Hradec Kralove

The city of Hradec Králové is a natural metropolis of Northeast Bohemia and it is located 100 kilometres east of Prague, with which is connected by the motorway D 11. The city lies on the confluence of the rivers Elbe and Orlice in a flat country with an average height of 235 m above sea level. It is one of the largest cities of the Czech Republic. In 2011, Hradec Kralove city had 94,242 inhabitants, which corresponds to eighth place in the ranking of cities of the Czech Republic with the highest population. The city administrative area is 105.6 km2 and it is divided into 21 cadastral areas. Hradec Králové is the regional centre of the Region Hradec Králové, which is part of NUTS 2 Northeast. The first written reference of Hradec Králové as a town comes from 1225. In 1306, Hradec Králové became a dowry town of Czech Queens. During the 1920s and 1930s the city grew rapidly and due to many buildings of modern architecture Hradec Králové became known as the “Salon of the Republic”. This was a nickname given to it by citizens who were spellbound by the unique architecture of Josef Gočár. Hradec Králové is the seat of six faculties for three universities – The Medicine and Pharmacy Faculty of Charles University, The Faculty of Military Medicine, The University of Defence and three faculties of The University of Hradec Králové (for Education, Philosophy, Informatics and Management). The total number of students attending these universities each year is 10,000; from the Czech Republic and also from abroad within various student exchange programmes. Hradec Králové is a member of the European Association of Congress Cities. About 80 congresses, conferences or exhibitions are held in the city.

The city of Hradec Kralove prepared The City strategic development plan in the year 2004. This plan is based on the principles of Local Agenda 21 and it covers the planning horizon by the year 2020. The city of Hradec Kralove plans to update the strategic document during the year 2012. The main goals of the update are to add new key development areas that have been previously omitted, to review the strategic goals and to establish a functional system of city development indicators.

The city of Hradec Kralove has a unique experience in creating strategic documents of the city development over the last ten years. In such a short period of time we prepared two city strategic development plans, which are very different: both in the content and, especially in a processing method. We have had the opportunity to compare the results achieved by implementing both strategic development plans. The first plan was developed in 1999 in cooperation with a consulting firm. The second strategic plan was developed in 2004. This process was presented as an update to the original document, but it was an entirely new document.

The aim of the project is "to establish a functional system for monitoring and evaluating of the city development". This system will be based on the implementation of relevant indicators in the strategic development plan at all levels. A database of the indicators usable for our city will be an output of the project. This database will contain definitions of indicators, including methodological papers and other metadata (the frequency of monitoring, etc.) The project will also include an initial verification of indicators and obtaining their initial values. Besides our own indicators we will use European Common Indicators (ECI). We will adapt the ECI to our needs but under the condition of maintaining the international comparability. We would like to share our methodology and we expect new experience in terms of city development planning and progress monitoring.