With the Metropolitan Plan in Force, IPR Splits Prague Into Four Offices and Moves Its Weight to Planning Contracts

The Prague Institute of Planning and Development (IPR) has rebuilt its structure around the work the Metropolitan Plan leaves it with. A new Coordination Section now handles everything to do with the development of a specific site in the city — an area study, a planning contract, a regulatory drawing, the assessment of a major project — whether the scheme is public or private. Its director, Kristýna Lhotská, dates the section to 1 July; IPR announced it on 20 October.

Both sources here are IPR's own: the institute's press release and an interview published by CAMP, the centre IPR runs. Nothing in them is independently reported, and the article reads them as what the institute says about how it will now work.

Why the structure changed

The reasoning is stated plainly. With the Metropolitan Plan approved, two of IPR's largest jobs ended: preparing amendments to the old zoning plan and drafting the new one. What grows instead, according to the institute, is the detailed work below the citywide plan — documentation for individual neighbourhoods, planning contracts and regulatory drawings.

Lhotská describes the Coordination Section as a loose successor to the former City Detail Section. A second new section, Metropolitan Planning, is led by Michal Leňo, and the two were designed to work closely together where the old agendas had been more separate. In future the Coordination Section will also be responsible for changes to the Metropolitan Plan itself.

Four offices, one team per site

The section is divided into four territorial offices: Centre, West, North-East and South-East.

• West runs from Praha 5 and 6 through Zličín and Suchdol to Zbraslav and Lipence.
• Centre covers Praha 1 and 2, part of Praha 3, and Praha 7 including Holešovice and Bubny-Zátory.
• North-East stretches from Vysočany through Kbely and Vinoř to Klánovice, Horní Počernice, Březiněves and Dolní Chabry.
• South-East coordinates, for example, Strašnice, Malešice, Štěrboholy and Horní Měcholupy down to Petrovice and Kolovraty.

Each office has named contacts with whom investors, architects and the public can discuss a project in their part of the city. The point, Lhotská says, is continuity: the people judging whether a new project complies with regulation should also know the history of the site, the earlier documentation and the city's long-term aims for it. Luboš Križan, formerly head of the Territorial Coordination Office and involved in the competition and planning contracts for Florenc 21 from the start, oversees method across all four.

Planning contracts become the lever

The part with the most consequence for what gets built is the planning contract. Through it the city agrees with a developer not only on the form of new construction but on what it gives back to its surroundings — schools, nurseries, parks, or financial contributions to public infrastructure. The regulatory drawing negotiated alongside sets the basic rules for future building on the site.

IPR is careful about where its own role ends:

Our role is above all to bring the expert view. We work from analytical data on the city's development, demography or the need for public amenities and help set conditions so that new construction matches the needs of the locality. The planning contracts themselves, however, are the result of an agreement between the city and the investor, and approving them is a political decision.

— Kristýna Lhotská, director of the Coordination Section, IPR Praha

What the institute pushes back on

Asked what it most often objects to in the projects it reviews, Lhotská named street design: proposals that put cars ahead of pedestrians, with perpendicular parking taking space from pavements and trees as the typical case. IPR is also pressing for continuous footway crossings at driveways in place of ordinary kerbed entrances, and regularly raises rainwater management.

She gave one recent example: a municipal housing project in Praha 13, where IPR supported building but proposed changing the layout, so that the result would have a more active ground floor and a better connection to Jeremiášova street instead of loading new traffic onto the surrounding estate.

An AI assistant for developers

Under the New Prague Neighbourhoods project, IPR is building an AI assistant for investors and city districts that is meant to explain which requirements apply to a given plot. Lhotská says a pilot version should be presented this year. Internally, the institute is looking at AI to help draft the expert opinions it issues, some of which recur.

What is not yet known

Neither source gives a number of planning contracts under negotiation, the staff the four offices have, or how the AI assistant's answers will relate to the binding rules it summarises. Read together, the two texts amount to a clear statement of intent: that after years spent writing one citywide document, Prague's planners now expect their influence to come site by site, in negotiations whose outcome IPR advises on and the city's politicians approve.