Public areas in built-up suburban developments around Prague, by Václav Hofman
This article presents a survey that was carried out as part of a student’s final thesis. The survey deals with systems of public areas in new suburban built-up zones and ways in which these systems are incorporated in existing structures. The concept of these systems includes both built-up territories of settlements (network of streets) and free landscape (network of roads in the landscape). The research was performed by means of observation and, subsequently, analysis of locations in Prague’s suburbs, which is where the process of suburbanization remains most intense in the Czech Republic. The objective of the observation was to produce a list of phenomena occurring when new housing complexes are integrated into previous housing zones. Another focus was on determination of principles that should be observed in practice so as to integrate new suburban housing complexes in equilibrium with existing buildings and the landscape.
The Sustainable Development Audit as an effective tool for evaluation of sustainable development of towns and cities in the Czech Republic, by Svatava Janoušková, Tomáš Hák and Bedřich Moldan
What is or is not a sustainable city can be understood intuitively. Nevertheless, current definitions are too vague to provide a relevant basis for sustainability-focused management of towns and cities. The Sustainable Development Audit was introduced ten years ago as a practical tool to be used by Czech municipalities to identify the strengths and weaknesses of cities as related to principles of sustainable urban development. Since then the Audit has become an important analytical material for strategic and conceptual documents of all sustainable municipalities. This article is an analysis of the Methodology for Evaluation of Sustainable Cities, which is the starting component of the Audit. Instead of theoretical concepts and models, which are either too simplistic or too complex and inapplicable in practice, this Methodology is based on international principles of local sustainability (known as the Aalborg Commitments) transformed into guideline questions and indicators. Our analysis is focused on major quality criteria of these indicators: relevance, credibility and legitimacy. The article puts the Sustainable Development Audit in the Czech Republic into the current international context in terms of evaluation in sustainable development.
European spatial development after COVID-19: challenges and visions, by Klaus R. Kunzmann
COVID-19 continues to make the world nervous. The pandemic has forced society to stay at home and individuals to maintain their distance from each other. Planners have more time to read and write. In the decade to come, the pandemic will be a frequent justification for why this or that could not be implemented. Challenges and visions will be regarded in a different manner. The book market will be flooded with popular and academic publications about COVID-19, but interest in them will soon wane. The pandemic will not necessarily mean the end of utopias in Europe as predicted by Ulrike Guérot, but COVID-19 is unlikely to raise a new wave of enthusiasm for efficient European policies of spatial development. Nor will enthusiasm be generated by Territorial Agenda 2030, a document approved in December 2020 at an informal meeting of ministers for spatial planning, spatial development and territorial cohesion.
An atlas of the Moravian-Silesian Region, by Jaroslav Burian, Stanislav Šťastný and Radim Fojtík
The Czech Republic is a country with a long tradition of making books of maps. Besides being an essential output of academic workplaces, atlases have become a point of growing interest for private publishers. Thematic atlases of particular regions such as the Region of Vysočina and the South Moravian Region sell well and can be used in regional development and strategic/spatial planning. An atlas of the Moravian-Silesian Region has recently been co-published by the agency Urban Planner and the Department of Geoinformatics of Palacký University of Olomouc. This article is a description of the atlas in terms of data used, content and map output as well as its potential for use in regional development and strategic and spatial planning.
