From the 7/8 2021 issue of A&B
Today's urban areas face the need to adapt quickly to climate change and new ways of working and living, and pandemic realities have forced more serious thinking about urban space in terms of flexibility, diversity and ecology. The perception of the housing speculation law, which was radically criticized when it was passed, has also changed. We talk to Wojciech Kotecki and Jakub Hecek of {tag:pracownie} about the possibilities offered by this tool, its advantages and disadvantages.
Edyta Skiba: What should the city of the future be like?
Wojciech Kotecki: We are living in a time of great change in the way we think not only about man, but also about the city in which he lives. After almost a century of modernist design - functionally organizing the city into districts and buildings, treating humans in the category of the human mass - we are beginning to see the complexity and diversity of the world around us. It is therefore necessary to create a space that allows it to exist, reducing tensions in both social and design contexts. Thus, the modern city should be such that it is complex and universal in every part, meeting the requirements of people with different needs. The definition of a single, average, statistical resident is no longer valid. The undefinition inherent in this approach allows the city to adapt to changing needs, allowing its residents to run errands in their immediate vicinity. Some call it a fifteen-minute city; to me it also means sensitivity to people's needs.
Warsaw-Służewiec, a mixed-use space - city-making
proj.: BBGK Architekci investor: ECHO Investment
Edyta: So which of the currently available urban planning tools allows you to realize such a vision? A study of land use conditions and directions, a local development plan, development conditions, or perhaps a housing spec?
Jakub Heciak: In my opinion, on an equal footing, the MPZP and the speculative housing law. But it should be remembered that an MPZP is mainly an obligation of the city, which has a limited budget, and has to divide it into various tasks. The ULIM[Determination of Location of Housing Investment - editor's note] resolution passed by the city council resembles the provisions of the MPZP in many aspects. It is a procedure that provides the same or even greater transparency in the procedure, many solutions are consulted with the city in every detail. The development conditions are somewhere between the ULIM procedure and the MPZP. On the one hand, the development conditions, like the speculative law, are tailor-made, but on the other hand they provide for a much narrower group of people with insight into the application, because it includes only parties to the administrative proceedings. In addition, in the case of the WZ decision, the role of the study is depreciated. Since the study is not an act of local law, there is no need to examine the compliance of the WZ with its provisions. Such an approach is not possible with regard to the local plan. In the case of a ULIM application, contradiction with the study is allowed only as to brownfield, post-railroad or postal service sites, and must be adequately justified. In contrast, for speculative development, unlike the other procedures, an incomparably larger additional investment outlay on the part of the investor for educational or recreational public lands is possible.
Wojciech: It's hard not to agree with the criticism of the development conditions invented in the 1990s as a tool to save spatial management right after the statutory cancellation of all local plans at the time. Over the past decades, it has become clear that the tool of the local plan is costly and time-consuming. The provisions address many interests that are difficult or even impossible to reconcile. The adoption of the plan also imposes very high costs on the city for the purchase of land for the implementation of the obligations contained therein. Therefore, there is little wonder at the moderate enthusiasm for their enactment. So we have, on the one hand, WZs, which can do a lot of damage, and on the other, local plans with so much inertia in the procedure that they are unable to keep up with the modern challenges of cities. This can be seen, for example, in the areas of Służewiec Przemysłowy, which is transforming from an office monoculture into a desert. Thus, the legislator's intention to introduce a facilitation act, responding to the housing deficit and the need to respond more quickly to contemporary urban problems, seems right.
Warsaw-Służewiec, elementary school on Konstruktorska Street
design: WWAA, investor: Echo Investment
Edit: A 2017 report by the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) points out similar problems in the procedure of local plans. According to its authors, 30 percent of the area of Poland is covered by local plans, with the passage of time, this area has grown little, the procedure has become longer, and the areas covered by plans have become smaller and smaller (the phenomenon of island MPZPs). So why the wave of criticism against a law that could solve some of the most pressing problems?
Wojciech: Perhaps one reason was distrust of the ruling camp. The law was created mainly with the Housing Plus program in mind, which, although a great idea, is still received with skepticism. Lack of trust and slogans such as "developer" and "facilitating" caused rightful concern in the environment. The criticism was so strong that most cities very quickly imposed additional, stringent restrictions - local urban planning standards that make investors carefully analyze the legitimacy of undertaking the ULIM procedure. In most cases, using this facility is not necessary. Applying for a building permit under the speculative law imposes on the investor, firstly, very large expenditures on social infrastructure, secondly, to undertake project preparations lasting two-three years, and thirdly, to be subjected at the end to an arbitrary decision of the city council, which may turn out to be a refusal at the last minute.
James:The reason may not have been so much distrust as a misunderstanding of the legislature's intentions, or perhaps even how modern urban planning works. We can now distinguish two types of urbanism. The first is the rationing policy reflected by studies and local plans. These are permanent tools that provide guarantees for many stakeholders. The second type is operational urbanism, which has an interventionist character in crisis areas. Its expression in Poland is primarily housing speculation. Updating local plans consumes almost the same resources as enacting new ones, so it seems that a tool that allows for their rapid revision could work perfectly well.
Warsaw-Służewiec, mixed-use space - diversity
proj.: BBGK Architekci investor: ECHO Investment
Edit: Published in the municipality's Public Information Bulletin (BIP), proposals quickly become media news. Residents and activists comment on the project. It seems, therefore, that community design of the city is becoming real.
Wojciech: This kind of thinking requires constant learning that "I" is as important as "we." As time goes on, we need more and more community consultations and workshops, and fortunately it is becoming increasingly difficult to impose designs from above. Having a dialogue among the various stakeholders in the process reduces tensions and negative emotions, needs can be more easily identified and incorporated into the project. The spec law gives the city another tool to discuss with its residents, instead of just deciding what the city should look like.
Edit: The transparency of the process and the investment by developers in urban infrastructure - both social and technical - is undoubtedly one of the advantages of the introduced law. However, it is probably worth asking whether bailing the municipality out of carrying out part of its tasks by the private sector leads to egalitarian spaces?
James: Of course, the assumption can be made that it is the municipality that carries out tasks that are related to its territorial development and changing population. However, it is worth considering whether this is the only option. Why not, for example, enable the support of tools from the range of public-private partnerships, why should all operational and organizational costs be borne by the municipality, when there are many entrepreneurs who would like to bail it out and can do it efficiently or faster.
Wojciech: It should also be emphasized that the developer is not building a school or a park for himself, but is carrying out the municipality's plans for the realization of road, recreational, green space and educational infrastructure. So far, new investments have only highlighted the deficiencies of municipal infrastructure. Now, the additional obligations - the accompanying investments indicated as part of the ULIM application - are fully financed by the investor and transferred to the municipality. We have been waiting for such a change for many years, today we can't believe that it has become possible. The amazing thing is that it will be possible to design schools that will become public facilities at the developers' expense. Building them as part of negotiations with the city also offers the chance to make them modern, functional and beautiful. In both Western Europe and the United States, very interesting public spaces are being created through such negotiations. An example of this is the POPS (Privately Owned Public Spaces) initiative in New York, which, in exchange for converting the ground floor of a building into a public space, allows a taller building to be built. In the ULIM procedure, the investor must not have a claimant attitude, he must enter into a dialogue with the neighborhood, the office of the city architect, urban activists and the city council, in order to negotiate the conditions under which he can realize the project. For me, the introduction of such a tool is a revolution in the way we think about how a city is built.
