district of the city. I don't want to compare it with the construction of Nowa Huta, because that's a bad comparison, while there hasn't been such a project since the construction of Nowa Huta. Nowe Miasto is a project to plan and realize a new city district that will have the potential to accommodate up to a hundred thousand people.
The entire interview entitled Competitions and tenders, or what's next for Krakow, can be found on our portal and in the March issue of Architektura i Biznes. Meanwhile, you can prepare for the discussion by reading the text on wasted potential, planning problems and lack of ideas titled New centers of Krakow, or the repeating story of failure by Kacper Kępiński
the debate will take place online
© SARP Krakow
How to design a New City?
Kraków's op-ed inspires a conversation on how to plan and implement new neighborhoods and the role of tall buildings in the city, which will take place this Tuesday. The online debate will be moderated by Marta A. Urbanska - Ph.D . architect, critic, architectural historian, professor at the Cracow University of Technology. She lectures at home and abroad. Author and editor of publications, translations of architectural literature and exhibitions. Juror of competitions. Conducted field studies of the architecture of historic Polish lands. Member of the Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland, active in the Association of Polish Architects. Winner of awards for public service.
Participants in the discussion will include:
- Zbigniew Maćków of Maćków Pracowania Projektowa, co-author of the model housing estate "New Żerniki" in Wroclaw,
- Przemo Łukasik of medusa group, co-author of the .KTW high-rise buildings in the Cultural Zone in Katowice,
- Marek Tarko and Piotr Chuchacz, members of the Team and the Forum for Urban Planning at the Council of the Małopolska Regional Chamber of Architects.
calendar of the debate
The debate will take place on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, at 6 pm, on the Zoom platform and will also be broadcast on Facebook.
- TheZoom meeting is available at this link
- Meeting ID: 828 8900 3890
- Password: NM
More information is available on the website of the Association of Polish Architects Krakow Branch and on its social media profiles Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
