The first national Act on Territorial Planning in Czechoslovakia was enacted in 1948. It distinguished regional, local and detailed local tiers of planning. The territorial planning system was considered and declared a tool for controlled development to promote economic growth and industrialisation in all parts of the country. To achieve a rational settlement structure, central place theory was introduced as the leading concept on the regional level, which under the conditions of a non-market economy resulted in the centralisation of all investments in central places and the suppression of small villages. The emphasis on the development of heavy industry, energy generation and the growth of agricultural production made some regions of the country the most polluted in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. The critical air pollution in Northern Bohemia was one of the first issues that led to the public protests in 1989 which resulted in the Velvet Revolution. On the local level, plans were tailored to the systematic prefabricated constructions that made it possible to produce huge volumes of housing units in multifamily blocks of flats. 

Attempts to reform planning towards greater openness date back to the period of the Prague Spring in 1968. They resulted in the 1976 Planning and Building Act, which enabled citizens to raise comments on proposed plans, but the reality of participation was very different owing to the Soviet occupation of the country.

The position of planning after the political change towards democracy and a market economy in the 1990s was weakened as spatial planning was often considered a part of the previous central general control by the state. The abolition of regions and the introduction of local self-government in municipalities in 1990 gave municipalities major rights and responsibilities for planning. The split of the country in 1993 did not immediately affect planning law or practice. 

The comprehensive privatisation in the 1990s abolished the previous network of state-controlled design institutes where spatial plans had been elaborated. Planners were now private entrepreneurs who bid for planning jobs, while municipalities, which were made responsible for local planning, had very limited resources and lacked the institutional and personnel capacity for it. Increasingly, planning became driven by the interests of businesses, while public initiatives were often treated as troublemakers. During the social and economic transformation driven by neo-liberal ideas, planning became an arena of many conflicts among various interest groups; mitigating these conflicts and finding a sound compromise has proven to be difficult. 

The 2006 Planning and Building Act made Czech spatial planning compatible with the relevant EU policies and directives. It defined the levels, activities, actors, instruments, responsibilities and powers associated with spatial / physical planning. Planning materials and documents are prepared by the planning departments of the relevant regional or local authorities as a delegated power, i.e. under the control of the state administration, but the regional and local planning documents are approved by the relevant council. 

The present 2021 Building Act (Act 283/2021 Coll.) continues this pattern. 

The central government sets national priorities and development objectives in the Spatial Development Policy (Politika územního rozvoje, PÚR; MMR 2020), which is binding for all lower levels of spatial planning. This document is approved by the government and subject to review every four years. Since the 2015 Building Act (Česká republika 2021), it has been supplemented by the Spatial Development Plan (Územní rozvojový plán, ÚRP), which projects the spatial policies in the physical environment. 

On the regional level, regional councils approve the Spatial Development Principles (Zásady územního rozvoje, ZÚR) as a binding document, which specifies development areas and axes, indicates the hierarchy of centres and defines areas and corridors for infrastructure projects of national or regional importance. 

On the local level, most municipalities commission Spatial Plans (územní plán, ÚP) as well as detailed Regulatory Plans (regulační plán, RP) for some local areas. The respective local councils approve those plans. The structure of planning instruments is subject to a robust hierarchy, whereby the plans on the lower territorial level must comply with all the requirements of the plans of a higher tier. If a new regulation is added to the Principles of Spatial Development that applies for the municipality, the municipality must amend the local plan to comply with the higher planning tier.   

Spatial (‘territorial’) planning deals only with physical aspects of development while strategic plans for cities, towns and regions (which are parallel to the spatial plans) deal mostly with economic and social change. Unlike spatial planning, which is described and regulated in detail by the Building Act, no legal definition for strategic planning exists. The connection between spatial and strategic plans as well as the budgeting of public bodies is rather loose, which is a matter of concern in some governmental documents, such as the ‘Strategic Framework Czech Republic 2030’ (Česká republika 2017; MŽP h.d.). 

For environmental aspects (nature, soil, forest, minerals, air, noise protection), as well as for the protection of monuments, water management and infrastructures, spatial planners have legal partners (‘affected bodies’) in state agencies, mostly at the relevant departments of the regional authorities. These affected bodies are responsible for particular issues of special public interest. No plan can be approved without the prior consent of these partners; in the event of conflicting opinions, the negotiations are organised by the officer who commissions the plan. This sometimes leads environmental, heritage and resource protection to be considered somehow external and even controversial to spatial planning. 

