The Czech Chamber of Architects disagrees with the proposal of the Spatial Development Policy of the Czech Republic 2008

By December 31, 2008, a proposal for the Czech Republic's 2008 Territorial Development Policy must be submitted to the government for approval. The document has been accessible to all interested parties on the website of the Ministry for Regional Development for several weeks, and the public could submit their comments until September 25 of this year. The Czech Chamber of Architects also took advantage of this opportunity and sent its opinion in a timely manner. Official commenting bodies, which include ministries and regions, also expressed their views on the proposal. Additional suggestions were received from neighboring countries. All comments are currently being evaluated.

The Czech Republic's 2008 Territorial Development Policy (TDP) is a document prepared by the Ministry for Regional Development, which should serve as a basis for promoting the interests and goals of the Czech Republic in Europe, related to the development of the values of our nation's territory, and as a foundation for the state’s territorial policy towards regions and municipalities. As stipulated by the Building Act, the TDP should define national priorities for spatial planning, and its tasks should also include care for the landscape and urban environment. It should coordinate the spatial planning activities of regions and municipalities, providing them with relevant information about the anticipated development of infrastructure, especially transportation, but also technical infrastructure. The Territorial Development Policy establishes the conditions for decision-making and evaluating projects that significantly impact the territory of several regions and have nationwide, international, or cross-border implications. The TDP does not propose the placement of individual buildings but only delineates "corridors and areas" and "development axes and zones." The TDP will be reviewed and potentially amended during updates every four years.
The Czech Chamber of Architects (CCA) is a legally mandated institution responsible for managing the profession and activities related to overseeing public interests in the field of spatial planning, urbanism, and architecture. Although the Territorial Development Policy is reflected in all spatial planning documentation prepared by architects and urbanists, this institution was not invited to participate in the preparation of the document nor was it a mandatory commenting body, thus its opinion summarizing objections to the proposal for the Czech Republic's Territorial Development Policy was sent only as part of public comments.
The CCA's opinion addresses individual sections of the document and comments on their solutions. Generally, however, the Chamber does not consider the proposal for the Policy to be a conceptual material, as it essentially just adopts the intentions of the ministries without verifying their consequences on territorial development. It does not represent a conception that aligns with the concepts of neighboring countries, particularly in the hierarchical understanding of settlement structure and the justification of significant infrastructural projects. No priorities, reasons for anticipated changes, or cost estimates for the monitored projects and timelines for their realization are established. If the TDP was supposed to be merely a summary of existing data about the territory, then its contribution is debatable since municipalities and regions have significantly more precise information in their documents. Furthermore, the TDP lacks a number of already prepared materials and references to international documents to which the Czech Republic has committed itself in the past.
Moreover, the CCA believes that a document significantly influencing spatial planning at the regional and municipal levels cannot be created without the participation of municipalities, especially larger cities. Although regions participated in preparing the TDP, experience shows that regions do not always represent the interests of the municipalities within their territory – they can, in many cases, be conflicting. Thus, the development plans for a given region can differ significantly between the regional leadership and its municipalities. Larger cities currently have a bigger budget than the regions, which also spend a substantial portion of their resources on "operational" (mandatory) expenses (transportation services, education, healthcare, social services, etc.).
The Building Act stipulates that the TDP is binding for preparing and issuing the principles of territorial development for individual regions, municipal plans, regulatory plans, and for decision-making in the territory. This means that the TDP will directly affect municipalities, as it can influence the spatial planning documentation approved and issued by them. According to the statement of the CCA Secretary Jiří Plose, this situation can have fundamental consequences: "At the moment when parts of the approved spatial planning documentation of a municipality come into conflict with the TDP, they will be suspended and will have to be changed in accordance with the TDP. In this way, the Territorial Development Policy can significantly intervene in the development plans and intentions of municipalities. For example, if a new transportation connection between two points is proposed in the TDP, it must necessarily go through specific territories and will thus affect many larger municipalities and cities. Therefore, the intentions of individual municipalities should be known in advance while processing the TDP."
According to the CCA, it is important for the Policy to primarily become a conception of priorities, a basis for systematic negotiations between the state, regions, and municipalities.
Milan Körner, co-author of the CCA's position and a member of the Association for Urbanism and Spatial Planning, criticizes the way the document was processed: "It is a shame that a quality expert team was not established at the beginning. The expert public, not only architects but also engineers, geographers, sociologists, environmentalists, and economists, did not participate in the preparation of the document to a greater extent. If this had happened, the document would have undergone a thorough "internal" analysis by qualified experts and only then would it have been submitted for public comments. The document also lacks the establishment of social costs and an expression of time priorities – in what time frame it is possible to achieve the set goals and what amount of GDP needs to be invested during the planned period. A standard similar to those foreign documents should be achieved."
The Ministry for Regional Development is currently evaluating all comments on the draft TDP 2008. In this context, it has invited representatives of the Czech Chamber of Architects for a discussion regarding its position on November 13, 2008.