Managing Warsaw
Whether the capital has moved quickly enough to address all its citizens' concerns is a matter of debate, though.
Over the past four years, new buildings have sprouted up across the city's landscape and foreign investment has poured into the capital transforming it into a financial and industrial hub for the nation.
"The last years were a real breakthrough for Warsaw," Swiecicki said last week, summing up his term in office. "Warsaw attracted a lot of investment, it became the most popular town in this part of Europe."
But residents complain that longstanding problems such as poor transport and infrastructure networks have not improved noticeably. And new woes such as rampant traffic jams have emerged.
"Swiecicki boasts about hotels or offices, but these are not his achievements," said Jerzy Wojnar, chairman of Friendly Town, a resident's organization that has protested development projects. "Our authorities don't create any relation between investments and benefits to the city."
This past Sunday, citizens had a chance to indirectly decide on the merits of Swiecicki's administration. Going to the polls in local elections, the capital's voters had to choose representatives for five levels of local government. This included elections for the council of the Centrum gmina - the largest and richest in the city. Those on the council in turn will pick a mayor, who also serves as the city's mayor.
Depending on the outcome of the elections, Swiecicki, a member of the Freedom Union (UW) may or may not return for another term in office.
Whether after his four years in office one is a fan or foe of Mayor Marcin Swiecicki, most agree that the mayor has operated under a less than ideal administrative structure. The office of Warsaw's mayor is not one of great power and the law that created the city's complex administrative structure has not worked out the way even its creators planned.
This has meant that even when the mayor has wanted to move on some issues, his hands have often been tied by competing interests within the city's spiderlike structure of gmina councils.
And some problems, many would admit, are simply the price of progress.
"It's like in any other large city," Swiecicki said of one of the fastest growing problems. "Traffic jams are part of it."
Night and day
There is no doubt that Warsaw has changed dramatically during the time of Swiecicki's mayoralty. When he first came to office there was no modern office space in the capital and only a handful of projects were underway. Today, cranes dot the skyline and developers wonder if Warsaw's office market may not become overbuilt in just a few years.
During Swiecicki's term, the following was built: 600,000 square meters of office space, 220,000 square meters of industrial and warehouse space and 353,000 square meters of retail space, according to data from real estate firm Coudereq & Kubas. Most of this construction was carried out by private companies or through joint ventures with the city where the local government's contribution was land.
While this building boom has attracted companies to Warsaw, some residents have felt the emphasis on office space has come at the expense of attention to infrastructure that is needed to make everyday life better. And this in the end impacts even the businesses moving into the new, glassy skyscrapers.
"In Warsaw, modern offices are connected to an ancient infrastructure," said Friendly Town's Wojnar. Residents also still face problems such as a lack of modern transportation facilities or clean drinking water.
But Swiecicki argued that the changes to Warsaw have been more than just to the office market. The city, he said, has paid a great deal of attention to public investments for infrastructure development.
"Last month we started to build two new bridges," he said. "Nobody could do that for the last 15 years."
Swiecicki added that the city made public transportation improvements a priority and this is reflected in its financial participation in the construction of the new subway. This year, two thirds of the costs of building a station in the center of the city were covered by the city at a cost of zl. 190 million ($52.7 million), compared to zl. 140 million ($43.7 million) the previous year, he said.
Over the last four years, the city also bought 220 new buses, 18 new subway cars and 20 new trams.
On another front, after numerous fits and starts, the city this month finalized a bid for installing parking meters in the city center. Swiecicki warned, however, that even this improvement won't end traffic jams.
As for technical infrastructure, the mayor said all preparatory work to start construction of a water-treatment plant has been completed and construction will being early next year. In this way, Warsaw hopes to finally shrug off the infamy of being the only European capital without a water-treatment plant.
Swiecicki added that during the last four years 10 gyms and swimming pools have opened and 14 others are under construction.
"Our predecessors built only two such facilities," Swiecicki said.
But critics contend that the improvements have been slow in coming. And the timing of many projects such as the bridge and water-plant construction, seemingly to coincide with local elections, raises suspicions among others.
"My impression is that it was sped up to look good in voters' eyes," said Adam Jankiewicz, a historian and town planner.
Others ask why it took two years to find a company to install parking meters, while the construction of the two bridges - Swietokrzyski and Siekierkowski - should have started years ago.
Even developers, who many would say have been the chief beneficiaries of changes in the city, don't think doing business in the capital is a piece of cake. "Warsaw is not an easy city" to do business in, said Maciej Herbich, managing director of Global Hotels Development, which plans to build two Holiday Inn hotels in Warsaw. But he said that the difficulty stems not from the mayor or city officials, but rather the level of competition among developers. "Everyone wants to be here," he said.
