Parking or Planting: Prague 10 Calls a Third Meeting on Náměstí Svatopluka Čecha

Prague 10 will hold a third public meeting on the rebuilding of náměstí Svatopluka Čecha this autumn, the district announced on 10 September. The stated reason is scheduling: the first two sessions fell on 15 July and 27 August, in the middle of the holidays, and the district wants to give people who could not attend a chance to speak. The meeting will again be in the Sál bratří Čapků at the town hall, with the date announced in advance.

The process sits at a specific point. An architectural competition has already produced a winner, and what happens now is that the architects develop that winning entry — using further technical investigation and the comments collected from people who use the square.

The architectural competition gave us a good basis for the work that follows. In the next step the architects will develop the designs on the basis of further expert examination and the comments of people who use the square regularly. The public meetings help us name specific needs as well as differing views on how this place should work in future.

— Martin Valovič, mayor of Prague 10

What the two meetings produced

About 75 people came in July. The discussion concentrated on the ratio of green to paved surface, the square's future role, parking, and the character and frequency of events held there. On transport, some asked for parking spaces to be kept, particularly in the northern part of the square; there were also comments on cycling. Other questions covered the extent of the central paved area, a water feature, street furniture, playgrounds, a seasonal ice rink, a café and the facilities it would need, along with the square's history and the economics of the rebuild.

About 40 people came in August. That session went further into technical ground: the architects set out how step-free movement and the corresponding path gradients would work, and explained the principle of blue-green infrastructure — improving soil conditions and managing rainwater, including collecting and storing water from the church roof and using it for planting. From that followed a debate on trees, the water feature, grassed areas and microclimate, plus the width arrangement of the surrounding streets and pavements and the acoustic load during cultural events. Expanding the space for children and the role of the northern terrace were also discussed, and participants pressed for good continuous maintenance.

The district records one clear shift between the two: in August, more comments supported reducing parking in favour of space to spend time in than had been heard in July.

The constraints that will decide it

The district is explicit that not every comment can be absorbed. Any change has to respect the conditions of the space, the routing of utilities, and traffic, safety and accessibility standards. On top of that sits a heritage requirement to preserve the views of the church of St Wenceslas — which, the district says, affects among other things the scope for new planting in the central part of the square.

That is the sentence worth rereading. The most common request at a meeting like this is more trees in the middle; the constraint most likely to block it is a protected sightline to the church. The two cannot both be satisfied in full, and no amount of consultation makes that disappear. The same is true of the parking split, where the district has now documented two meetings pulling in opposite directions and has told the architects to balance them.

All comments have been recorded and are being evaluated. The detailed outputs from the second and third meetings will be published on the district's website, as the minutes of the first already have been. What is not yet public is a date, a budget or a construction timetable — those follow the developed design, not the consultation.