After years of work and preparations, construction of the first new flats in the city’s development zone Nové Dvory could get underway by next year. In all, the urban planning for the area counts on creating homes for up to 5,000 new residents. The first project is called Jalový Dvůr, a 40-unit housing complex that will be made from a combination of bricks and cross-laminated wood panels. Planning has reached the stage that the city agency PDS that’s spearheading the entire zone’s creation predicts a construction permit could be in place by the beginning of 2025. PDS director Petr Urbánek says that thanks to the materials they’ve chosen, it’s possible the new flats could be ready during 2026.
PDS (Pražská developerská společnosti) is the City of Prague’s vehicle for developing municipal housing on its own land holdings. Nové Dvory is vast undertaking spanning 30 ha of primarily city-owned land in Prague 4’s Lhotka district. It’s a crucial area of development for Prague, for which it’s even building a new metro station (named Nové Dvory). Detailed planning is now underway on 15 ha of the zone which calls for up to 300,000 sqm of new gross floor are to be created over the next decade. Most of it will be devoted to municipally-owned rental housing, while roughly 130,000 sqm will serve as offices, restaurants, shops and schools. Intensive planning has been underway for two years already. This has included exhaustive studies to understand everything from traffic flows and the area’s demographic structure to wind modelling, sun intensity and storm water management.
“We have to remember that public investments have to meet the highest environmental and energetic standards these days in order to qualify for any kind of financing from European or even standard sources,” says Urbánek. “Meeting them makes it possible to reduce dramatically the costs for any financing of the projects using external sources.”
