On the topic of changes in regulations and the consequences associated with them, as well as the differences and similarities and the search for a way to reconcile conflicting interests, Marta Kulawik talks to Michal Leszczynski, a lawyer from the Polish Association of Developer Companies.
Michał LESZCZYŃSKI - Expert in investment process law, legislator, graduate of the National School of Public Administration. Since 2012, in the Ministry of Construction, he was in charge of creating the regulatory environment for the real estate sector. From 2019 to 2023, director of the office responsible for urban planning and regional development strategy at the Central Transport Port. Since 2023, a lawyer at the Polish Association of Real Estate Developers, dealing with urban planning, the construction process, sustainable development. Expert advising in investment processes on the public and private side. Member of the team in the scientific project "A new model of regional and local spatial planning to ensure the resilience and security of the spatial structure of Poland, in the context of contemporary development challenges". Speaker at the November OEES congress in Krakow (www.oees.pl).
Marta Kulawik:You are a lawyer with a long-standing presence in the construction sector, and since last year you have been associated with the Polish Association of Developer Companies. What changes in the law do you strive for as part of your activity in PZFD?
Michal Leszczynski: At PZFD I am responsible for the area of the investment process and sustainable development. We have formulated and published a list of dozens of regulatory changes that would make the investment process more predictable, faster, simply better - for both local governments and investors. Recall that the long investment process affects a commercial developer as much as a company building TBS or public housing. Let me give an example of the change we are seeking. We want to open the catalog of complementary investments that the developer carries out under the new ZPI mode - so that municipalities have more opportunities to carry out their tasks "with the developer's hands." This is beneficial for us, because if this catalog includes, for example, the renovation of municipal vacant buildings (absent today), cities will be more inclined to quickly pass local plans under the ZPI mode. Everyone will benefit from this.
Marta Kulawik:How could these changes translate in practice into the housing market in Poland?
Michal Leszczynski: In Polish cities we have a gigantic potential to create better neighborhoods, better estates, which can be done faster than before. Unfortunately, in addition to legal changes, this also requires building an organizational culture in which the host city's cooperation with investors is based on transparent negotiation of investment terms. A situation in which the City does not talk to investors, fearing urban movements, for example, is detrimental to the public interest. Dialogue in the investment process is necessary, it is not possible to optimize the functional solutions of an investment by exchanging official letters. New Żerniki in Wroclaw is an example of dialogue based on the authority of the city's architect at the time.
Marta Kulawik:What is the biggest challenge in the Polish housing market today?
Michal Leszczynski: Today, the biggest challenge to the housing situation is the extremely low priority of these issues at the government level, which translates into a lack of steering and agility in this area. We are still formally implementing Beata Szydło's 2016 National Housing Program, and comprehensive housing policy is being replaced by a series of point-scoring announcements: we will do this, we will introduce that. It has already taken almost a year to correct the absurd provision of requiring 1.5 parking spaces per unit, so what time perspective to take for comprehensive, difficult changes?
Meanwhile, increasing the share of public housing in annual housing production from the current 2 percent to, say, 4 means that a gigantic machine must be set in motion: from financing to planning to land management to construction. Such programs are not implemented with press conferences, but with the antsy, Benedictine work of hundreds of bureaucrats, planners and engineers. There is no "low-hanging fruit" here. - there is a lack of good land, infrastructure, implementation teams. This is a task that far exceeds tenure. Maybe that's the problem.
Marta Kulawik:I agree, tenure is a brake on many long-term measures and comprehensive reforms. Let's take a look at developers, as they currently have the greatest influence in shaping cities. What should their role be in this regard?
Michal Leszczynski: I have to partially argue with this thesis. Yes, developers are responsible for 60 percent of the housing built in Poland and the vast majority of the office, commercial and logistics fabric. In this sense, the effect of developer activity is most widely seen in the urban landscape. On the other hand, we don't have most of the tools to improve Polish cities - we don't plan the road network, green spaces, transportation and social infrastructure. This is the role of cities, which for more than a century have been given the authority to plan, parcelize, acquire land, etc. On secured land, a developer can build a park or even a school at his own expense, if the scale of his investment allows it - this is what happens under the demonized housing specs law, the real effects of which are radically different from the social picture. Developers also commonly build roads, they are obliged to do so by law, annually it is the scale of commitment reaching hundreds of millions of zlotys - only in large cities.
After this introduction, I can say that the role of developers is to compete in the market with the quality of the buildings being constructed - a mission defined in this way also serves cities. The mission of cities, on the other hand, is to provide residents with a high quality of life by exercising their powers, including those of authority.
