Municipalities have until the end of 2025 to make a revolution in spatial planning. In some, preparations to implement the so-called general plan are in full swing, while others have not even passed resolutions to proceed. Applications submitted by residents are dominated by requests to leave allotment gardens and allow single-family housing.
By the end of next year, every municipal study must be replaced by a new general plan. The document, which municipalities must prepare in such a short period of time, will specify the use of a given area: it will indicate where neighborhoods, jobs, parks or roads are to be built. It will also divide the city into zones, for which, among other things, the maximum height, area and intensity of development will be determined. The assumption is that the changes should facilitate and speed up spatial planning, although in reality - as we wrote in the pages of AiB - there is unfortunately nothing to count on to improve spatial order.
thousands of comments
Among large cities, the most advanced work on the general plan is being carried out by Gdansk and Krakow, among others - there, the collection of applications from residents has already ended, after both cities decided to extend the deadlines provided by the law. Many municipalities - such as Poznań and Warsaw - have this process yet to come.
What do residents expect? In Gdansk, 5,484 comments were received. For comparison: to the study of Gdansk, which was finally passed in 2018, residents submitted 937 of them. With the fact that as much as 75 percent of the applications submitted to the general plan are related to one thread: Family Allotment Gardens. Users of the gardens are calling for preserving the current use of these areas.
- Many times meeting with allotment holders we hear that they appreciate the existing opportunity in Gdansk to spend time in close contact with nature," comments Edyta Damszel-Turek, director of the Gdansk Development Office. - Such a large mobilization of this group of residents on the occasion of work on the master plan is very gratifying, but it is hard not to get the impression that this is partly the effect of the disinformation campaign conducted in recent months and scaring allotment owners that failure to submit an application could result in the liquidation of the ROD and the introduction of development in its place. Probably that's also why hundreds of applications with identical content have been submitted for the same plots.
Applications to the general plan of the city of Gdansk have also been submitted, among others, by residents who plan to invest in their area; about 50 applications concern allowing residential and commercial development in the agricultural areas of Olszynka. In addition, 57 applications concerned the routing of the streetcar line in Klonowa Street, while 25 concerned maintaining the current building height in the Manhattan area (20 meters).
A larger share of residents can boast of Krakow, where about 16,500 comments were received. Most concerned single-family housing ( 40 percent), but also, as in Gdansk, the preservation of allotment gardens and green areas (32 percent). The others mainly concern multi-family developments, but also the allocation of specific areas of the city for parking lots with greenery, services or transportation areas.
new rules of the game for the city
What's next.
- We assume that in September there will be a preliminary report, and then each comment will be considered and evaluated to see if it will go into the master plan. We need these comments to create a master plan, which is a new rule of the game for the city, a new rule of the game for space. We want spatial order to become part of the world we live in, we can see that this longing for aesthetics in space is reflected in the number of applications," reported Stanislaw Mazur, deputy mayor of Krakow.
The application stage was by no means the last opportunity for residents to have their say. The next one will come when the draft plan has already been presented. In addition, public consultations are planned - they will be held in the capital of Malopolska in the first half of next year.
