Mission impossible?

Lech Kaczyński, the President of Warsaw and now a serious presidential candidate, finally issued the city's Warsaw Development Strategy by 2020. However, he caused major controversy with its distribution. The brochure, which was financed by Warsaw City Hall, was attached to the issue of Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on September 4, just five days before the presidential elections. Critics say the presidential candidate was using city hall resources for electioneering purposes.

The brochure is an element of a social action called Transparent Poland, which is directed at local governments. The project of the Strategy was first presented to Warsaw citizens in June, during the Warsaw of the Future exhibition, which was visited by some 50,000 citizens. The 18,000 circulation was too small and now the city hall decided to publish 96,000 issues. Initial work on the document started in 2004. In September this year, the strategy was directed to the Warsaw City Council, which is to decide to set a bill approving the document after it has consulted with interested parties.

The strategy presents the mission and vision of Poland's capital in 15 years' time. The mission is achieving the highest level of meeting citizens' demands and Warsaw taking a significant position among the most important metropolises in Europe. The Strategy's vision sees Warsaw as "an attractive, modern and dynamically developing city, with its economy based on knowledge. An open and accessible community, with high standards of living."

"Modern schools," "sport for everyone," "save Warsaw," "clear water," "clear sewage," "new roads," and "more bridges" are just some of the catchy slogans introducing the details of five major operational aims. One of them talks about support for residential housing and modernizing the existing buildings.

The city also promises to create a complex program for constructing communal houses located throughout the whole city, which will, as the strategy explains, help to avoid a concentration of poor people in one region. The city has bound itself to support Towarzystwa Budownictwa Społecznego (Social Building Associations). The city also pledges to support the housing cooperatives in modernizing and heating flats in the huge housing estates. The document says that asbestos will have been eliminated from buildings by 2020. Interestingly, there are plans to adapt some of the previous production buildings to high class, spatial residential apartments.

The project predicts that the monstrous, gray housing estates built at the beginning of the 1970s, in which the bulk of Varsovians have their homes, will be modernized and thermo-modernized.

For investors, the city will set up an electronic system of information on spatial development planning, which will include data on all the real estate available in Warsaw. Detailed information will be provided on technical condition of the properties, ownership, evaluation, and charges.

Time is to judge when, how, and if at all the current burning issues in the capital, such as constructing a ring road, dealing with Jarmark Europa, and developing the area surrounding the Palace of Science and Culture and Plac Piłsudskiego, will be settled. The problem with the document is that in many respects it is more than vague and unrealistic. As to Stadion Dziesięciolecia, which is now the location of Jarmark Europa, City Hall promises to, together with the Government, attempt to work out a modernizing project and develop the premises with recreation and sports facilities. They also assure that the construction of the National Football Stadium for 40,000 viewers will get underway on ul. Łazienkowska.