All proposals for plans must be made available (online and otherwise) to the public during the consultation process. In the statutory planning process, all citizens may comment on a plan proposal at the stage of the planning brief as well as at the public hearing or before the final approval process at the regional/local council. After a plan is approved by the respective regional/local council, any person who asserts that their rights may have been infringed may sue at the Administrative Court.

The current Local Plan of the City of Prague dates back to 1999. Having been criticised for obsolescence, preparations for the elaboration of a new spatial plan began in 2007. The then City Council promised in their Programme Statement that a new plan would be completed by 2010. In 2009, a draft of the plan, including a strategic environmental assessment (SEA), was put out for public consultation. The immense number of comments and the sheer criticism of the proposed plan caused further work on the plan to come to a virtual halt. The new city representatives elected in the 2011 local elections decided in 2012 to definitively end the work on the plan and to instead develop a new ‘Metropolitan Plan for the Capital City of Prague’ (however, despite the designation ‘metropolitan’ the plan does not cover the entire metropolitan area; rather, it is limited to the city jurisdiction). The declared goal of the new Metropolitan Plan was to stop the expansion of the city into the countryside and to ensure a sufficient quality of public facilities.

In order to prepare the Metropolitan Plan, the former City Development Department was transformed in 2013 into the Institute of City Planning, which manifested a major turnaround from previous practice, with the Office of the Metropolitan Plan now elaborating the plan. The Department of Development of the City of Prague was empowered to commission the Metropolitan Plan; unlike the Institute of City Planning, which is an agency established by the Capital of Plague and responsible to the City Council, commissioning plans is a delegated power. Having the status of Planning and Building Authority, the department should ensure the legality of the entire process and that it complies with the approved terms of reference and superordinate (i.e. national and regional) plans and laws. The department was also ordered to manage the process of discussing the proposal and public hearings, and to process all comments and objections from the affected bodies, the city districts and the public.

The Prague City Council approved the commissioning of the new Metropolitan Plan in September 2013. The elaboration of the draft plan took six years and was ready in 2018. It was then put out for public consultation to invite the opinions, comments and objections of the affected bodies, the public and property owners. The public submitted a total of 14,500 comments on the proposal. A number of key comments were also raised by the city boroughs, experts from the Association for Urban Planning, and some civic initiatives.The Department of Development of the City of Prague evaluated all the comments and submitted a proposal for how to handle them to the City Council. The plan is currently being revised as instructed by the City Council and will subsequently again be put out for public consultation for views and comments.The discussion of the draft Metropolitan Plan was originally scheduled to be completed by 2022, but the new Building Act 2021 postponed the deadline and it is now assumed that the Metropolitan Plan should be approved by the City Council in 2025 or 2026. 

The spatial planning system is built on a strict hierarchical principle. The higher territorial level of spatial planning documents is binding for the lower levels, i.e. the national Spatial Development Policy (MMR 2020) and the Spatial Development Plan are binding for planning at the regional level (Development Principles) and municipalities (Local/Spatial Plans, Regulatory Plans). This means that plans prepared by the municipalities must fully comply with the national plans and regional plans. This requirement is particularly problematic in the relationship between Local Plans and Regulatory Plans, because when preparing a Regulatory Plan, there is often a need to modify the regulations contained in the Local Plan. There is currently a discussion about whether the Regulatory Plan should be able to deviate from the requirements of the Local Plan. The elaboration of spatial plans is obligatory on the national (Spatial Development Policy (MMR 2020), Spatial Development Plan) and the regional level (Development Principles). The decision to elaborate and approve local plans for municipalities lies with the local council; as such, municipalities are not obliged to create local plans. However, almost all municipalities do have local plans as this is a prerequisite for obtaining subsidies and grants for development. There are far fewer detailed regulatory plans covering development sites, which would provide detailed guidance for lots and the parameters for individual buildings. Many municipalities are reluctant to prepare regulatory plans because they find it difficult to discuss detailed regulation with the affected owners and they lack effective tools for such cooperation.  The spatial planning system largely overlaps with the state’s regional policy as represented by the Regional Development Strategy (Strategie regionálního rozvoje ČR 2021+; Česká republika 2018), which includes (1) metropolitan areas, (2) agglomerations, (3) regional centres and their rural hinterlands, (4) structurally affected regions, and (5) economically and socially vulnerable areas. According to this system, all municipalities in the Czech Republic can be subsumed under these five structural characteristics. The widespread privatisation and outsourcing in the 1990s also affected spatial planning. Plans are prepared by private individuals authorised for this activity by the Czech Chamber of Architects. Municipalities, as their clients, often choose them based on the lowest bid price. Only the largest cities have their own expert teams dedicated to the preparation of plans.

