In May, the Prague Institute of Planning and Development (IPR) launched the ‘Prague Tomorrow?’ website, which looks to make available publicly the details of all the development projects planned for Prague, those underway and those just completed. It currently has 184 development projects listed on the site. This relatively low number and the number of projects that will clearly fail to meet their expected completion dates serve to show that Prague will continue to struggle to get projects underway until the city streamlines the building permitting process and finalises the new Metropolitan Plan.

There is no doubt the ‘Prague Tomorrow?’ website will be a valuable tool for both the general public and industry professionals alike. It is a comprehensive database of construction and development projects, ranging from the minor development of urban vacant lots, to the reconstruction of entire streets and squares, all the way up to the development of large transformational areas. However, Savills has already identified one large project missing: ACS Properties’ hotel and business centre complex to be built around the stadium of Sparta Prague in Letna.

Looking at the projects by real estate segment, the database has 68 housing projects, 31 office projects, 11 mixed-use projects and 13 large-scale “transformation territory” projects. Each entry displays basic information about the project, including its location, investor, architect and estimated total investment. The site also includes visualisations and expected completion dates.

Yet at a time when Savills research found that Central London has never seen so many development opportunities in play at one time as in 2019, with 6.7 million sq ft of space currently available, this database also shows the extent to which Prague is still struggling to get new projects off the ground.

Much of the blame for that lies with the country’s cumbersome permitting process. The World Bank’s 2019 “Doing Business” survey put the Czech Republic in 156th place out of 190 countries for the ease of getting a building permit, down from 127th place in the 2018 survey. In Europe, only Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Moldova ranked lower. The survey said the number of required procedures for Czechia was 21 and the average number of days was 246, which compares with just 7 procedures and an average of 64 days for the highest ranked European country of Denmark.

PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

Another brake on development opportunities is the painfully slow progress of the new Metropolitan Plan for the city. In April 2018, the IPR published its draft Metropolitan Plan for the Czech capital, which will replace the old land use plan adopted back in 1999. The IPR says this draft Metropolitan Plan offers a new perspective on urban planning and sets out clear rules on the development of Prague for the next 15 to 20 years. Officials talk about the final Metropolitan Plan being adopted by the City Council in 2023, though many people believe that date will be missed because much will depend on how many objections are received. And there are expected to be many.

One of the centrepieces of the Plan is to halt the urban sprawl on the outskirts of Prague and instead concentrate on those large-scale “transformation territory” projects in city areas that have lost their original industrial or transportation uses and remain unused and neglected. This would open up large-scale development opportunities, though already there are complaints from the green lobby that increasing the building density within the city will only happen at the expense of parks and sports grounds.

The new Metropolitan Plan, like the IPR’s ‘Prague Tomorrow?’ website, will help to bring Prague’s development into the 21^st century. However, it will undoubtedly be a slow process.