Slovakia is on an 8-year path to a fully digitized urban planning system. By 2032, all towns and cities are expected to have submitted new master plans in electronic format. This remarkable journey into hyper-modernity began back in 2022 with the establishment of a new government agency: the Authority for Spatial Planning and Construction (ASPC). At the same time, the government then in power passed new laws governing the country’s planning system.
One of ASPC’s roles is act as a decision maker in cases when conflicts arise over planning issues between government ministries. But its most important job was that of creating a unified methodology that all towns and municipalities would use to create their new digitized master plans.
In one of her last acts as ASPC Deputy director, urbanist Milota Sidorová submitted into the country’s legal registry what amounts to an enormous manual that will now guide the planning work of all Slovak towns. They’ve been given until 2032 to complete new master plans under the new rules — and to do so in the prescribed digital format. Sidorová points out that while it’s an enormously complex document with excruciating levels of detail, it marks the first time Slovakia’s registry of law includes pictures.
The government is applying both the carrot and the stick to make towns stick to the 2032 deadline. On the motivation side of things, the ASPS will provide cities with preset blank data files for creating spatial plans to be used with freeware software (QGIS) or a proprietary version (ARCGIS). These will be made available along with funds and training resources. Towns who refuse – or fail – to produce a new plan in time simply lose their right to issue assessment statements on whether a construction plan is compliant with a spatial/zoning plan. (Regional governments will take over that job.)
The ambition of this new system taking root in Slovakia is stunning. By forcing all towns to create master plans using a single data structure for their data model, it will become possible to have a unified approach to storing and presenting them to the public. Along with the greater transparency made possible by digital documents, the master plans themselves have been simplified by reducing the number of colors assigned to different functions and making them more intuitive.
The program towns use to create their master plans will have four mandatory spatial regulations along with 15 optional spatial regulations that city planners can choose from. The four mandatory items are:
-the degree of development (meaning how much can be built on a given piece of land)
-height regulations (to avoid random, unregulated high-rises construction)
-vegetation regulation (to set a minimum level of vegetation for a given plot)
-public space regulation
The last of these is the one Sidorová says she’s especially pleased with. “We’ve made it clear that public space doesn’t just mean roads for cars, which is how it’s often interpreted here,” she says. “Public space also means green areas, space for pedestrians and for cyclists. You have to combine these elements into the creation of public space.”
The result is that planners will now have to make room for all four of these elements. “So often in Slovak and Czech villages, you’ll have a church, a bar and a municipal building along with a road, but that’s it,” she says. “People don’t have any space to be together. “This will push them to really think. If they have just one common space where people can come together, this is a huge push for local mayors to redesign those spaces in order to add maybe some traffic-calming elements to create, say, a nice little plaza.”
The new legislative conditions also enable towns who want greater control over their development to add additional regulations to their master plans. These optional “layers” include choosing where urbanistic landmarks belong, the urbanistic form of development, the interconnection of public spaces, construction plot sizes, or what roofs should look like. Planners can even specify acceptable color palettes or what level of water permeability is acceptable and where. Once an optional regulation is included in the digital master plan model, it becomes mandatory for all investors. Because their large size means they have somewhat unique planning needs, Bratislava and Košice are treated separately. Each has a metropolitan land-use plan that takes their specific development needs to take into account.
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