While all of Wrocław is abuzz with the giant titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) blooming in the Botanical Garden, another long-awaited and noteworthy event took place in the capital of Lower Silesia. The City Council voted to resume work on the landscape resolution.
What is a landscape resolution?
The landscape resolution, which took effect in September 2015 (pursuant to Article 37a of the Act on Spatial Planning and Development), is a local legal act— a tool designed to combat visual chaos in the urban environment — including banners obscuring building facades or garish billboards that cause excessive sensory stimulation.
The landscape resolution makes it possible to regulate the placement of advertisements, small architectural features, and fences throughout the entire municipality. The municipality’s adoption of a landscape resolution subsequently enables it to pass a resolution providing the basis for the municipality to collect fees for the placement of advertisements
— as stated on the government’s website.
This tool thus allows for both the visual organization of space and the generation of revenue for local budgets.
Read more: Summer visual chaos. Article by Magdalena Milert
Since 2016, landscape resolutions have been implemented in 82 municipalities ( out of 2,479 in Poland), including 6 provincial capitals (out of 18): Łódź (2016), Gdańsk (2018), Opole (2019), Kraków (2020), Kielce (2022), and Poznań (2023). However, they are still absent in cities such as Warsaw, Katowice, or Wrocław; nor do they produce the expected results everywhere, which may stem—as Jakub Głaz notes—from the provisions of the law, which do not require municipalities to draft these resolutions and do not set maximum deadlines for their adoption:
Voluntary compliance and delays will never allow Poland to free itself from advertising and aesthetic chaos. [...] Cities where such a resolution is already in effect, such as Gdańsk or Kraków, are coming out on top. Others are ceding ground to advertising media operators and continue to allow them to make large sums of money at the expense of the quality of public space
— wrote Jakub Głaz in 2022 in A&B.
Second time’s the charm?
On June 18, 2026, the Wrocław City Council voted to begin work on a landscape resolution. This is not the city’s first attempt to regulate the public space—the draft was ready for adoption as early as 2021, but doubts were raised at the time—as reported by the wroclaw.pl portal—regarding the methods of seeking compensation for the removal of legally installed advertisements.
Ultimately, a December 2023 ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal confirmed that the draft was inconsistent with the Constitution. Municipalities that already had landscape resolutions amended them. Wrocław city council members concluded that our draft was not suitable for further consideration. A new one must be prepared
— writes Tomasz Wysocki on the wroclaw.pl website.
So what has changed over the past three years? Not much, but the city’s chaotic landscape won’t sort itself out on its own.
The law is full of loopholes; it needs work, but we don’t want to—and won’t—wait any longer. That’s why we’re resuming work on the landscape resolution
— said Anna Kołodziej, a Wrocław city councilor, during a press conference.
© Press Office of the Wrocław City Hall
The city is not a billboard
However, this process isn’t starting from scratch. A team has been formed to work on the new guidelines for the resolution—it includes city council members: Anna Kołodziej (subcommittee chair), Igor Wójcik, Sławomir Śmigielski, Dominika Kontecka, and Sebastian Lorenc — which has spent the past year analyzing solutions implemented in other cities. Another team is also set to be formed , which will in turn ensure compliance with Wrocław’s version of the document. Plans also include assessing the scale of the problem and holding discussions with residents.
The experiences and practices of the “Stare Miasto” Cultural Park, which has been in operation since 2014 , may also prove helpful . However, Wrocław is not just the city center. As Małgorzata Jordan, deputy director of the Department of Architecture and Historic Monuments and the city’s artist, explains, the resolution is intended to introduce different provisions for specific areas:
the city’s very center has different needs than residential neighborhoods or industrial areas, which is why analyses and consultations will be so important.
According to the wroclaw.pl website, the city will draft the resolution in cooperation with a qualified external firm selected through a competitive bidding process.
Why is that? First, it will be faster. Specialized firms have emerged on the market that are familiar with the advertising industry and have the tools for professional spatial analysis. Second, Wrocław is neither relinquishing its decisive influence over the direction of the work nor its ongoing supervision
— writes Tomasz Wysocki.
If everything goes according to plan, preparing and enacting the resolution will take at least two years, which would mean there is a chance to begin its implementation before the end of this term. Will it work out this time?
A city is not a billboard; a city is a place to live [...]. This will be one of the most important decisions regarding the city’s appearance for the coming decades, because this resolution isn’t really entirely about advertisements, nor is it entirely about small-scale architecture or billboards—it’s about the kind of space we want to live in. And I believe that Wrocław deserves a cityscape featuring the greenery that is spreading more and more throughout the city, historic monuments, and good architecture—rather than yet more flashing advertisements, ubiquitous billboards, or yet more spaces plastered with posters
— concluded Anna Kołodziej, a Wrocław city council member
