Support the Preparation of the Metropolitan Plan!

The existing territorial plan and the discussed concept of the "new" plan are reflective of the 1970s.
They are documents based on regulation and restriction, unwelcoming and incomprehensible documents.
They stem from the assumption of formal expertise and public passivity, serving only the interests of individuals.

In contrast, the prepared process perceives the initiative of people as part of the territorial plan.
The new Metropolitan Plan must be an open, dynamic, and broadly communicative document.
Prague must finally have a developed and contemporary plan in the spirit of current European trends.

Today, a city can no longer be planned from above and statically in a naively objectivist spirit.
A truly livable city requires very broad cooperation from those who inhabit it daily.
If the city is not to be reduced to a marketplace for plots, its plan must be genuinely shared.

The creation of the Metropolitan Plan is conditional upon the completion of work on the ongoing territorial plan.
The termination of the current process and the start of work on a new plan is not in conflict with legislation.
Those who benefit from the existing one-sidedness of the plan are now trying to prevent these changes.

On June 7, 2012, at 9 a.m., the Assembly of the Capital City of Prague discusses this groundbreaking topic.
Let's support an open and welcoming Prague in any peaceful but emphatic way!

Just as those who lost power, whether expressed through property or position, loudly voiced their opinions after 1989, so now, after significant positive changes at the Prague City Hall, the same types of people are shouting their concerns about these changes. Just like those after 1989, these also "explain" to the public that it is just a change of power elites, not qualitative changes. Such people cannot even recognize, let alone admit, that someone can act with pure intentions. In the case of the Prague territorial plan, Deputy Tomáš Hudeček quickly recognized that the existing plans are an ideal tool for corruption (incoherence allowing constant shifts in direction, over-regulation requiring continuous changes in rules, formality preventing a dynamic city tactic) and completely lack friendliness of use and clarity of vision. During their preparation, more and more emphasis was placed on the formal aspect, without reflecting significant changes in both the socio-political and economic-technological spheres. Similarly, there is glaring ignorance of fundamental changes in the current method of urban planning in developed European countries. Territorial plans here lack the rigidity and technocratic characteristics typical of Czech plans. They are very understandable and open both for discussion during their deliberation and for interpretation in their use. A crucial parameter here is their strategic character or vision. Stringency lies in defining the protection of values and maintaining the agreed direction of development, not in absurd insistence on indefensible regulations. Territorial plans here serve as a basis for further negotiations, whether with the public within the framework of more detailed plans and studies, or with investors when discussing their intentions.
And this should also be the case for the new Metropolitan Plan of the Capital City of Prague, a newly formulated urban planning document. The theoretical preparation for such a change has been ongoing for about a year; Deputy Hudeček is consulting this topic with an unusually wide range of significant experts, and the matter is also being discussed, albeit much more discreetly, but nonetheless emphatically, in the political environment of the capital city. And it is here that the influence of those who do not want to lose their aforementioned power manifests itself. On the one hand, there are the "experts" who believe that urban planning is just one and that there is no difference now from socialist planning, and on the other, those who confuse the territorial plan with the board game "Monopoly." If we really want to realize the ideologies currently proclaimed either formally or ideologically such as "sustainability," "participation," or "ecology," we must fundamentally change our view on urban planning first and foremost. Now is the opportunity for this.