Plán pre Košice

What kind of a city do we want in the future? The Plan for Košice is an opportunity to understand the future of the city in a comprehensible way. It is a strategy of mediating closer contact between the citizens with the process of providing the city with a new Master Plan. It is a challenge to comment on the concepts of the Master Plan with full comprehension of the plan. After all, it needs the citizen who understands the city with its processes and vice versa and a high-quality tool - the Master Plan - defining a new vision of urban development for Košice to develop in the right direction.

Idea and project management: Spolka

Cooperation: The City of Košice, Office of the Chief Architect of Košice, Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Arts TU Košice, Cinema Úsmev, Skupina, Východné pobrežie, Dávid Sivý, Michal Šindelář, Kaja Miková - PDCS, Ondrej Vecan and others.

Graphic design and concept: Dávid Sivý a Filip Dioszegi

Our goal was to facilitate public participation in the creation of the city. In this case: get as much enlightenment about urban planning among citizens as possible and create closer contact with the process of procuring the new Master Plan of Košice and its commenting process, which took place from April 12 to September 30, 2018. Spolka drew the inspiration from the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, despite the fact that participation in Košice started at an advanced stage of the development of the Master Plan. That is why we have prepared an information website Planprekosice.sk (online until 2021), Facebook page and an exhibition with an interesting participatory program. You could personally meet with experts in the field of urban planning, take part in guided walks or lectures of the urban planners and authors of the Master Plan Concepts, in addition to the traditional display of the Master Plan Concepts in their originals at the City Municipality of Košice and at Kosice.sk.


— Overview —

13.4. - 31.5.2018, Oskar Pavilion, Kasárne/Kulturpark
Openning: 12.4.2018, 5 pm

The exhibition Plan for Košice presented to the Košice residents an important document that determines the vision of the future of our city. Therefore, its aim was to outline the process of preparation of the Master Plan and the Master Plan Concepts:

What is the Master Plan?
It is a document about the possibilities of development of the areas in the city. It is based on a comprehensive city map. With the Master Plan, the city expresses its intentions to develop specific territories in a binding, meaningful way and in the context of the current development of its surroundings.

Why do we need a new Master Plan?
Currently, we work with a Master Plan from the 1970s. It is based on completely different social conditions and has undergone a number of amendments to meet the needs of contemporary urban life. Today, we are reflecting on how to perceive the city as a whole, in the context of the 21st century. For example, this means coping with the decline in industrial production, traffic load and environmental problems.

“Košice city is preparing a new Master Plan.
What city do we want in the future?
What are the two proposed Master Plan Concepts?
Participate in creating a better city!”

About 500 unique visitors came to see the exhibition. It was open daily (except Mondays), always with the possibility of a guided tour or consultation on the content of the Master Plan Concepts.

Accompanying program

What is the Master Plan and who creates it?
Why do we need a new Master Plan?
What is in the Master Plan?
And what do its authors think about it?
How does the Master Plan deal with your neighbourhood?
How to comment on it?

Every Thursday in the evening, we hosted a moderated meeting of the residents with the Master Plan Concepts authors, or other experts, in an open, informal discussion - Tea at Five .

Tea at Five with authors of the Master Plan Concepts
Meeting with the Chief Architect of Košice - Petronela Királyová and authors of the Master Plan Concepts from the UPN-M KE Association: Viktor Malinovský, Alexander Bél and Dezider Kovács. (April 19, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Tea at Five with Vladimír Debnár
Informal discussion with Vladimír Debnár, the provider of the new Master Plan, focused on questions and clarifications of the process of leaving comments. (April 26, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Tea at Five with Jakub Marek
Jakub Marek represents the younger generation of urban planners in the Master Plan team. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (STU), returned to Košice, and works very hard to improve the urban environment of this city. (May 3, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Tea at Five special on housing
Discussion with Dezider Kovács, one of the authors of the new Master Plan Concepts. We focused mainly on the topic of housing, which concerns all inhabitants of Košice. “Is it better to live in the city and have a kindergarten, school, shops, offices and medical facilities at hand, or rather buy cheap land in the suburbs with a house and garden and commute daily to the amenities of the city? How do these approaches affect city life? Could this even affect the Master Plan?” (May 10, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Tea at Five with Ladislav Kočiš
Discussion with Ladislav Kočiš, a longtime employee of Office of the Chief Architect of Košice, and one of the key personalities who oversee the overall process of preparing the new Master Plan. (May 17, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Tea at Five with Martin Jerguš
The last Tea at Five summarized the approach of the Office of the Chief Architect of Košice and the overall process of preparing the new Master Plan. (May 24, 2018, in the exhibition area)

About 20 residents regularly took part in the “Tea at Five” discussions.

