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ISSUE N°7, December 2018
 

INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER

Dear Friends, 


Time flies when you’re having fun! The holidays are upon us again and we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a peaceful holiday season and a very happy New Year. Have a look at what we’ve been up to and stay warm!

Best wishes,
The EU and International Affairs Team, IPR Prague


Happy 5th birthday, IPR Prague! 

IPR Prague was created five years ago this fall through the transformation of the City Development Authority, or the previous planning agency, into the organization we are today. The aim of the restructuring was to create an institution charged with making Prague a living, influential, dynamic and competitive city that provides pleasant conditions for living, flexibly reacts to the current needs of its population, and maintains its place among the most advanced cities in Europe. These are the goals which we continue to strive for in our work.

Click here to learn more about the history of IPR Prague.

 

Winners are Announced for Three Design Competitions

Winners have been announced for the Karlovo námestí (Charles Square), Vítězné náměstí (Victory Square) and street furniture competitions.

The Karlovo Náměstí Competitive Dialogue, showcased in previous editions of the newsletter, drew to a close with the selection of a team including German landscape studio Rehwaldt Landschaftsarchitekten, Czech architecture firm BY Architects, and Czech transportation engineers PD Filip. More information about the winning entry can be found here.

The Vítězné Náměstí Design Competition was won by a team of Czech architects, including Pavel Hnilička, Eva Macková and Josef Filip. The winning entry can be seen here, and more general information about the project in English can be found here.

And finally, winners were announced for the second phase of the Street Furniture Competition, this time focusing on a new design for tram stops and railings throughout the city. The winning design and other entries can be viewed here and more general information can be found in English here. The first prototype for the new design should appear in Prague in October 2019.

 

IPR Prague Wins Two Prestigious Architectural Prizes

Two IPR projects have been honored with awards for exceptional achievement by the Czech Chamber of Architects. Prof. Ing. arch. Roman Koucký and the Office of the Metropolitan Plan received the award for finding a new path in spatial planning and promoting discourse about its purpose. The Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP) received the award for using an innovative approach to the promotion of architecture and for offering an opportunity to discuss the future development of Prague.

“We are pleased with both awards, as it shows that we have chosen the correct path. Both projects center on the future of city development. The Metropolitan Plan prepares Prague for this future, while CAMP is a place where anyone can come and ask about it,” says Ondřej Boháč, Director of IPR Prague.

"Prague will benefit greatly once the Metropolitan Plan is in effect. We now have a document that meets the strictest world standards. Congratulations to all who participated in the creation of the plan, "says Petr Hlaváček, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Development.

Preparation of the Metropolitan Plan began in 2012. One of its aims is to curtail urban sprawl, and it’s also the first plan to introduce height regulations for the city. Currently, the city is in the process of reviewing the public comments received on the draft plan during the public review stage.


Prague Takes Part in OECD Study on Transport Policy


IPR Prague is pleased to continue our cooperation with OECD, this time by participating in a new analysis on the topic of transport policy. OECD experts came to Prague in November to interview local stakeholders about urban and regional transport needs. Their analysis will investigate into how better targeted investment and transport policies could improve access to jobs and services.

Two days of interviews pinpointed some of the issues that Prague is facing, such as the high volumes of car traffic from the surrounding Central Bohemian Region entering Prague on a daily basis, a consequence of rapid suburbanization. On the other hand, Prague's system of public transport is an example of a good practice that it can share with other cities – both in the quality of its service and in the way it is operated through ROPID (Regional Organizer of Prague Integrated Transport). The other case studies being included in the analysis are Vancouver, Madrid and parts of Romania.

VIDEO

What can we learn from Danish and Swedish best-practice projects in the field of climate adaptation? How can we apply them to Prague and elsewhere?