The flood of investors looking to get into Warsaw, however, has meant that the city isn't necessarily responsive to the needs of those with money to spend.
"Warsaw doesn't need to be active as investors flow there anyway," said Michal Kubicki, development director with Echo Investment.
"It's generally more straightforward in regional cities," said Vinton Frost, chief executive of Portico Development. "The site acquisition process is more transparent."
Root problem
In many ways, the question of whether Swiecicki moved the city forward during his term may be moot. Although he's the mayor, Swiecicki has often had his hands tied by the city's complicated administrative and political structure.
The city of Warsaw is divided into 11 gminas, with the Centrum gmina being the largest. The Centrum's mayor is at the same time the mayor of the whole city and reports to both councils, whose interests are often at odds with each other.
Money, or the lack of it, was often at the heart of this conflict.
"The Warsaw law assumed that all gminas will voluntarily contribute money for so-called all-city functions, like transportation or water supply," said Piotr Wojcik, a member of the Parliament from Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and a co-author of a new proposal for Warsaw's administrative structure. "But this didn't happen."
The most severe conflicts were between the city of Warsaw and the Centrum gmina, which is the richest due to its real estate assets.
"The truth was that the Centrum had money and we had responsibilities," said Julia Pitera, a deputy to the Warsaw City Council.
In between was Swiecicki. He admitted that the councils were often "at war," leaving him between a rock and a hard place.
"But on the other hand, it could be even worse with two mayors - one for the Centrum gmina, the other for the city council," he added.
The law that established Warsaw's administrative structure, enacted in 1994, also didn't answer one important question - how to divide something that can't be divided, like public transportation networks or water and heat supply networks. The law assumed that all 11 gminas would create "target unions," but after four years the situation remained the same as it was four years ago.
"It made any ownership transformations impossible," said Swiecicki. "So far, only one municipal company, Warsaw Hotels Syrena, has been privatized."
Although all political parties agree that the capital can't function within the present structure, none has been able to present a viable solution. (See WBJ, Oct. 5-11, 1998.)
"Frankly, I feel a grudge against parliamentarians," said Swiecicki. "That they couldn't come up with any solution."
But many residents believe that lack of action on key city issues can't be entirely blamed on a poor administrative structure.
"Even with this structure, something could be worked out," said Adam Jankiewicz, a historian and town planner, who previously worked in gmina governments. "There was just a lack of good will among everybody."
According to Antoni Kaminski, a specialist in local government with the Adam Smith Research Centre, gminas took their independence too seriously and protected their own interests, while forgetting the city as a whole.
"The city is the city," he said. "And all problems should be solved on the city level, not on the gmina level."
The multiple layers of government, along with competing interests within the bureaucracy, has often made it difficult for citizens to figure out who is dealing with an issue. On the other hand, it has also presented an opportunity for interest groups to play one authority off another to stall or block development projects.
Over the past four years, city authorities have faced protests regarding almost every large, municipal construction project from the Siekierkowski bridge to the Praga incinerator to the new subway system.
This has frustrated city officials, such as the mayor, who sometimes felt it was impossible to get anything done.
"There should be some regulations taking the public good into account," said Swiecicki. "It can't be that one person could stop the whole process."
But others believe that just the opposite is true, that the city has to learn how to deal with critics and to effectively communicate with residents.
"People can feel threatened by such projects as an incinerator," Jankiewicz said. "And it's the local authorities' job to explain all the pros and cons."
In his opinion, good communication with residents has been sorely lacking over the past four years.
Seeking solutions
Politicians agree that Warsaw's administrative structure needs to be changed, said Danuta Waniek, who is likely to be the Democratic Left Alliance's candidate to succeed Swiecicki as mayor.
"I would like to see Warsaw better managed and as one city instead of a union of independent entities," she said after a campaign rally last week.
But neither her party, nor AWS or UW have been able to come up with a viable solution for how to make Warsaw workable. Rather, the parties are slugging it out in the courts at the moment over what changes should be made.
One thing is clear to some, though: Warsaw has too much government.
"To start with, Warsaw should have fewer deputies," said Pitera. "In Philadelphia, for instance, there are only 30 deputies, and it works."
Several layers of local self-government and hoards of deputies are the best way to do nothing, she said, since it allows the deputies to remain anonymous to their voters.
"People don't know who their deputies are," Pitera added. "For instance, my constituency is in Mokotow and I used to solve problems from all districts and gminas."
And if citizens don't know who their representatives are, businesses also don't feel that this month's election will have a great impact on them. The bureaucracy won't change, executives said.
Still, the mayor is at the helm of the city and whoever holds the position after this election will be responsible for setting a vision that will determine the shape of things in Warsaw well into the next century.
"The bureaucracy stays the same, but it's the council and mayor who set the feeling of the city," said Andrew Gutowski, managing director of Genesis Hotels.
