Source: 24tv.ua
Urban planning documentation is the basis for the development of territories. Its completeness, quality and availability make it possible to effectively implement business plans, attract investments and create a harmonious social environment.
“Urban planners also have strategic tasks, in which they are looking for answers to the challenges of the future,” Jacqueline Vrolijk from the Department of Spatial Planning at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Netherlands, emphasized at the workshop “Spatial Planning. In a Quality and Transparent Manner”. The expert mentioned minimizing the effects of climate change, ensuring water safety, creating a healthy living space, moving to sustainable development of rural areas and developing the quality of natural landscape as one of the main tasks currently being solved by urban planners in Europe.
Pick up the wind
One of the most urgent tasks is the transition to alternative energy sources. In Ukraine, there are three cities (Zhytomyr, Kamyanets-Podilsky and Chortkiv), which have committed themselves to gradually move their energy systems to renewable energy sources. Zhytomyr even announced the date: the transition should be completed by 2050.
What does the decision to completely move to renewable energy sources mean for urban planners? Jacqueline Vrolijk gave an example: when drafting development plans for territories, it is necessary to take into account where wind power plants will be located; a streets layout should “pick up the wind” to make the best use of it.
Do people in Zhytomyr and Chortkiv, Kyiv and Odessa think about this? Unfortunately, we are still far from solving such tasks of the future on a systematic basis.
Publicly available urban planning documentation – when?
Priority number one for Ukraine is to finally create an open, digitized system of urban planning documents, so that anyone can access it at any time from any gadget.
Last year, the pMAP Open Spatial Planning project was launched, and all government bodies, architects and designer engineers have access to it. This project is implemented by the BRDO Office with the technical assistance of the MATRA project and support of the Ministry of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities of Ukraine. All existing urban planning documents can be added to the pMAP platform.
We really have a lot of work to do: only three regions are close to the final stage. The Rivne region added 100% of records on urban planning documents in the pMAP, the Dnipropetrovsk region – 98.36% and the Sumy region – 96.62%.
If we assess the process not in terms of completeness, but in terms of openness and quality of information, then there will be other three leaders. The rating of openness and quality is made for the second year in a row, and this year the Dnipropetrovsk region got the highest possible score (6.7 out of 6.9), the Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia regions got by 6.6 points, respectively.
“It should be noted that all regions improved their results in terms of public disclosure of data during the year. The number of regions, which do not have publicly available urban data documents at all, decreased from 11 to 5. It is Crimea, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Kirovohrad and Mykolaiv regions,” the Construction Sector Head at the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) Olena Shuliak said.
How does publicly available urban planning documentation help?
“If these documents are prepared in a quality manner, it minimizes conflict situations and provides an opportunity for improved forecasting while being a prerequisite for sustainable development of territories,” the chief of the Architecture and Urban Planning Department of the Sumy region Oleh Krivtsov says.
“Today, when the civil society is being formed, the public demand and interest to urban planning documents to control the way they are implemented by government bodies and businesses increased significantly. On the other hand, investors also want to get as much information on the possibility to implement their projects on a certain territory as possible to create a comfortable investment climate and improve business forecasting conditions. It is possible to meet this need only by publishing appropriate urban planning documents,” Krivtsov said.
Krivtsov believes that since the urban planning documentation is a platform, where the interests of the state, the public and private businesses coincide, all of them should be taken into account when developing such documents. Keeping the balance of interests of all groups and complying with legal requirements is an indicator of the quality of urban planning documents.
What’s wrong with publicly available urban planning documentation?
The chief architect of the Vinnytsia region Leonid Huzhva outlined the main problems with filling the pMAP platform. The number one problem is the quality and relevance of existing documents.
“All urban planning documents approved prior to 2011 should be revised. In regions, it is a huge amount of documents (more than 80%). There are general plans approved 40-60 years ago and available only in paper form,” he said.
One more point is how to ensure the obligatory publication. Local authorities are responsible for this task. However, there are no mechanisms to stimulate them. “In Vinnytsia region, about 13% of documentation were published, another 30% are prepared, but we have no authority to oblige village councils to publish them, while there are not enough resources at the local level,” Huzhva complained.
How to solve a problem?
The Order of the Ministry of Regional Development No.220 of 15/08/2018 “On Approval of Requirements for the Structure and Format to Publish Data on Urban Planning Documentation in the Internet” recently approved by the Ministry of Justice. From now on, communities with general plans, zoning and detailed plans of territories will be able to make them publicly available in the modern format only.
However, it is still not clear how to stimulate the citied, which are in no hurry to approve modern documentation and make it open. Kyiv living according to the obsolete General Plan 2020 and hindering the approval of the new one is among such backward cities.
But the pMAP team hopes that most of the regions will add all documents to the platform by the end of the year. And then the regions will be able to focus on improving the quality of documentation, reflecting the public demands there and coping with the challenges of the future.
By Tetiana Kovryga, PR Sector Head at BRDO