Prospects of Czech shopping centres in view of their urban localization – the example of the city of Brno, by Josef Kunc, Petr Tonev, Zdeněk Szczyrba and Zuzana Greplová
A very successful phenomenon of the current era is shopping centres. The main wave of their expansion dates back to the end of the 1990s, but it came to a stop with the start of the economic crisis in 2008. Some centres have problems with the outflow of customers and a few have now closed down. The market is saturated in many places and competition is intense. Today’s decisive factors for success are attractive location, suitable mix of lessees, and more popular opportunities for entertainment and leisure. Investments will be directed at modernization and reconstruction of older commercial premises or new concepts such as retail parks. What remains controversial, however, is the localization of large shopping centres outside urban residential areas and near town centres, which often lose their commercial and social functions due to the outflow of visitors.
Physical planning: the Ombundsman’s position, by Milan Hanák
The agenda of physical planning is importantly affected by the decisions of bodies of self-administration, specifically the municipalities and regional authorities, which are beyond the legal powers of the Ombudsman. According to the Building Act, it is in the autonomous competence of municipalities to publish spatial plans and alterations to these. The process of spatial plan elaboration, however, is a discharge of state administration, so the Ombudsman may be involved. The position of the public defender of rights is restricted by the fact that each stage of elaboration (assignment, concept, draft) is concluded by a decision of a self-administration body. The Ombudsman cannot decide in which form the municipality should publish the plan and how to treat citizens’ objections to specific items of the spatial plan. In spite of this, the public defender of rights endeavours to help citizens who comment on matters of physical planning and gives them advice and legal consultation in order to protect their proprietary rights.
A proposition for the visualization of the dynamics of phenomena displayed in physical planning documentation of the Olomouc Region, by Barbora Hladišová, Aleš Vávra and Jaroslav Burian
This article is focused on the application of cartographic rules for the visualization of dynamics in physical planning documentation. One of the roles of physical planning documentation is to cover spatial development in time. The task of cartography is to visualize these developments comprehensibly for end users and, at the same time, observe all cartographic rules. This article presents several approaches adopted by authors of spatial plans and physical planning documentation and suggests the use of back-lighting for the draft and reserve categories. Potential use of these signs in practice is explained. A part of the article is an example of the use of the proposed sign key for drawings of the Olomouc Region’s physical planning documentation.
A new method of comparative evaluation of the purposefulness of transportation infrastructure projects (case study of motorways and limited-access roads in the Czech Republic), by Milan Viturka, Vilém Pařil and Petr Tonev
The article comments on evaluation of selected projects for road and motorway construction in the Czech Republic. An original evaluation methodology is presented, covering technical, economic, political, spatial and environmental aspects (criteria of relevance, purposefulness, integration, stimulation and sustainability). A relevant result of its application in practice is the division of selected projects into three groups: projects of proven, debatable and not proven purposefulness.
On the evaluation of the benefits of selected routes in road infrastructure, by Milan Körner
The development concept of the road network of the Czech Republic is based on several myths the credibility of which is problematic, both in general terms and specific instances. After 1990 there was a logical increase in load, especially due to the mass availability of cars but also because of new working and housing relations and just-in-time logistics (big employers disappearing, origin of small businesses, rise of suburban private housing). Inevitably there were periods of a certain decline in dynamics, or even regression after 2008, but these factors cannot be seen in today’s optimistic prognoses of transportation development.
Chandigarh — a green city for the children of sun: evaluation of a big urban planning experiment, by Barbora Matáková & Jiří Dohnal
The capital of Punjab and Haryana, two states in northern Inida, is highly exceptional among the cities of India. There is a prosaic reason for this, as it is far from being a typical Indian city. Founded on a meadow in the spirit of modernistic trends, largely influenced by the great figure of world architecture Le Corbusier, Chandigarh is a real pearl of India. Indians have nicknamed Chandigarh “the European city”; they are very proud of it even though they scarcely realize the values anchored in the original concept. So Le Corbusier’s vision of a futuristic city was reshaped in the peculiar Indian style.