The new Prague zoning plan could be ready by spring next year

Prague - The long-awaited new zoning plan for Prague could be ready for voting in the council by spring or summer of next year. This summer, the Prague municipality will publish a draft updated according to the latest round of comments from 2022, after which it will be possible to express opinions on it again. At today’s meeting of the Prague council's housing committee, the director of the municipal department of urban development, Filip Foglar, said this. The so-called Metropolitan Plan was originally supposed to come into effect in 2020.

The current plan was approved in 1999 and can still be valid only on the basis of an exception from the Ministry of Regional Development. The draft of the Metropolitan Plan was published by the city in 2018, followed by the first round of comments, which, according to Foglar, received about 45,000 comments or objections. The municipal department has incorporated these and another round followed in 2022, when around 18,000 suggestions came in.

Officials have also incorporated those in recent years into the proposal and, according to the director, they are now nearly at the finish line. He added that the department has tried to accommodate the comments from city districts. "We completely revised it from scratch," he said. After the publication of the updated proposal this summer, according to him, there will be another round of comments, and if all goes well, the completed proposal could be submitted to the political representation for a vote by mid-next year.

The zoning plan is one of the main documents that determines construction in Prague. The preparation of the Metropolitan Plan began under Mayor Tomáš Hudeček (then TOP 09). Compared to the current one, the proposed plan represents a significant shift, it is more flexible, addresses height regulations, and considers not only the functional use of the area but also the character of the area and urban districts. The plan focuses on several key areas, namely climate change, housing, public spaces, and amenities.

The proposal has previously been criticized by ecological and heritage organizations, among others. In the past, there were disputes surrounding its preparation, due to which the main author of the plan, architect Roman Koucký, temporarily left the city’s Institute of Planning and Development. In the end, he returned to lead the team at the institute preparing the plan after winning a tender.