DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Martyn, Peter: Seeking to place one city among numerous others, in its own context
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49349#0555
Seeking to Place One City, among numerous others, in its own context
541
Following on from the incessant glut of piecemeal, but not infrequently monumental, retail,
office and housing construction in the private sector, the point has been reached where powerful
business-commercial corporations have begun to play a decisive role in urban planning. A very
obvious example would be the appointing in the year 2000 of a generał designer by the concern
PROKOM Investments Ltd. to lay out an entirely new district dubbed the Wilanów Township.
While the standard 'burnph' waxes lyrical about references to the urban aesthetics of 18th-century
Paris and Nancy, as well as the Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, Ca., it is most realistic to gauge the
future prospects for this kind of 'grand-urban' town planning in terms of gigantic hypermarkets
competing with each other for customers, housing on mortgages affordable to none other than
'upwardly mobile' professionals, underground parking space for 4000 motor vehicles and a drop
in the watertable that could kill off much of the flora in the parkland surrounding Jan Sobieski's
celebrated 17th-century residence.3
Within a few months of the preliminary plan to this new district being put on public display, a new
initiative was taken in the municipal authorities' approach to planning issues. Prior to abandoning
his post at the urban council headquarters on Bank Square in favour of a parliamentary deputy to the
Sejm on Wiejska Street, the city mayor (Polish title: prezydent miasta), Paweł Piskorski, inaugurated
architects' workshops responsible for preparing 'plans for the (urban-) spatial cultivation' (plany
zagospodarowania przestrzennego) of entire inner-urban districts. The slogan adopted for this muni-
cipal initiative was: 'The Warsaw of our Dreams' (Warszawa naszych marzeń). Apart from those to
redevelop the riverside area around M. Budzyński's remarkable new university library complex on
Dobra Street, district plans have been drawn up for extensive sections of Wola and Powązki, as well
as the Tenth Anniversary Stadion and disused port regions of Praga. They have also included more
localised schemes, such as converting the current voids or carparks in the middle of Constitution,
Theatre and inner Źoliborz's Woodrow Wilson Squares into 'public' spaces. Drastic reductions in
funds available to the public sector mean the great majority of such planning schemes will come to
fruition only if and when private investors are found. The general tendency, as has occurred at 'Little
Town Wilanów', is to parcel the area under development up into multiple contracts, which may
serve only to further 'cultivate' the chaotic fragmentation and architectural dissonance inflicted
on the city since the mid-1990s. Portrayed as multi-colour two-dimensional maps and axiometric
diagrams, complete with idealised and intimate artists' impressions from the pedestrian's perspec-
tive (featuring superimposed pictures of generally young men and women living the lives of self-
made urban professionals), these projects underline a total commitment to the hearsay recovery in
the world's economy which is being currently professed (to ever less convincing effect) by the
powers that be in Washington DC and repeated by friends, big and little, across the world.4
3 Cf.: A. STOPKA, Z. OKOŃSKI of PROKOM, Miasteczko Wilanów, prestiż i skala zobowiązuje, followed by their
confrontation with some leading architects and academics, edited by G. Buczek under the title Jakość przestrzeni -
interes miasta czy inwestora?, 'Urbanista', Nr 9, IX 2003, pp. 17-26; also: the provacative text by G. STIASNY, with a
separate declaration from the planner-designer, G. PERRET, in a comprehensive report titled Wilanowskie pola biznesu/
Wilanów Business Fields, 'Architektura' 11/2003, pp. 26-48. In what more resembles a modus vivendi than confronta-
tion between the Church and Big Business, the 'Township' borders on the Temple of Divine-and-Holy Providence (the
adjective 'Holy' has been added to the original name). Following the sacral authorities' rejection of M. Budzyński's
adventurous, but costly, competition-winning design, the Świątynia Świętej Opatrzności Bożej is currently in the course
of being constructed according to a concept by W. Szymborski. This votive monument from the Polish nation in celebra-
tory thanksgiving for its full sovereignty was originally promised by Stanislaus Augustus and its foundation stone,
restored in the late 1980s and adapted into the 'Third of May Chapel', was laid in the vicinity of the Ujazdów Castle, on
a site occupied since the 1820s by the [old] Botanical Gardens. In the late 1930s, a second votive temple design, selected
from an architectural competition won by B. Pniewski, was to rise above a wholly new government district in the
Mokotów Field, but this monumental conception was also thwarted by the course of history; see: Sąd konkursu na
projekt świątyni Opatrzności Bożej, 'Architektura i Budownictwo', R. VI 9/10, pp. 322-95.
