As of December 29, 2024, the arrangements of the Cultural Park "Historic Center of Warsaw" took effect in the capital. Positive changes will include many phenomena derived from intensive tourist traffic. How will the center of Warsaw change, and when will spatial order also take hold outside the areas covered by the Cultural Park?
Spatial order is not only buildings that, standing on strong foundations, build up its space for decades or even hundreds of years. It's also the more ephemeral elements that appear and disappear - booths, advertisements, stalls, food bicycles or event-related infrastructure. While the form of objects in the former category is regulated by a number of documents and laws, such as the findings of Local Area Plans or conservation protection, for ephemeral components of urban space the matter is often much less obvious. In this case, two legal solutions in particular come to the rescue - a landscape resolution and, for historically significant spaces, the establishment of a Cultural Park.
Warsaw's Cultural Park is finally up and running
Warsaw's space is currently regulated by only one of these documents - the Cultural Park of the Historic Center of Warsaw was enacted a year ago, but it was not until December 29, 2024 that some of its provisions came into effect. What will the changes include and in what area will they apply?
Map of the Cultural Park of the Historic Center of Warsaw
© UM Warszawa
The Cultural Park Historic Center of Warsaw was established in December 2023 on an area encompassing the Old and New Towns, the Royal Route, Krasinski and Saski gardens, as well as parks located below the Skarpa and Łazienki Królewskie Parks, stretching over an area of nearly 6 kilometers. The document passed at the time was to take effect on December 29, 2024, but in the meantime the city decided to change its wording. The main idea was to simplify and clarify the provisions it contained. To this end, several rounds of public consultations were held, including the most recent one, concluded on December 22 of this year, which was attended primarily by entrepreneurs interested in the changes.
Door-to-door sales in the center of Warsaw
© UM Warszawa
itinerant trade only according to the letter of the law
The effects of the Park Kulturowy Park Historyczne Centrum Warszawy resolution will be felt primarily by those engaged in itinerant trade. So far this branch of commerce has not been regulated in the city from the perspective of spatial chaos, but from two days any person trying to engage in this kind of activity in the protected area will have to obtain permission from the land manager, which in most cases is the city. According to Warsaw officials, this is to combat illegal food carts and bicycles, which not only negatively affect the aesthetics of the urban space, but can also cause obstructions to pedestrian traffic.
Castle Square in Warsaw - in the background you can see stalls with door-to-door sales and clusters of helium balloons
Photo: Rhododendrites © CC BY SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
food gardens with restrictions
Another change is the regulation of the size of food gardens. As in the case of door-to-door trading, gardens at bars, restaurants and cafes often occupy a large portion of sidewalks, disorganizing pedestrian traffic and impeding the movement of people in wheelchairs.
The absolute minimum is a 180 cm wide pedestrian lane free of obstructions. No advertising stumbling blocks, trash cans and lamp posts, from plant pots and two-meter waffles. Fences, umbrellas and menu desks must fit within the garden area designated by the land manager.
- proclaims the wording of the information on the Warsaw City Hall website.
The regulations will also cover stands, including those erected on the occasion of Christmas markets. According to the document, they will now have to operate with consistent, subdued colors, their area will be limited to 5 square meters, and only 0.3 square meters of the booth can be covered with advertising content.
The Historic Center of Warsaw is to combat the onerous consequences of tourist traffic
Photo: Rhododendrites © CC BY SA 4.0 | Wikimedia Commons
center without toilets
An interesting and necessary change will also take place in the matter of public toilets. From now on, it will be illegal to put up toi-tois and their other outdoor counterparts. While this seems unlikely in the third decade of the 21st century, until recently such toilets could be found in the center of Warsaw, for example in Nowy Swiat.
We are confident that the city will provide public toilets in an aesthetically pleasing form.
- claim city representatives.
Will this actually happen? It's hard to say, because Warsaw clearly has a problem with providing access to public toilets, a prominent example of which is the story of the automatic toilet in Skaryszewski Park, which took three years to build, costing 650,000 zlotys to erect, and in the end using it anyway is not the most pleasant, because the area around it is not paved.
Warsaw's historic center without advertising
The changes outlined are only part of what the Cultural Park Act will change in the historic heart of Warsaw. Advertisements destroying historic facades and disfiguring the facades of Warsaw tenements are expected to disappear next May, when the resolution on the Historic Center of Warsaw Cultural Park becomes fully effective. Until then, comments made during consultations on the project are still being analyzed. It is also known that the provisions already in force regarding the issues mentioned in the above paragraphs may be subject to amendment.
Billboard on tenements on Jerozolimskie Avenue
Photo: Panek © CC BY-SA 4.0
When will a landscape resolution for Warsaw be passed?
The city calls the Cultural Park project a "Small Landscape Resolution." However, what about a real landscape law? In this case, the situation is a bit more complicated, and has actually been getting more complicated since 2017, when the first work on this document began. Back in 2023, it seemed that Warsaw would finally get a tool to protect urban space from unwanted, unsightly advertisements, billboards and advertising banners. The reality turned out to be quite different, however, as the city's plans were thwarted by the Constitutional Court of Maria Przyłębska, which was to rule in a December 12, 2023 ruling that removing advertisements without the possibility of seeking compensation is an unconstitutional action. Work on the resolution in Warsaw has therefore been halted again. The City Is Ours foundation writes about plans for the future of advertising in Warsaw:
This is interesting in light of the election promises of Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, who declared that one of the first actions he would take would concern the landscape resolution. This makes it all the more puzzling that, despite similar legal and organizational problems, other large Polish cities - Krakow, Gdynia, Gdansk, Sopot, Lodz and Poznan- have managed to introduce a document protecting space from advertisements. Members of the City Is Ours foundation predict that the resolution will reach the City Council in about two years. How long it will take to put it into effect is unknown.
