Prague, Feb 26 (CTK) – The Czech capital of Prague may gradually turn into an open air museum unless a thorough strategy of development is drafted and the city may lag behind similarly important European cities, daily Pravo wrote on Friday, citing experts.
Besides Milunic’s Dancing House on the Vltava’s Rasin Embankment of 1996, no building has appeared in Prague since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 that would attract visitors as strongly as historical monuments, the paper writes.
“We are unable to bring it in harmony like, for instance, London, we do not want anything new to enter the city,” Pravo quotes Michal Melc, from the Deloitte consultancy firm, as saying.
Deloitte has initiated a survey that mapped the opinions of experts of the future construction and investments in Prague.
Personalities from the spheres of construction, town planning, architects and academics gave their replies to 30 questions, Pravo writes.
Eighty-four percent of the 153 questioned experts support the building of a new dominant structure in the city, while 12 percent believe that the city already has it, Pravo writes, but it does name any specific one.
The survey participants said municipal politicians should markedly contribute to the creation of the long-term strategy, but Melc said this has not been so for many years.
Experts say mainly brownfields and railway stations are examples of a negative development in Prague.
“The situation around the Wenceslas Square (in the centre of Prague) is perceived negatively,” Melc said, adding that “it is an untapped opportunity that weakens the value of the city.”
The polled experts said the most distressing factor that restricts Prague’s further development is transport infrastructure, Pravo writes.
It writes that the experts have problems with the safety of communications and means of transport, but not with their density.
The experts also recommend to pay attention to public spaces and parks, Pravo writes.