Over the past four years, new buildings have sprouted up across the city's landscape and foreign investment has poured into the capital transforming it into a financial and industrial hub for the nation.
"The last years were a real breakthrough for Warsaw," Swiecicki said last week, summing up his term in office. "Warsaw attracted a lot of investment, it became the most popular town in this part of Europe."
But residents complain that longstanding problems such as poor transport and infrastructure networks have not improved noticeably. And new woes such as rampant traffic jams have emerged.
"Swiecicki boasts about hotels or offices, but these are not his achievements," said Jerzy Wojnar, chairman of Friendly Town, a resident's organization that has protested development projects. "Our authorities don't create any relation between investments and benefits to the city."
This past Sunday, citizens had a chance to indirectly decide on the merits of Swiecicki's administration. Going to the polls in local elections, the capital's voters had to choose representatives for five levels of local government. This included elections for the council of the Centrum gmina - the largest and richest in the city. Those on the council in turn will pick a mayor, who also serves as the city's mayor.
Depending on the outcome of the elections, Swiecicki, a member of the Freedom Union (UW) may or may not return for another term in office.
Whether after his four years in office one is a fan or foe of Mayor Marcin Swiecicki, most agree that the mayor has operated under a less than ideal administrative structure. The office of Warsaw's mayor is not one of great power and the law that created the city's complex administrative structure has not worked out the way even its creators planned.
This has meant that even when the mayor has wanted to move on some issues, his hands have often been tied by competing interests within the city's spiderlike structure of gmina councils.
And some problems, many would admit, are simply the price of progress.
"It's like in any other large city," Swiecicki said of one of the fastest growing problems. "Traffic jams are part of it."
Night and day
There is no doubt that Warsaw has changed dramatically during the time of Swiecicki's mayoralty. When he first came to office there was no modern office space in the capital and only a handful of projects were underway. Today, cranes dot the skyline and developers wonder if Warsaw's office market may not become overbuilt in just a few years.
During Swiecicki's term, the following was built: 600,000 square meters of office space, 220,000 square meters of industrial and warehouse space and 353,000 square meters of retail space, according to data from real estate firm Coudereq & Kubas. Most of this construction was carried out by private companies or through joint ventures with the city where the local government's contribution was land.
While this building boom has attracted companies to Warsaw, some residents have felt the emphasis on office space has come at the expense of attention to infrastructure that is needed to make everyday life better. And this in the end impacts even the businesses moving into the new, glassy skyscrapers.
"In Warsaw, modern offices are connected to an ancient infrastructure," said Friendly Town's Wojnar. Residents also still face problems such as a lack of modern transportation facilities or clean drinking water.
But Swiecicki argued that the changes to Warsaw have been more than just to the office market. The city, he said, has paid a great deal of attention to public investments for infrastructure development.
"Last month we started to build two new bridges," he said. "Nobody could do that for the last 15 years."
Swiecicki added that the city made public transportation improvements a priority and this is reflected in its financial participation in the construction of the new subway. This year, two thirds of the costs of building a station in the center of the city were covered by the city at a cost of zl. 190 million ($52.7 million), compared to zl. 140 million ($43.7 million) the previous year, he said.
Over the last four years, the city also bought 220 new buses, 18 new subway cars and 20 new trams.
On another front, after numerous fits and starts, the city this month finalized a bid for installing parking meters in the city center. Swiecicki warned, however, that even this improvement won't end traffic jams.
As for technical infrastructure, the mayor said all preparatory work to start construction of a water-treatment plant has been completed and construction will being early next year. In this way, Warsaw hopes to finally shrug off the infamy of being the only European capital without a water-treatment plant.
Swiecicki added that during the last four years 10 gyms and swimming pools have opened and 14 others are under construction.
"Our predecessors built only two such facilities," Swiecicki said.
But critics contend that the improvements have been slow in coming. And the timing of many projects such as the bridge and water-plant construction, seemingly to coincide with local elections, raises suspicions among others.
"My impression is that it was sped up to look good in voters' eyes," said Adam Jankiewicz, a historian and town planner.
Others ask why it took two years to find a company to install parking meters, while the construction of the two bridges - Swietokrzyski and Siekierkowski - should have started years ago.
Even developers, who many would say have been the chief beneficiaries of changes in the city, don't think doing business in the capital is a piece of cake. "Warsaw is not an easy city" to do business in, said Maciej Herbich, managing director of Global Hotels Development, which plans to build two Holiday Inn hotels in Warsaw. But he said that the difficulty stems not from the mayor or city officials, but rather the level of competition among developers. "Everyone wants to be here," he said.
The flood of investors looking to get into Warsaw, however, has meant that the city isn't necessarily responsive to the needs of those with money to spend.