In November, IPR hosted Nordic experts René Sommer Lindsay, Björn Embren and Mattias Gustafsson at an event focused on  making cities greener and preparing them for climate change. The examples they presented included the Cloudburst strategy and its implementation (Copenhagen), the planting of trees using stone biochar and compost (Stockholm), and several green-blue infrastructure projects (Stockholm). 

The event was organized by the NEXT institute from Brno and IPR Prague and was held at CAMP.

WATCH HERE! 
You can watch the presentations and the panel discussion with the three experts from the 20th minute of this video.

WHAT DOES THE LEGAL OFFICE ACTUALLY DO?


Spotlight on the Legal Office
 

We spoke to Martina Hajková from our Legal Office to get a better idea for what IPR’s lawyers do. 

What is the role of the legal department in IPR urban planning projects? Can you give an example?

The Legal Department, together with the Office of Public Procurement, guarantees that all of IPR’s work is in accordance with Czech law and internal guidelines. For example, in the proceedings involving the competitive dialogue for the revitalization of Charles Square, we guided the entire process, created all of the associated legal documents, and administrated the public procurement side of the competition.  

What other types of work does the legal department focus on?

Since we ensure that IPR Prague is in line with the Czech laws, the scope of our work is very broad-- from labor law to architectural competitions, to public procurement, and so on. In addition, as an innovative, relatively new institution, IPR has been at the forefront of new ways of approaching planning in Prague. This often brings with it a requirement for the creation of new legal frameworks within the boundaries of existing Czech legislation, which our team tackles.

How have the new GDPR guidelines affected IPR?

IPR Prague was not affected much by the new GDPR guidelines, because similar provisions were already included in the Czech law governing the protection of data. What has been more of a challenge for us is that within the EU GDPR guidelines, there are certain provisions where member states are required to adapt the legislation to the local context. In the Czech Republic, this has not yet happened, meaning that there is still some uncertainty around how some of these provisions will be implemented here in the future. 
 

WHAT ELSE HAS HAPPENED SINCE NOVEMBER?

IPR was pleased to participate in the EUROCITIES Creative Competitive Cities conference, held in Edinburgh in November of this year. We enjoyed the speakers as well as the side events, and are looking forward to hosting the 2019 EUROCITIES conference here in Prague next November! 

Our engagement with EUROCITIES continued into December, when we participated in the Working Group Metropolitan Areas meeting in Warsaw for a fruitful discussion on mechanisms to better integrate cities with their surrounding regions. 

In Vienna, we were  inspired by the “Housing for All” conference held in December, where our colleagues learned about the tools that Vienna has historically employed and continues to apply to keep living in the city affordable for lower and middle income groups while avoiding social stratification.

We were also glad to see our "Imagine Prague" exhibit, showcasing the city's Strategic Plan, picked up in an article on www.worldarchitecture.org. 

UPCOMING EVENTS

In the new year, we are looking forward to continued cooperation with our international partners and delegations. If you’re in town and interested in planned development projects around the city, stop by CAMP from January 9th to March 20th for the third iteration of the "Prague Tomorrow" exhibit, showcasing another 70 projects that have the potential to change the face of the city. 

2019 will also be a very busy year of hosting international guests. We will be co-hosting, together with City Hall, the next UNALaB Project Consortium Meeting and General Assemby in May 2019, when we will welcome up to 80 members of the UNaLab Consortium. For more about UNALaB, please see the project's website. Then in October, we will welcome the Triangulum Consortium for their last meeting before the project winds down in 2020.

The City of Prague will also host the EUROCITIES Annual Conference in November. More information will appear here as it becomes available.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 

Do you have any underpasses in your city, or even right in your neighbourhood? Would you like them to be safer and better designed? 

If so, have a look at these examples from the USA to see how 11 "ugly" underpasses have been transformed into meaningful public spaces. 
 

CONTACT US


Have any thoughts on this? Want to give us feedback or suggest improvements?
 
Please contact us at international@ipr.praha.eu.






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Prague Institute of Planning and Development · Vyšehradská 57 · Prague 12800 · Czech Republic

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