All around the garden

Viewed from the outskirts of the city, Warsaw seems like the very vision of a burgeoning modern, sustainable European metropolis: glittering high-rises with new public squares, renovated historic buildings, flower-filled meadows, expensively-planted trees, cycle paths, parks and socially responsible businesses. Even if this is a picture that has been half conjured up by marketing and PR, it is still one that has been painted with real buildings and public amenities. But those of us who live just outside Warsaw are sometimes so jealous of all this that our entire families go to sleep sobbing into our pillows. Where I live, a spatial plan was drawn up more or less ten years ago, but that doesn’t mean that this document has since been turned into a clear local development plan. From time to time, plans are drawn up for a new residential estate out in the fields nearby. Sometimes smaller plots are joined together and the land is assigned a different usage. A week never goes by witho