Your Association continues to grow and now you’re putting on your first conference. What’s the idea behind it?
Over the last 35 years, this profession has developed tremendously in the Czech Republic, even if we’re still struggling with a number of problems. The idea was to produce sort of a summary conference where we could bring people together for a look at everything we’ve achieved over the past years. But we’ve also invited futurologists to give people a point of view about the future. We need to look at what lies ahead of us to cope with all the changes that are happening on the market, like the Green Deal, demography and so on. All of these issues should be addressed. More generally, it’s an opportunity to highlight the development profession to the outside world. That’s why we’ve invited high-level politicians like the Prime Minister and government ministers for discussions. It’s supposed to be a high-level summary of where we are as a profession. Not to discuss current politics and problems, but to have a broader discussion and to look ahead towards the future.
This is the association’s first conference but it’s happening in conjunction with a Build Europe Association gathering. How did that come about?
It was actually a nice coincidence that we helped along. The Build Europe Association has its own annual awards evening and they decided to hold them in Prague this year. We thought it would be good to combine our activities. So, our conference will take place from morning until the afternoon. Then in the evening will be the Build Europe Awards program. This means we can bring the Czech real estate development environment together with the European one and have all these people talking to each other. But my goal was also to be able to show people coming from other countries what Czech development has achieved over the past 30 years. So, there will be a development tour to show them different projects around Prague. It’s a presentation of the Czech Republic for the other countries in Europe.
The tour of projects actually begins at your venue, which is the new Spirala building at Vystaviste. The public sector doesn’t get credit very often, but that’s a notable achievement.
Absolutely. We have to appreciate what the city of Prague has achieved there because it’s a quality reconstruction. And also in my opinion, this type of venue is really missing in Prague. The venue is really special and this will be the first event to take place there.
Sustainability is bound to come up, isn’t it? On the one hand, you have constantly tightening regulations which raise expectations. But then there’s the reality of investor expectations and the basic laws of physics governing what’s possible. It sometimes feels like we’re heading for a three-car, head-on collision.
That’s exactly where we are heading to. Our main concern is that in the long-term, it’s very hard to imagine that all the constraints these days can work together and that we’ll be able to deliver the product that society needs. It’s the same thing with affordable housing. Society is demanding that we need affordable housing. But the conditions developers operate in make it difficult to build any kind of housing at all, to say nothing about affordable. This collision between ambitious goals with reality is huge. And that’s a real danger for the profession of development. Because at the end of the day, everybody’s now blaming developers for apartments being too expensive.
The Czech Association of Developers is holding its conference “Together, we shape the future” on October 16, featuring futurologist “Gerd Leonhard.” That evening, the Build Europe Association will hold its awards ceremony. ThePrime is a media partner of the event. Tomáš Kadeřábek is Director of the Association of Developers.
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