Guided bike tour around Hornád
With Ing. arch. Martin Jerguš from the Office of the Chief Architect of Košice, we explored what is the proposed future of the surroundings of the Hornád river according to the new Master Plan Concepts - right on the site of the river from Ťahanovce to Krásna nad Hornádom. (April 21, 2018, Ťahanovce Bridge - Anička)

Guided tour “the Green Belt”
With a young architect Ondrej Vecan we got to know the hidden Green Belt Terasa, which is a potential park that may arise from the residual greenery between the Old Town and the Terasa housing estate and historical cemeteries, as well as its future according to the planned Master Plan. (April 28, 2018, at the heat exchanger at Štítová 3)

Guided tour “Do not blame my South!”
The third and the last of the series of walks through development sites was focused on the disappearing industrial zone in the southern suburbs of Košice and its future according to the prepared Master Plan Concepts. The walk was led by Mišo Hudák from Východné Pobrežie.
(May 19, 2018, final stop of the tram 4 in Barca)

Free continuation of the “Tea at Five”: Explanation of urban planning concepts specifically for individual districts. We organized the events at the invitation of the residents of the housing estates who came to discuss and learn how to comment on the Master Plan Concepts.

How should the character of the housing estate evolve or change?
Will there be new development? What about green and recreational areas?
Will we give more space to cars or cycling?

Plan for SEVER
(April 30, 2018, Poď na dvor)

Plan for KVP
(May 26, 2018, in the exhibition area)

Lectures on the Master Plan organized by the citizens themselves:
Plan for ŤAHANOVCE
(June 2, 2018, Domček-Ťahanovce)

Plan for ZÁPAD
(June 9, 2018, Átrium klub terasa)

Plan for STARÉ MESTO
(June 10, 2018, Mondieu)

In cooperation with Quizzical, we have prepared a special quiz dedicated to the city on the occasion of the presentation of the new Master Plan of Košice. During the competition evening, experts in the field asked about the history, present and future of the city and how well you know it.
(March 26, 2018, Papa Pavilion, Kasárne/Kulturpark)

In order to get to know the process better and understand it, we have prepared a complex map displayed at the Kasárne/Kulturpark right in the centre of Košice, where we were always available for your questions and consultations.

We have made it even closer to the public electronically. We have created a short illustrated video and online materials about WHAT is actually a master plan, WHY we need it, HOW it is being prepared, HOW you can enter the process through comments, and what is its content - TWO MASTER PLAN CONCEPTS . All this is accessible on the visually attractive, intuitive project page Planprekosice.sk (online until 2021).

At this stage, the city planners prepared two visions of the city. Option A shows the city with the current population (approximately 240.000). Option B represents the city if the number of inhabitants increased to 300.000. They are also distinguished by the way they are addressed: Option A determines land use functions more specifically, while Option B is more flexible. The aim of the options is to open a discussion and look for the best solutions, which will then be incorporated into the final design of the Master Plan.

Analytical schemes of both options - both Concepts for key topics were available in our map application:

Through this website, you could find all the relevant information in one place, for example, the explanation of the process of creating a Master Plan, maps of both Master Plan Concepts in a readers-friendly form, links to the complete documents from the city of Košice, link to the comment form, or you could contact us directly.

— Statistics for the period: 20. 2. 2018 - 15. 12. 2018 —

Who decides which variant of the Master Plan Concept (A or B) to work on? We, citizens, are also deciding this through the process of commenting. Between April 12, 2018, and the end of September 2018, we, the citizens, were able to submit written comments to the Košice City Hall. However, for the first time, the Plan for Košice initiative also provided the opportunity to submit an official comment quite simply by filling in an electronic form: https://goo.gl/JCL48G.

