A requirement of the Gdańsk Local Urban Development Standards - usable first floors instead of parking lots and service roads
pic: Edyta Skiba
Edyta: Still, the concept (KUA) is a public commitment of the investor. The basis for issuing a building permit is the characterization, which is also an appendix to the city council's resolution. However, one gets the impression that the public commitment is the strongest binding element for the investor. For the first time, we have a situation in which the change of particular parts of the city has become the subject of public debate, which is lived not only by the media, but above all by the residents.
Luke:The public nature of the speculative proposal is one of the few significant advantages of this solution. The findings of the proposal are published in the Public Information Bulletin, so residents have the opportunity to see all the attachments to the proposal. This also creates an opportunity to hold the investor accountable for his promises at a later stage. Ensuring the transparency of the entire proceeding is a very important issue that is not much talked about in the context of the speculative law. While implementing the Openness Project in Gdansk, Zaspa, we noticed that access to information alone is no substitute for dialogue. Most often, residents learn about solutions too late. Then there is no opportunity for a significant correction of the adopted assumptions, everyone has to live with the consequences of the planning decisions issued. Transparency in the process of passing a speculative proposal is not only its publication, but also the opportunity for opinions and comments. The main challenge is the short response time. Despite this shortcoming, the public party has more oversight of the process and design solutions than in the case of building permits issued on the basis of a local plan or development conditions. The watchdog activities of public organizations show that transparency makes it possible to increase control over the solutions adopted and, if anything, stop negative actions.
Edit: The scope of public obligations is regulated by "Local Urban Development Standards," defining the connection of developments with public transportation, roads, schools and recreational areas. However, they lack provisions that protect the environment. Take, for example, the biological area - still the minimum value is a factor derived from technical conditions. With what tools can the city negotiate better environmental parameters for investments?
Lukasz: This is quite an important theme, indeed it would be worthwhile to increase these requirements within the framework of urban planning standards. However, let's remember that the spec law does not exclude the operation of technical conditions and separate environmental regulations. However, these requirements are likely to increase, if only because of the Drought Protection Law or the need for rainwater retention. I am in favor of increasing the competence of local governments to set standards and modify them. This approach was successfully tested by Gdansk. The local government has succeeded in setting standards well beyond the statutory minimum. Their ambition is not only to indicate quantitative parameters, but also qualitative ones. Meeting Gdansk's urban planning standards is not so easy and forces the application of many solutions to improve the quality of the settlements being built under the special law. I believe that local governments should be able to set requirements and standards related to rainwater retention and increasing the share of biologically active area in investment areas. These are also issues that need to be adjusted at other levels of spatial planning in order to adapt it to the challenges of climate change adaptation.
Edyta: What qualitative criteria do the Gdansk urban planning standards assume?
Lukasz: It is worth reading the entire text of the local urban planning standards prepared for Gdansk. In terms of the shaping of development, they are interesting in that they deal with the shaping of the urban composition, the organization of first floor services and the frontage of the plot in the context of fighting the scourge of service roads built for settlements. The criteria also allow controlling the quality of architecture. The standards were developed by the Gdansk Development Bureau in cooperation with the city's Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, representing the architecture and construction administration. Meeting such requirements gives investors more hope for a smooth processing of the application by the city authorities also at the stage of the construction permit. It is very important that a precedent has been set nationally to increase requirements for investors. It also proves that municipalities can safeguard the public interest by clearly declaring the expectations for the investor, necessary to be realized in order to benefit from the facilitation of the administrative process.
Edyta: Still, despite these exacting standards, the involvement of a group of experts - in the form of the city's urban planning and architectural commission - reviewing the proposal, councilors openly declare their distrust of the procedure, seeing the spec as an assault on their authority.
Lukasz: Perhaps first let's look at the genesis of the conflict. Since the operators of the projects implemented by the Housing Plus program, were supposed to be commercial entities, the speculative law was opened to developers as well. As a result, some private investors found that this was a tool that could begin to be used for commercial projects. This, in turn, caused local governments to treat this tool as a trick to bypass the planning system. During the implementation of the spec law, no provision was made for pilot implementations - in cooperation with local governments. Not surprisingly, the lack of dialogue between the government and local governments resulted in a negative reaction from the latter. The superimposition of conflicts arising from national policy on these issues did not help, as well as the rapid preparation of the law and the associated underdevelopment leaving local authorities with many doubts. In my opinion, the jurisprudence of the courts and practice have shown that if the process of analyzing the application by the local government is done decently, substantive arguments are presented, which are the reasons for rejecting the application, then the council is entitled to make a negative decision. Nothing here limits its authority. However, I would like to emphasize at this point that it must be a substantive decision. It is important that local government officials are aware that they have an obligation to carry out planning work that allows them to conduct spatial policy in an orderly and transparent manner. It is not possible, on the one hand, not to prepare local plans, to rely on vouchers, and on the other hand, to vote against the use of any other tools that allow residential development, explaining it as a responsibility for spatial order.