"Warsaw doesn't need to be active as investors flow there anyway," said Michal Kubicki, development director with Echo Investment.
"It's generally more straightforward in regional cities," said Vinton Frost, chief executive of Portico Development. "The site acquisition process is more transparent."
Root problem
In many ways, the question of whether Swiecicki moved the city forward during his term may be moot. Although he's the mayor, Swiecicki has often had his hands tied by the city's complicated administrative and political structure.
The city of Warsaw is divided into 11 gminas, with the Centrum gmina being the largest. The Centrum's mayor is at the same time the mayor of the whole city and reports to both councils, whose interests are often at odds with each other.
Money, or the lack of it, was often at the heart of this conflict.
"The Warsaw law assumed that all gminas will voluntarily contribute money for so-called all-city functions, like transportation or water supply," said Piotr Wojcik, a member of the Parliament from Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and a co-author of a new proposal for Warsaw's administrative structure. "But this didn't happen."
The most severe conflicts were between the city of Warsaw and the Centrum gmina, which is the richest due to its real estate assets.
"The truth was that the Centrum had money and we had responsibilities," said Julia Pitera, a deputy to the Warsaw City Council.
In between was Swiecicki. He admitted that the councils were often "at war," leaving him between a rock and a hard place.
"But on the other hand, it could be even worse with two mayors - one for the Centrum gmina, the other for the city council," he added.
The law that established Warsaw's administrative structure, enacted in 1994, also didn't answer one important question - how to divide something that can't be divided, like public transportation networks or water and heat supply networks. The law assumed that all 11 gminas would create "target unions," but after four years the situation remained the same as it was four years ago.
"It made any ownership transformations impossible," said Swiecicki. "So far, only one municipal company, Warsaw Hotels Syrena, has been privatized."
Although all political parties agree that the capital can't function within the present structure, none has been able to present a viable solution. (See WBJ, Oct. 5-11, 1998.)
"Frankly, I feel a grudge against parliamentarians," said Swiecicki. "That they couldn't come up with any solution."
But many residents believe that lack of action on key city issues can't be entirely blamed on a poor administrative structure.
"Even with this structure, something could be worked out," said Adam Jankiewicz, a historian and town planner, who previously worked in gmina governments. "There was just a lack of good will among everybody."
According to Antoni Kaminski, a specialist in local government with the Adam Smith Research Centre, gminas took their independence too seriously and protected their own interests, while forgetting the city as a whole.
"The city is the city," he said. "And all problems should be solved on the city level, not on the gmina level."
The multiple layers of government, along with competing interests within the bureaucracy, has often made it difficult for citizens to figure out who is dealing with an issue. On the other hand, it has also presented an opportunity for interest groups to play one authority off another to stall or block development projects.
Over the past four years, city authorities have faced protests regarding almost every large, municipal construction project from the Siekierkowski bridge to the Praga incinerator to the new subway system.
This has frustrated city officials, such as the mayor, who sometimes felt it was impossible to get anything done.
"There should be some regulations taking the public good into account," said Swiecicki. "It can't be that one person could stop the whole process."
But others believe that just the opposite is true, that the city has to learn how to deal with critics and to effectively communicate with residents.
"People can feel threatened by such projects as an incinerator," Jankiewicz said. "And it's the local authorities' job to explain all the pros and cons."
In his opinion, good communication with residents has been sorely lacking over the past four years.
Seeking solutions
Politicians agree that Warsaw's administrative structure needs to be changed, said Danuta Waniek, who is likely to be the Democratic Left Alliance's candidate to succeed Swiecicki as mayor.
"I would like to see Warsaw better managed and as one city instead of a union of independent entities," she said after a campaign rally last week.
But neither her party, nor AWS or UW have been able to come up with a viable solution for how to make Warsaw workable. Rather, the parties are slugging it out in the courts at the moment over what changes should be made.
One thing is clear to some, though: Warsaw has too much government.
"To start with, Warsaw should have fewer deputies," said Pitera. "In Philadelphia, for instance, there are only 30 deputies, and it works."
Several layers of local self-government and hoards of deputies are the best way to do nothing, she said, since it allows the deputies to remain anonymous to their voters.
"People don't know who their deputies are," Pitera added. "For instance, my constituency is in Mokotow and I used to solve problems from all districts and gminas."
And if citizens don't know who their representatives are, businesses also don't feel that this month's election will have a great impact on them. The bureaucracy won't change, executives said.
Still, the mayor is at the helm of the city and whoever holds the position after this election will be responsible for setting a vision that will determine the shape of things in Warsaw well into the next century.
"The bureaucracy stays the same, but it's the council and mayor who set the feeling of the city," said Andrew Gutowski, managing director of Genesis Hotels.