4 See, above all, successive catalogues for the annual exhibitions titled Plany na przyszłość ('Plans for the Future')
organised since 1998 by the 'Łowicka' Educational and Cultural Centre, but displayed since its completion in the public
541
Following on from the incessant glut of piecemeal, but not infrequently monumental, retail,
office and housing construction in the private sector, the point has been reached where powerful
business-commercial corporations have begun to play a decisive role in urban planning. A very
obvious example would be the appointing in the year 2000 of a generał designer by the concern
PROKOM Investments Ltd. to lay out an entirely new district dubbed the Wilanów Township.
While the standard 'burnph' waxes lyrical about references to the urban aesthetics of 18th-century
Paris and Nancy, as well as the Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, Ca., it is most realistic to gauge the
future prospects for this kind of 'grand-urban' town planning in terms of gigantic hypermarkets
competing with each other for customers, housing on mortgages affordable to none other than
'upwardly mobile' professionals, underground parking space for 4000 motor vehicles and a drop
in the watertable that could kill off much of the flora in the parkland surrounding Jan Sobieski's
celebrated 17th-century residence.3
Within a few months of the preliminary plan to this new district being put on public display, a new
initiative was taken in the municipal authorities' approach to planning issues. Prior to abandoning
his post at the urban council headquarters on Bank Square in favour of a parliamentary deputy to the
Sejm on Wiejska Street, the city mayor (Polish title: prezydent miasta), Paweł Piskorski, inaugurated
architects' workshops responsible for preparing 'plans for the (urban-) spatial cultivation' (plany
zagospodarowania przestrzennego) of entire inner-urban districts. The slogan adopted for this muni-
cipal initiative was: 'The Warsaw of our Dreams' (Warszawa naszych marzeń). Apart from those to
redevelop the riverside area around M. Budzyński's remarkable new university library complex on
Dobra Street, district plans have been drawn up for extensive sections of Wola and Powązki, as well
as the Tenth Anniversary Stadion and disused port regions of Praga. They have also included more
localised schemes, such as converting the current voids or carparks in the middle of Constitution,
Theatre and inner Źoliborz's Woodrow Wilson Squares into 'public' spaces. Drastic reductions in
funds available to the public sector mean the great majority of such planning schemes will come to
fruition only if and when private investors are found. The general tendency, as has occurred at 'Little
Town Wilanów', is to parcel the area under development up into multiple contracts, which may
serve only to further 'cultivate' the chaotic fragmentation and architectural dissonance inflicted
on the city since the mid-1990s. Portrayed as multi-colour two-dimensional maps and axiometric
diagrams, complete with idealised and intimate artists' impressions from the pedestrian's perspec-
tive (featuring superimposed pictures of generally young men and women living the lives of self-
made urban professionals), these projects underline a total commitment to the hearsay recovery in
the world's economy which is being currently professed (to ever less convincing effect) by the
powers that be in Washington DC and repeated by friends, big and little, across the world.4
3 Cf.: A. STOPKA, Z. OKOŃSKI of PROKOM, Miasteczko Wilanów, prestiż i skala zobowiązuje, followed by their
confrontation with some leading architects and academics, edited by G. Buczek under the title Jakość przestrzeni -
interes miasta czy inwestora?, 'Urbanista', Nr 9, IX 2003, pp. 17-26; also: the provacative text by G. STIASNY, with a
separate declaration from the planner-designer, G. PERRET, in a comprehensive report titled Wilanowskie pola biznesu/
Wilanów Business Fields, 'Architektura' 11/2003, pp. 26-48. In what more resembles a modus vivendi than confronta-
tion between the Church and Big Business, the 'Township' borders on the Temple of Divine-and-Holy Providence (the
adjective 'Holy' has been added to the original name). Following the sacral authorities' rejection of M. Budzyński's
adventurous, but costly, competition-winning design, the Świątynia Świętej Opatrzności Bożej is currently in the course
of being constructed according to a concept by W. Szymborski. This votive monument from the Polish nation in celebra-
tory thanksgiving for its full sovereignty was originally promised by Stanislaus Augustus and its foundation stone,
restored in the late 1980s and adapted into the 'Third of May Chapel', was laid in the vicinity of the Ujazdów Castle, on
a site occupied since the 1820s by the [old] Botanical Gardens. In the late 1930s, a second votive temple design, selected
from an architectural competition won by B. Pniewski, was to rise above a wholly new government district in the
Mokotów Field, but this monumental conception was also thwarted by the course of history; see: Sąd konkursu na
projekt świątyni Opatrzności Bożej, 'Architektura i Budownictwo', R. VI 9/10, pp. 322-95.
4 See, above all, successive catalogues for the annual exhibitions titled Plany na przyszłość ('Plans for the Future')
organised since 1998 by the 'Łowicka' Educational and Cultural Centre, but displayed since its completion in the public