INTERVIEWS AHEAD OF KRYNICA FORUM 2023
Magdalena Milert, urban planner: We need deglomeration, that is reducing the load on the biggest cities
‘We have to quickly re-evaluate our imaginations and behaviours to have the chance of creating in the cities a space for living’ – comments Magdalena Milert, architect, urban planner, Jagiellonian Club expert, who will take part in Krynica Forum 2023.
Unbearable heatwaves, then equally troublesome downpours and local flooding – that’s the summer look of many housing estates in Polish cities. Have we dealt this fate to ourselves?
Yes, but quite knowingly. After all, no one wants to create the worst possible public space, one which can barely be used. This space is the result of regulations, culture, ingrained habits, and being slow to adapt. Regulations that govern the formula of tenders compel us to use cheap, durable, and Polish materials. Here, nothing beats paver and stone. Local spatial development plans don’t account for a sufficient amount of green areas. Conservators are unwilling to agree to tree planting, giving the obligation to protect facades as their reason. Tree-lined squares are associated with the need to rake the leaves in, and the afterimages of the previous political era make us partial to ‘keeping the land tidy’, or paving it over so that not even grass grows there. We have to quickly re-evaluate our imaginations and behaviours to have the chance of creating in the cities a space for living.
What ails Polish people in the cities apart from weather anomalies in urban heat islands?
Big Polish cities mean bigger congestions, including traffic jams. Both air pollution and stress are the results. The larger the city, the faster the pace of life. You can see it well in the case of Warsaw, which drums this rhythm and seems not only to guarantee ‘meteoric rise’ measured with a job in a glassy office building but also to burn people out in professional or mental terms, and which some run away from – preferably to the country. A big city also means big cost of life, often too high to handle, especially if someone with no seed money tries to find a flat. This leads to overpopulation: we’ve got an excessive number of people per dwelling according to WHO standards. In parallel, suburbanisation is coming in strides, that is people start living outside the city in search of better-priced housing with the property area they need to live.
Are we able to halt the urban sprawl?
We need to remember that the sprawl of Wrocław is a totally different phenomenon than the sprawl of Sanok or Niepołomice. Everything around us is by design, regulations too, and urban sprawl is an activity that is entirely man-made and is not happening in a vacuum. The prerequisite here is a precise analysis of causes, then we need to go on to implement specific, multi-level actions.
Is the flight from the centre to the suburbs a good solution?
If we are running away from the city, it’s most likely not to the suburbs but to the countryside or a small town. If we choose the suburbs, it’s likely the outcome of searching for a well-priced dwelling with a sufficient size, perhaps the ‘Polish dream’ of having a house coming true. Such a decision does involve certain consequences, however – suburbs are not cities, their character is completely different.
What are their pros and cons from the perspective of people of various ages – from children to seniors?
If and when you are a non-disabled person with a driving licence who works from home, it can be a good solution. But we still need to get to grips with teenagers suffering transport exclusion, often social, too, as they are dependent on the bus timetables, optionally on parents driving them. Such a neighbourhood won’t let us find dedicated spaces, e.g. a playground you could go to with a child. A house is also a financial and temporal commitment, especially in the time horizon of decades: it needs to have facades repainted, the roof patched, not to mention the garden. The prospect of a Sunday coffee on the sunny patio surrounded by flowers is gorgeous, but someone who has never cleaned a patio or taken care of even the smallest flowerbed will be stunned by how energy it takes. And we are not getting any younger.
What are the cardinal sins of Polish local governments in spatial planning?
Siloed approach, term-bound notions, short-sighted view. We are thinking ‘here and now’, optionally about the real estate tax revenue, not in terms of longer planning, urban planning, future-proofing.
How can we halt the harmful trends and enhance the positive ones? To what extent active local government policy is necessary here, and to what extent central authorities can stimulate or help such actions?
The policy of local governments has a lot of influence here. It is them that decide the introduction of the relevant spatial development plans, which will precisely outline the limits of urban growth, focusing on the development of areas that are urbanised already and avoiding the sprawl of buildings. The introduction of green area protection, especially of the existing ecosystems, including trees, is a must. We need a policy for all of Poland too, including deglomeration, that is reducing the load on the biggest cities.
Are there any examples of successful initiatives by local Polish governments that improved the quality of urban living and are worth promoting?
We have a surfeit of initiatives before the election… New bike paths and bike racks make me really happy. Thanks to them, traffic decreases, air quality improves, and residents have better access to recreational routes. I would put energy-saving upgrades second, that is all the building insulations but also the switch to renewables. Waste segregation policy comes third.
Magdalena Milert, architect, urban planner, Jagiellonian Club expert, will have the floor in the debate on future cities during Krynica Forum 2023.