Planning and strategy is the most important challenge facing Polish cities today after the amendment of the Law on Planning and Spatial Development
© Gerd Altmann © Pixabay
Marta Kulawik:What is the PZFD realistically doing to carry out this mission?
Michal Leszczynski: The core of our activities is the law - we give opinions on legislative proposals, postulate for the introduction of certain solutions, train member companies and solve their problems in dialogue with the central authorities and, importantly, in dialogue with the authorities of the largest Polish cities. We adopt standards of ethical behavior for developers and promote good practices, especially in the area of sustainable development. Poland was the first EU country to develop standards for the application of the Taxonomy of Sustainable Construction between the development and banking industries. Membership in the PZFD is a kind of quality mark of a developer.
Marta Kulawik:Another group, whose interests are often at odds with the general good, are investors in the broadest sense. There is almost always controversy associated with investments of various types (industrial, tourist, residential), because sometimes, despite their great impact on development, they bring with them many concerns, such as those of environmentalists. Does the Integrated Investment Plan have a chance to change this?
Michal Leszczynski: ZPI is a way of enacting a local plan, so the statement that a municipality, having planning authority, can enact a good or bad plan - within the limits of the law - is valid. The advantage of ZPI is the possibility to negotiate the conditions for the creation of a specific investment with a specific investor, with broad public participation (public consultations, all documentation in the BIP). The scope of the investor's benefits related to the investment is also subject to negotiation - in the case of, for example, a nuisance production plant, this allows a transparent conversation about certain compensation measures in the municipality beyond the legal minimum.
Project 22, Lodz - the project is located in a metropolitan zone, an area of the city center, where an MPZP is in force, but excludes the function of residential development. The aim of the project is to achieve an economically justifiable scale of the residential function (in place of the existing office function) and to achieve a new quality of development in the representative part of the City Center quarter; the lex-developer procedure is in this case a panacea for the current provision on thenecessity to locate service functions in these quarters; lex deweloper will also make it possible to balance and rationalize the percentages of residential and office functions, significantly improve the character of the development and the natural functionality of this part of the inner center
vision: © Project 22
Marta Kulawik:How is this planning tool expected to positively influence what will be developed?
Michal Leszczynski: ZPI is an attempt to systemically embed the "plan on application" mode, which in recent years was included in the housing spec law. Unfortunately, instead of taking advantage of the legacy of the application of the spec law, new regulations were written a bit by force, which already necessitates amendments. The clear pluses are the possibility of negotiating the conditions for the location of a particular development and the time required for the adoption of a local plan.
Marta Kulawik:And what is the procedure for enacting the ZPI?
Michal Leszczynski: In a nutshell: the investor submits an application containing a draft local plan, which almost immediately goes before the municipal council for preliminary approval to proceed. The wording of the plan and the urban planning agreement are then negotiated and go to consultations, agreements and opinions. After passing these stages, the documents are passed or rejected at the municipal council.
Project 22, Lodz - the project is located in a metropolitan zone, an area of the city center, where an MPZP is in force, but excludes the function of residential development. The aim of the project is to achieve an economically justifiable scale of the residential function (in place of the existing office function) and to achieve a new quality of development in the representative part of the City Center quarter; the lex-developer procedure is in this case a panacea for the existing provision on thenecessity to locate service functions in these quarters; lex deweloper will also make it possible to balance and rationalize the percentages of residential and office functions, significantly improve the character of the development and the natural functionality of this part of the inner center
vision: © Project 22
Marta Kulawik:Is there room in the Integrated Investment Plan for interpreting the provisions in such a way as to bend them to the benefit of one party?
Michal Leszczynski: MIP is a mode of enacting a local plan, so we are undoubtedly operating under planning authority, within which the municipality can freely shape solutions for the use and development of real estate. If by "bending" we mean a mechanism that, for example, allows us to increase the parameters of an investment in exchange for additional benefits from the developer to the municipality, then let's emphasize that this is how mechanisms work in many developed countries - for the benefit of the public interest, whose guardian remains the municipal authorities.
Marta Kulawik:In that case, what is the difference between the Application for Determining the Location of a Housing Development Project [ULIM - editor's note] and the Integrated Investment Plan, and what do they have in common?
Michal Leszczynski: In the housing speculation mode, the investor has a chance to show the assumptions of the investment in an understandable way, as he submits an urban planning and architectural concept. This element is missing in the ZPI mode, in which a draft local plan is submitted - this is one of the drawbacks of this institution that we point out.
multi-family residential building with a service part in Lodz at Mickiewicza Avenue carried out under the lex development mode
proj.: Design lab group, author team: Maciej Taczalski, Karolina Taczalska, Mateusz Cyganek, Artur Piórek, Marta Golec, Daria Bartosik
Marta Kulawik:In your opinion, will ZPI perform better than ULIM in practice?
