Flooding the market

Another year and more major flooding across swaths of Central Europe. The floods that struck the region (and in particular Poland) in 1997 were referred to at the time as the '1,000-year flood'; in turn, those that devastated Prague and other Czech, German and Austrian cities in 2002 became known as the '500-year flood'. However, the stark fact is that these are no longer freak occurrences. It is becoming clear that these calamities are increasing in both frequency and magnitude. After the latest deluge, some have even been prompted to ask whether we need to move our settlements away from the flood plains completely. But for developers and their potential tenants, the question that arises is whether it is still worth investing in some of the riverside areas designated for commercial development in cities susceptible to floods. One of these is Karlín in Prague, a post-industrial district that was being busily revitalised into a modern commercial and residential area when it was s