How to discourage residents from positive transformation of the city? It's simple. All it takes is organizational chaos and increasingly inferior ways of providing information. The reason? Not just thoughtlessness. The culprit is clerical inertia, low salaries and pushing magistrate tasks to city companies.
For several months now, Poznań has been experiencing a renovation offensive. Extensive reconstruction of the city center is underway, as part of the Downtown Project (Swiety Marcin and 27 Grudnia streets with adjoining areas), and work has begun on revalorizing the surface of the Old Market. After long renovations, the reconstruction of Wierzbięcice Street bordering the downtown area, the Rataje traffic circle, Rynek Łazarski, and the Old Town's Kolegiac Square has come to an end. To this must be added a number of repairs to streetcar tracks, which disrupt the use of public transportation.
sparse and difficult to find directional arrows (on the fence)
Photo: Jakub Głaz
a step backward
All these transformations are badly needed, but residents and downtown businesses are heartily fed up with them. They are expressing this more and more loudly, calling on the city authorities to better organize the work and inform about the changes. No wonder. On city construction sites, progress is very slow, often no workers can be seen, and signage for constantly changing crossings, bypasses and shortcuts occurs with little or no trace. Also in the city's Internet services there is a great shortage of communicative maps, projections and information.
The fractious location of a directional sign
photo: Jakub Glaz
This is all the more surprising, since just a few years ago Poznań was much better at announcing its intentions to residents - both online and in the city space. On the initiative of the then still active city visual artist, a coherent and clear urban information system was created. Consistent boards announced clearly on construction fences the purpose, scope and duration of investments, avoiding PR lip service.
repetition of entertainment
Today is different - it looks as if the city has reg ressed to the days of the previous mayor Ryszard Grobelny. The delayed and poorly thought-out reconstruction of the Kaponiera traffic circle was accompanied then, in 2013, by banners reading "29,300 cubic meters of concrete poured, everything new from the foundations, an investment for years." The situation is now repeating itself. After an appeal by Stare Miasto neighborhood councilman Tomasz Dworek, who demanded better information about investments, ghastly graphics were hung on the fence surrounding the reconstructed Marcinkowski Avenue (see title photo). They had nothing to do with the refined forms of the city's information system. After online criticism, the sheets were taken down, but the problem remained - good information and navigation are still lacking.
Marcinkowskiego Avenue
Photo: Jakub Głaz
Poznań Mayor Jacek Jaskowiak also seems to be orbiting further and further from reality. When downtown entrepreneurs from the Freedom Square Association appealed for better organization of the works and help in promoting businesses weakened by the renovations, the mayor unveiled a series of bizarre posts on Facebook, in which, among other things, he praised the investment momentum of the Poznań Municipal Investments Company and the Municipal Road Administration, and showed how to take a selfie without the renovations in the background. And later, on WTK TV, he instructed downtown entrepreneurs to improve their offerings and optimize prices. Instead, he explained the snail's pace of work by a pandemic, an exodus of Ukrainian workers and inflation, which is probably relevant, although the spontaneity of work on private investments says otherwise.
companies on special rights
What is the result of the chaos and arrogance accompanying the investments, which - in the end - will benefit the shape and functioning of the downtown, which is being renovated in stages? There are, it seems, several reasons. First, after more than seven years in government, the authorities have lost their social sensitivity and switched to a table-and-investment mode of management. Second, the reform of the city's management structures, which was not carried out years ago, is taking revenge. The lack of a coordinator of all investment and architectural intentions is acutely felt. For such a role is not played by the head of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture.
Lack of direction of access, Święty Marcin Street
photo: Jakub Głaz
Finally, it is difficult to demand much from low-paid magistrate staff. Especially if they are demotivated by the situation in city companies operating on completely different principles. For example: in Poznański Inwestycje Miejskie, Marcin Gołek, a former assistant (now also an advisor) to Jaskowiak (not previously associated with construction or investments, a thirty-year-old), has been working as vice-president of the board for more than three years - with an annual salary of just over PLN 559,000 gross in 2021. It is worth remembering this while wandering in the mired labyrinths of PIM-coordinated Poznań renovations. Their course may serve as an instruction manual for other cities: "how to disgust citizens with meaningful changes in an easy way."
