A few months after announcing a master plan including recommendations for changes in Krakow's Grzegórzki and Kazimierz districts, the local magistrate decided to establish another, the third cultural park in Krakow. What does this mean for the district?
mosaic of the city
The new Kazimierz with Stradom cultural park is to cover an area covering a total of one hundred and forty hectares. It is a unique space for Krakow, being a peculiar mosaic of cultures - especially Jewish culture. The Kazimierz area is an important element as a memorial site. The district itself has undergone a process of gentrification in recent years, a result of the mass tourism that has hit Krakow.
In the case of this cultural park, we are dealing with a mosaic of areas of different character, genesis and development. These are different spaces, which are the arena of intensive investment processes and thorough transformations. Kazimierz and Stradom is an area inscribed on theUNESCO World Heritage List , also part of the historic complex of the city, recognized by an order of the President of Poland as a monument of history. The creation of a cultural park in this area is therefore a complement to the protection of the world heritage site," explains the sense of the project's creation by Katarzyna Olesiak, director of the Department of Culture and National Heritage at the Cracow City Hall.
Krakow's Kazimierz is a unique space that is a mosaic of diverse cultures
Photo: J Doll,© CC BY 3.0
new provisions and changes
What will the planned cultural park cover? The area of Kazimierz, Stradomy and the Vistula boulevards, together with the area between the border of Kazimierz and the former Vistula riverbed. According to officials, work on preparing the document began in 2019. At the beginning, a project agreed with the Małopolska Regional Monuments Conservator was prepared, which formed the basis, to create regulations.
What will be included in this cultural park? The regulations will cover similar aspects as in other cultural parks. First and foremost, regulations on the amount of advertising in public spaces, the conduct of construction works and commercial and service activities. The resolution is also intended to sort out the problems of any tourist city, namely the meleks, which, whether we want it or not, have already become part of the landscape of Krakow in many aspects.
Shooting flies out of a cannon and lacking integrity
The new cultural park that is being established may be controversial. First of all, should a tool such as a cultural park first and foremost solve the problem of spatial chaos and unregulated advertising that has resulted from the gentrification of a neighborhood? Such an action can be called "shooting flies from a cannon." Unfortunately, local governments in Poland still have the problem of not having the right tools to use in urban organization processes. On how "hollow" the law is, landscape law writes Jakub Glaz see here.
There is also the question of how compatible the cultural park will be with the master plan for Grzegórzki and Kazimierz, which includes a number of recommendations for changing traffic, organizing transportation and introducing new greenery. From the authority's side, there is no information on how (or even if at all) these projects will be connected. The lack of proper integrity points to the need for a broader look at the Kazimierz-Stradom area.
Are the tools available to local governments sufficient?
Photo: L-BBE, © CC BY 3.0
As of now, the City Council has passed a resolution to create the park. As of September 1, 2022 , all new facilities and elements of space development will have to comply with the provisions of the document. For facilities and elements already operating in the area, the new regulations and provisions will not apply until September 2023 .
Lukasz Pancewicz of A2P2 studio talked about why the Climate Quarter, a master plan organizing space in Kazimierz and Grzegórzki for A&B, was created see here.
