Building for squirrels

Recently my fiancée was driving me through Warsaw's Ursynów district and we passed a placard with the bold words: This is to be the site of a project by Hochtief. The location for this future development is a bucolic green knoll lined with willows. My fiancée noted that it was a shame that such green areas in Warsaw are disappearing. Indeed, there are many such signs littered around the city and many people hold similar sentiments. In Białołęka district, two thirds of Park Wiśniewo is to be redeveloped and turned into a shopping centre. The area is owned by developer Astro. Unsurprisingly, local residents are objecting, pointing out that the park contains many rare plant and bird species, and that there are few such areas in the surrounding local area. I have some sympathy for such residents, and indeed Poland does have a bit of a reputation for concreting over greenery. We all probably remember the row over Dolina Rospudy in 2009 when the government incurred the wrath of the European Union and risked the imposition of large fines by proposing to put a motorway right through the nature reserve.

However, my sympathy has its limits. Warsaw sorely requires further development. In almost every respect the capital remains underdeveloped. Developers talk with dreamy eyes of how few hotels there are, while the pace of office development is far from slow. True, some developers talk of saturation when it comes to retail facilities, but the fact that Astro seems prepared to face down local objections to construct a mall suggests that there is still room for growth. And don't get me started when it comes to housing. There are an estimated 2 mln residents in Warsaw, while the population of Poland is around 40 mln. In other words, only app. 5 pct of the country?s population can be found in its largest city. That is a tiny proportion. Where are all the people? A large number can still be found sitting in the countryside, making a subsistence living and praying that their children will have a better life, which despite any number of rural development schemes, only a city can provide. Sooner or later, these people will migrate to the cities and this puts immense pressure on housing and other local amenities. For many Varsovians (including myself, for I now regard myself as a Varsovian even though I am English), affordable housing remains pie-in-the-sky, a dream with little hope of fulfilment. And it's not as if Warsaw lacks green spaces. Łazienki Królewskie park is almost in the very centre of the city and it's huge, while Ogród Saski (the Saxon Gardens) is in the very centre and it too is of no mean size. Occasionally, these parks are a real pain. I used to live next to Pole Mokotowskie (Mokotów Field), which just as its name suggests largely comprises a huge under-utilised green expanse best suited for grazing sheep or cows. The problem was that at the time I would regularly have to travel to Ursynów and I (not being renowned for my punctuality) would often be forced to take a taxi - just so that I could sit in a traffic jam for half an hour on ul. Hynka. Obviously, building a road through the park would be out of the question! Please tell me, in what other city can you get on the metro next to a forest, travel without changing trains and get off at another forest? The irony is that despite a surfeit of green spaces, the city remains ugly. I?ve been told that pre-war Warsaw was a city that rivalled Budapest in its beauty. Clearly, the beauty of a city is not just dependent on its parks, but also on its architecture, and much of Warsaw is dominated by pre-fabricated housing. I'm not fool enough to claim that all the recent development in Warsaw is pretty. Architects talk of a dialogue between buildings; well, such a dialogue is never going to be on a particularly high level with a block that looks as if it were constructed from Lego.

It's not that I am completely insensitive to environmental issues. I fully support green building initiatives and I too would object vehemently to any development that was proposed in a green-belt area. But what I am talking about is development within cities and the question I want to ask is who do we build cities for? For people or for squirrels? Developers in Warsaw have my full permission to concrete away.