Mayors, clerks, developers, NGOs, art associations - the aim of the Round Tables with the “city-makers” of Košice was to introduce both Concepts of the Master Plan. In the first part, the meeting took the form of presentation of the Master Plan Concepts by its authors. In the second part, we discussed in a moderated discussion the questions and uncertainties related to the topic within smaller groups - Round Tables, with an emphasis on city concepts and concepts for larger territories. The discussions were informal and through them, we became acquainted with the perception, requirements and ideas about the Concept of the Master Plan in the context of all of our interests, together. We discussed four main topics:

The topic of Košice as a compact city
The topic of transport
Greenery, Sports and Recreation topic
Housing, work and services topic

Seminar: Participation and City Strategies was mediated by Spolka in November 2017 under the guidance of trainer Karolína Miková, Ph. D., director, coach and facilitator at PDCS. Its aim was to introduce the basic principles of the public engagement plan to the workers and staff of the Office of the Chief Architect of Košice, and to point out the advantages and risks of participatory procedures in the creation of strategic materials / Master Plan.

Altogether 30 clerks participated. Their impressions were very positive in terms of form, content, methodology and trainer, and showed the need for continuing in-depth seminars, which would be welcomed by the majority of those who participated.

In the block subject “Making the City: People and the City”, in an interdisciplinary urban planning seminar, we involved students of the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Economics in planning and communicating solutions for the city in collaboration with city organizations, NGOs, citizens and foreign and local experts.

The aim of the course was to identify key methods for the preparation of a participatory project, to acquire analytical competences using literature and to collect qualitative data in urban and sociological research. Students of the subject mapped and defined the basic terms that the Master Plan brings, tried to translate them to the public in a comprehensible, readers-friendly language, and subsequently sought suitable methods and strategies for the communication and participation in the process of commenting.

Professional workshops were also held during the seminar. The following experts brought these inputs:
Dávid Sivý, design workshop lecturer (Artist and Designer)
Kaja Miková, participation workshop lecturer (Director, coach and facilitator at PDCS)
Michal Šindelář, lecturer of mobility communication workshop (Mobility team leader, Nadace partnerství))

Guest for feedback on the final student projects:
Mišo Hudák (Východné pobrežie)

As a final output of the subject “Making the City: People and the City”, students prepared an exhibition and a participatory performance as part of the accompanying program of the exhibition Plan for Košice. They tried to bring the new way of organizing the urban structure that Master Plan Concepts bring closer to the city dwellers.

Compact City Exhibition

10.4. - 30.4.2018, Foyer of the Bravo Pavilion, Kasárne/Kulturpark
Opening: 9.4.2018 o 17:00

“The city is leaky, it has got cracks.”
“There's no way here!”
Get to know Kosice brownfields better - areas that are underused in the city.

Participative installation

The citizens of Košice could learn about the Plan for Kosice not only through the accompanying project activities, but also through:
Citylights in the city, public transport info-leaflets, leaflets, cinema spot in the cinema Úsmev, at Pecha Kucha evenings, on radio and local TV, or from social networks.

8.2.2018
TV Košice, video reportage and interview

8.2.2018
Korzár, How should Košice develop? Citizens can also speak up

18.4.2018
Regina Radio, Local politics Club

18.4.2018
Košice:dnes, video reportage and interview

20.9.2018
ASB eNewspaper, issue 6-7/2018

The project was initiated and implemented on the basis of voluntary activities of Spolka and dozens of other citizens and organizations that supported us with promotion, graphics, installation and guarding of the exhibition, providing their own volunteer time. The project was funded by a grant of € 2,500 from the Via Foundation under the program ViabilityNet and educational activities at TU KE also with a grant of 3.500 Euros from the Tatrabanka Foundation within the program Know More. The city of Košice financially supported the city light campaign and mediated the rental of the city spaces. Through their cooperation and providing of data to the initiative, the Office of the Chief Architect of Košice provided enormous support.

The initiative Plan for Košice finished its work, as the commenting of the Master Plan Concepts has also ended. Its continuation by the city in the next stages of the Master Plan process is open.

Participation is about influencing political decisions, not promoting them. By involving residents, we can contribute to better city planning. Participation certainly does not replace the democratic process and always represents only certain groups that participate. It is organized “top-down” and often touches only individual projects and not the policy itself. You can read about how to involve the public in city planning, for example in Participation Manual (in the Czech language). This project had no ambition to be an example of a participatory process. This is also because it could not start with the beginning of the process of creating a new Master Plan. Although it was only a partial activity, we believe that the initiative Plan for Košice opened the door for a new way of communication of the city towards its inhabitants. This is also proven by a new working position at the Office of the Chief Architect of Košice, which aims to communicate the Master Plan to the public.