My City’s Policy for Land Use? Two Mayors' Answers

Q: What is the importance and the priority level your city organization ascribes to the development of “Urban Growth Management” and strategies  for reduction of soil consumption? What are the expected benefits for your  administration?

Cătălin Cherecheș, Mayor of Baia Mare:  The Baia Mare Metropolitan Area and Baia Mare City are constantly preoccupied with the management of urban development, especially concerning the strategies of reducing the consumption of land, without affecting the possibilities of economic and residential growth. In this sense, the local administration is encouraging new real estate developments, mostly by the re-usage of abandoned structures, to reduce the need for social housing. The municipality is also taking into consideration the use of disused and unproductive lands, to help with the development of industrial, logistic and technological parks, in order to attract major business investments. The local community has a lot to gain from these policies for the efficient use of land, by the increase in the number of new available housings on the real estate market, and by the increase in the number of available work places, as an effect of the attraction of private investments.

Jozef Dvonč, Mayor of Nitra: City of Nitra provides plenty of services toward its inhabitants. It is hard to prioritize witch one is the most important. From the point of view of “Urban growth management” valid General plan of the City for the long term foresees Nitra as the centre of its metropolitan area and influential stakeholder at not just regional but also national level. This vision was supported by the demographical prognosis until 2020. The current state of matters concerning the reduction of the soil consumption is in the state of preparation of zonal plans for some city districts /kynek, Šudol, Párovské háje, Párovské lúky/, which are focused on searching for the optimal city structure and reserves for new facilities and structures within existing area of the city. The expectations of the USEAct project is the exchange of the  experiences and import of the good  practices on this matter, which could be disseminated to other Slovak regional centers and such bring some solutions for day – to – day agenda in the field of urban development.

Q: What is the role played by your organization to develop planning tools for “Urban Growth Management” with the aim of less land use and what is, in general, the degree of strategic and operational cooperation with the other authorities (national, regional, local) on the specific “Land use” issue? What are the most positive and the problematic aspects of territorial cooperation?
Jozef Dvonč, Mayor of Nitra: City of Nitra through its professional body – The Head Architect Department of the Municipal Office provides the services concerning the urban planning and development of the city. This process includes also the design of the new plans on different levels outsourcing mechanism, communication with stakeholders, private and public alike and also keeping the urban plan up to date according to law/regular amendments of the General plan. From the point of view of territorial cooperation, the main issue is the phenomenon of competition, when the municipalities are not always encouraged to join forces in order to apply for funding money.

Cătălin Cherecheș, Mayor of Baia Mare:  Baia Mare City has a major role in the planning of urban and metropolitan development, due to the cooperation that the Baia Mare Municipality has with the neighbouring towns that are part of the metropolitan area, based on an existent strategic development concept for 2010-2030. Baia Mare City is working with the county, regional and national authorities to manage the existent real estate assets in the best way possible. For example, steps are being made to take into direct administration of Baia Mare City the sport arenas that are currently administered by the County Department of Sport and Youth, as well as the train station that is administered by the Ministry of Transportation. The reasoning behind these actions is to improve the state of these buildings, which are currently in poor condition. Moreover, Baia Mare City plans to purchase certain lands that are presently property of other public or private bodies, to ensure them a more efficient use, by using investments from structural funds for the 2014-2020 period. One example would be the intention of the municipality to develop an Industrial Park in southern industrial area of the city.

Q: What are tools and strategies for “urban growth management” Land Use/Reuse/Refitting, how they are used to support urban regeneration(s) in your city?
Cătălin Cherecheș, Mayor of Baia Mare:  In regards to the strategies and plans of the management of urban and metropolitan development, Baia Mare uses a variety of tools, such as The Strategy of the Baia Mare Metropolitan Area for the 2010-2020 period, The Strategy for Sustainable Development of the Baia Mare Metropolitan Area, Baia Mare City General Urban Plan, The Integrated Urban Development Plan Local Urbanism Regulation of Baia Mare City. These tools are used by the local public administration, to help the development of the city, and of the metropolitan area by implementing infrastructural projects (street repairing, enlarging the transportation network, creating public parks, rehabilitation of historic monuments) funded from European structural policies. The local public administration will also use these tools for the planning of urban and municipal sustainable development to prepare the portfolio of urban and metropolitan projects for the 2014-2020 programming period.

Jozef Dvonč, Mayor of Nitra: One of the main tools of the “Urban growth management” on the municipal level is the service of Geographical information system /GIS/ with its subcategories of the partial GISes – cadastre and owners structure, general plan and zonal plans, transport schemes, technical infrastructure, environmental protection, administrative and spatial organization of the city area. All this subsystems are kept up to date and provide the source of information for the inhabitants, investors and developers. In this way is the City able to regulate and support its urban growth in logical and sustainable way. head architect department also through its own human resources or by outsourcing schemes provides the strategic materials, feasibility studies, case studies and such in the field of “Urban growth management”, environmental protection, city greenery management and landscaping, technical infrastructure and transport, waste management and other. City of Nitra through the elected representatives (Mayor, Deputy Mayors, City Council) and executive body/Municipal office, helps the public and private stakeholders to choose the sustainable approach in the field of investments and development. In general the urban regeneration is supported on every level of the public administration of the city.

Q: What would be your request to the European Commission for a real support on policies on land use?
Jozef Dvonč, Mayor of Nitra: The actual restoration process difficulties, due to the lack of public financing combined with the crisis affecting low income, low pensions and families with high unemployment rate, means that those urban areas where restoration interventions are more requested, are the ones where that critical situation is particularly important. Therefore, the implementation of those incentive programs and policies through the intervention of the local institutions and stakeholders (no matter if they are public or private partnerships, or any other type that enhances its viability), must be consider as a priority.

Cătălin Cherecheș, Mayor of Baia Mare:  Concerning the requests to the European Commission for the support of local policies for the efficient use of lands, it would mean for the local public administration to be awarded non-refundable grants through national sectorial programmes and regional operational programmes.

Q: What would be your request to your National and Regional authorities for a real support on policies on land use?
Cătălin Cherecheș, Mayor of Baia Mare:  Our request for the national and regional authorities would be to assure funds for local economic development, by using/reusing industrial or polluted lands. These grants should fund the cleaning the polluted industrial lands and their introduction in the economic circuit, or the use of industrial land to support businesses, the use of unproductive land for residential development, that target disadvantaged groups of people, the development of a geographic informational system in order to efficiently use the management of land use, at urban and metropolitan level.

Jozef Dvonč, Mayor of Nitra: As the basic condition of the land consumption reduction, which should be supported from the EU and National authorities is the increasing of motivation of the local stakeholders to search for the solutions of avoiding the unnecessary and consumption. In ideal case the motivation would take form of funding the alternative solutions reuse, regeneration, change of function, using the reserves within the existing fabric of city structure to land take, which is in many cases the easiest way to do things. Very important is also the communication with public in order to increase the awareness to the matter /community activities, community planning, pro-active approach/.

Read more:

USEAct network – URBACT website

Download USEAct Second Seminar Report (7.73 MB) - USEAct project publication

Land Use policy context – European Environement Agency website

Making our cities attractive and sustainable – European Commission, DG Environment publication