Michal Leszczynski: ZPI will certainly work well for non-residential developments. The renewable energy or logistics industries badly needed such a solution. As far as residential investments are concerned, as I said earlier, several of the changes represent a step backward from the speculative law. I think the ministry should take a pragmatic approach and copy what has worked in practice.
Marta Kulawik:I would still like to ask about your participation in the scientific project "A new model of regional and local spatial planning to ensure the resilience and security of Poland's spatial structure, in the context of contemporary development challenges." What Polish contemporary development challenges were studied?
Michal Leszczynski: The project deals with spatial planning. The dimension of spatial resilience is quite complex, as resilience is not only about high-profile climate issues, but also about defense (population security) or economic issues. We are still working on a proposal to systematize this problem.
multi-family residential building with a service part in Lodz at Mickiewicza Avenue conducted under the lex developer mode
proj.: Design lab group author team: Maciej Taczalski, Karolina Taczalska, Mateusz Cyganek, Artur Piórek, Marta Golec, Daria Bartosik
Marta Kulawik:What could ensure the aforementioned resilience and security of the spatial structure in Poland?
Michal Leszczynski: In the project I am working on issues of efficiency of the spatial planning system, we are currently focusing on the regional level of planning - the situation here is so complex that Polish regional planning has been deprived of regulatory competence in virtually all relevant areas - demography, infrastructure, wind power plants, transportation. The report's conclusions, therefore, are not so much to improve the details of this system, but to build its foundations from scratch, with the assignment of specific functions and implications for local planning. This is also important for housing, since we have no formal metropolitan governance. To give an example: the current protests against the location of new rail lines are largely due to the fact that - by focusing on the pace of speculative investment - we have not ensured at the regional level that green corridors are secured for the course of this or future infrastructure.
Marta Kulawik:This year, the Ministry of Development and Technology referred a draft law on solutions to increase the availability of land for housing to the Government Programming Team. Have you had a chance to familiarize yourself with this draft?
Michal Leszczynski: Unfortunately, I have not seen this draft, we are looking forward to it.
Marta Kulawik:And how is it in practice with the supply of construction land? Are they really in short supply?
Michal Leszczynski: Let's collide two perspectives. Public statistics show that up to 300 million people can be settled in Poland, according to studies of conditions. This is statistically true, but 80 percent of construction traffic is concentrated in 20 percent of municipalities - metropolitan areas and their surroundings, where there is therefore a shortage of quality land. It is impossible to decree the settlement of people in the countryside, where there is plenty of building land - there is a lack of jobs and social infrastructure, and it would also cause a car armageddon in cities. So we need to wisely develop cities and their neighboring smaller centers with great access by public transportation.
Lizbońska housing estate, the first lex project completed in Warsaw developer-design: JEMS Architekci studio investor: Develia and Grupo Lar Polska number of units: 199 apartments and 15 commercial units in four buildings with modernist architecture
illustrations: © Grupo Lar Polska
Marta Kulawik:How do you provide it wisely?
Michal Leszczynski: According to two philosophies - filling in gaps in urban development equipped with infrastructure (especially rail!) and launching new land in the form of integrated, large-scale projects, where there are economies of scale, for example, it becomes profitable to pull rail transportation or investors' participation in infrastructure.
Marta Kulawik:What is the role of the National Property Stock in this?
Michal Leszczynski: KZN should play the role of a public land developer in Poland. The model for me is the French EPF Île-de-France - a public agency that is a land operator supporting the process of implementation of land development plan arrangements. The primary statutory purpose of EPF's operations is to improve the availability of housing through the acquisition and disposal of investment land (essentially, the organization operates on a not-for-profit basis). EPF also enters projects with complex ownership structures that make targeted development difficult. As part of its land management during the transition period, EPF carries out the necessary activities to remove investment barriers, including soil testing and demolition of existing facilities. To launch large investment sites in Poland, problems must be solved, and this takes time and resources.
Lizbońska housing estate, the first lex development completed in Warsaw developer-design: studio JEMS Architekci investor: Develia and Grupo Lar Poland number of units: 199 apartments and 15 commercial units in four buildings with modernist architecture
illustrations: © Grupo Lar Polska
Marta Kulawik:In an ideal world, would it be possible to reconcile the interests of developers and buyers?
Michal Leszczynski: It seems that the market mechanism of competing on the quality of housing is the best way to reconcile these interests.
Marta Kulawik:Thank you for the interview.
interviewed by: Marta Kulawik
more: A&B 11/2024 - Soul of Europe, Soul of the City,
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