REGION

Ostrava has begun the regulation of “advertising

smog”. Why? Is this step not a contradiction to the

support of enterprise?

Advertising takes up a considerable part of public space.

It influences human perception of retail points and

products but it also affects the way we see public space.

As a society we have grown somehow immune to the

scale and design of advertisements.

We believe in the high quality of products and goodquality advertisements whose clear language and elegant

form bring value to the enterprise. It took us some time

to create our manual and regulations; now the long-term

and even more complicated job is ahead: to show that

efficient advertising does not have to spoil public space,

and to support businesses and transform theory into

practice.

The city is a great investor in public space, organizing

numerous architectural competitions. When will we

see some of their results coming to life?

In the past three years, the City Council of Ostrava has

organized eight architectural competitions. The greatest

competition in the recent history of our city has been

the plan of the construction of the new concert hall.

The winner was Steven Holl Architects, however, there is

still a very long time before we see the results. A project

whose plans have already been finished is the renewal

of historic slaughterhouse buildings.

As any other project, the slaughterhouses have gone through

a challenging phase of planning and preparation. Now we

are in the phase of the procedure to appoint construction

contractors, whilst construction itself should begin in the first

quarter of 2020. That will be the first real and visible results

of the architectural competitions. More will follow relatively

soon, including one for the recently approved car-park block

near the Regional Government Offices.

Ostrava is a polycentric city: transport and parking

are extremely important here. How do you feel about

the connection of public and individual transport in the

park-and-ride system?

Transport is very important, especially when you have

such polycentric character as Ostrava has, but also

because the city is a metropolis covering the needs

of many nearby urban areas. Even though the problems

of Ostrava are not as huge as in other large cities, the

situation is growing worse. We cannot sit and wait for

a breakdown and then repeat the same mistakes already

experienced by others, like increasing the capacity

of streets, roads and parking lots. The city’s public

transport must be a better, or at least an equally good,

alternative. Ostrava has worked on that for some time

already, therefore we can proudly claim that our public

transport is the best in the Republic. I believe the time will

come when cars will not be the centrepieces of our lives.

The Czech standard still is a town or a city where streets

serve as car parks.

Connecting public transport and IAD (Integrated Access

Device), the park-and-ride system in this case, is one

of the ways. Ostrava is therefore preparing a few projects

of car-park blocks to be offered to private investors,

including the previously mentioned car-park block near

the Regional Government offices or near the city hospital.

Investments in these infrastructures are huge and could

be beyond the city’s capacity, thus they go hand-in-hand

with the regulation of free parking. That means the

park-and-ride system for long-distance commuting and

good-quality alternative forms of transport to cover short

distances, such as bikesharing and pedestrian zones.

Let us not forget about these.

Thank you for the interview.

-editorial-

Text:

Zuzana Bajgarová,

Foto:

archiv

Statutární město

Ostrava

www.ostrava.cz

POSITIV 4/2019 ǀ 49