A requirement of the Gdansk Local Urbanism Standards - rainwater retention, recreational spaces for residents in greenery
pic: Edyta Skiba
Edyta: Do cities and towns need more PUM (floor area of apartments)?
Luke: I think it is more a question of quality than quantity. The motivation for the construction of new housing is the changing needs of urban residents, resulting from changing expectations of life and where to live. Another problem is the availability of housing, which is probably one of the main challenges. In the near future we will have to face the problem that the West is currently facing, namely the "rental generation." This includes young people who cannot afford to buy their own apartment and who spend their money not on loan repayments, but on rents that go primarily to private property owners. Analyzing the utility alone makes the discussion of the condition of Polish housing go down the drain. Let's not forget that the speculative law was only one element of the reform aimed at increasing housing availability.
Edyta: The special law is presented as a solution to increase the supply of housing on the market, leading to lower prices. However, perhaps in combination with the New Deal program and housing loan subsidies, it will help to inflate the speculative bubble even more?
Lukasz: This is a question for a real estate specialist rather than an urban planner. From my perspective, I can say that when the barriers to the functioning of the housing market were identified, one of the most important factors was the duration of administrative procedures. This refers to the issuance of building permits and the time it takes to pass local plans. Changes in the zoning of land so that residential development could be carried out on it were pointed out as mechanisms that could help. The sites in question were post-industrial, post-military, post-rail areas. It was also important to streamline the administrative part related to the preparation of a building permit. As a result of these discussions, there was a proposal for such a tool as a special law, which was to provide a temporary fast-track mechanism. It should be remembered that this idea went in tandem with the Housing Plus program and the formation of the National Property Stock, which was to create a land base for public housing.
Edit: What about the social stock, which cities tend to get rid of, and which should provide an alternative to the commercial market?
Luke: Having a social resource, which is a viable alternative not only to buying an apartment on the commercial market, but also to renting on the commercial market, is currently quite a problem. It depends not only on administrative and legal issues, but on the entire process of preparing and acquiring land and making investments. This was the main reason for the slow pace of implementation of the Housing Plus program. This raises another question: to what extent do legal conditions, including planning, influence the factors determining the availability of housing. We talk about supply, but the relevant question is: what shapes demand. Rather, it's worth starting to ask whether these are apartments purchased by future residents and financed by loans, or whether it is rather dictated by the growing share of the investment market, treated as a convenient capital investment. Lack of financial accessibility for the average homebuyer does not cause housing sales to fall, it just causes them to be bought by others, with other implications and challenges. For example, people who do not have the opportunity to buy their own apartment will spend their funds not on loan repayment, but on rent. Here the question is from whom they will rent apartments: whether from commercial entities or in public housing. This is the paradox of the strong marketization of housing.
A requirement of the Gdansk Local Urban Development Standards - access to a public road and networks (water, heat, electricity, sewer)
drawing by Edyta Skiba
Edyta: One way to solve shortages in the social housing stock could be to require the transfer of a portion of the apartments of a given development to the city, following the model of solutions common in the UK, for example. The question arises, however, whether this would not be a resource that would be quickly disposed of by the municipality, since the accompanying investments - schools, parks or roads - are already raising concerns in municipalities about maintenance and management costs.
Lukas: Let's not forget that cities are obliged to have a housing policy. In the short term, such an arrangement could be seen by the municipality as a burden. The divestment of municipal properties by municipalities, either as a way to get rid of a stock in poor condition or to support privatization, has contributed to some of the current housing problems. A contributory system, giving away housing in commercial properties, is one solution that can help rebuild this resource. Schools, parks, public housing are public assets, they cost money, but they bring tangible benefits to residents, increase the attractiveness of the municipality to live in, and thus revenue to the city coffers.
Edyta: Will the changes envisioned in the amendment to the Planning and Zoning Law currently under way improve the situation? What challenges does the government face in this regard?
Luke: A very important element will be to curb the use of the procedure of building conditions and strengthen the role of the local plan, including allowing municipalities to cover all the land they manage with a plan. In a way, this coincides with what has been advocated so far as part of plans to reform the planning system, namely to try to replace the Study with a master plan. It would allow, on the one hand, the efficient issuance of building permits, and, on the other hand, enable the management of the municipality's space. There is, of course, one catch here: it is necessary to think carefully about how to solve the biggest problem, which is legalizing the oversupply of investment land. If the exuberant provisions of studies (SUiKZP) are submitted when creating general plans, there is a risk that millions of dollars of reserves for new development areas would be legalized. It seems to me that this is one of the biggest challenges to the implementation of the reform of the planning system, if it happens as currently envisioned.
Edyta: Thank you for the interview!