Use of ‘soft planning’ such as informal (non-statutory) planning, planning strategies, etc. 

In addition to spatial plans, many cities also prepare strategic plans that analyse local constraints and potentials, create visions for future development and seek organisational and economic resources for their implementation. Strategic plans and their strategies are not followed by regulations; in practice, they are linked to the availability of EU structural funds in individual programming periods. Structural funds are also linked to ITI (Integrated Territorial Investment) programmes that cross administrative boundaries in metropolitan and agglomeration areas, and CLLD (Community-Led Local Development)-based Local Action Groups (Místní akční skupiny, MAS) that bring together rural municipalities. Citizen groups in big cities, which are increasingly accepted by officials as participants (e.g. ARNIKA in Prague), have at times developed their own analyses and alternative studies and plans, typically for pedestrian- and bike-friendly transport, in contrast to the official plans oriented towards automobile and mass public transport infrastructures (e.g. AutoMat in Prague, see https://auto-mat.cz/publikace/studie-a-analyzy). 

Initially, the European spatial planning agenda established a new layer above and/or in addition to the Czech spatial planning system. Only gradually did the European agenda start to penetrate and influence spatial planning through the national Spatial Planning Policy. Since 2006, when the then Planning and Building Act was adopted, Czech spatial planning has been fully compliant with the relevant EU directives from a formal point of view. Planning formally adopted the EU-wide procedures like the EIA and SEA, but sometimes with significant modifications in their implementation and outcomes.

The structural policies and revised plans are significantly influenced by the availability of EU structural funds; to a large extent, it can be said that large infrastructure investments in particular are EU policy-driven. 

The recent EU planning agendas, namely EU 2030, are also implemented by means of spatial plans. 

For the EU 2021–2027 programming period, the Just Transition Fund is providing huge sums of resources to the three former NUTS 3 mining regions of Karlovy Vary, Ústí and Labem and Moravia-Silesia (Ostrava). The capacity to absorb and wisely use these resources to comprehensively revitalise the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development represents a major challenge for the institutional capacity of planning and territorial management.  

Challenges for spatial planning 

The ageing population is considered a major social and economic problem for the future, but its spatial dimensions have not been fully considered. Until recently, the issue was not addressed by spatial planning (which does not deal with non-physical phenomena) or by regional policies. In fact, there is a spatial dimension to the ageing population. Rural areas far from major centres have traditionally been demographically ‘the oldest’, but ageing also affects housing estates in cities where the original residents have reached their retirement age. The challenge of demographic ageing has recently been increasingly addressed in spatial planning by demarcating sites for care facilities.

The big global issues of climate change and the energy transition are reflected in spatial planning but the fact that spatial planning’s scope is limited to physical structures and infrastructures alongside the pursuit of technology-based solutions have tended to simplify the complex issues. Moreover, the transformation towards net zero sustainable energy was delayed due to scandals connected with the introduction of solar collectors in the early 2010s. As such, until recently, the measures to tackle climate change and energy production have been reduced to dams for flood protection and plans to strengthen the electricity transmission system with new high-voltage lines. The 2023 and 2025 Acts on sources of renewable energy (OZE I, II, III) aim at supporting the construction of small energy plants on rivers, solar and wind generators as well as the means for energy produced by individuals to be stored, traded and sold. 

The 2021 Building Act requires spatial planning to ‘define suitable areas for the production of electricity, gas and heat, including areas for their production from renewable sources with regard to the objectives of the energy strategy and the climate objectives of the state, […] to create and establish the conditions for reducing risks [from a changing climate] in the territory, especially from the effects of floods, drought, erosion phenomena and extreme temperatures, […] and to implement the requirements for the adaptation of settlements and landscape design resulting from climate change’. 

Following this, the sixth update of the national Spatial Development Policy in 2023 identified the areas exposed to droughts and requires the lower tiers of planning documents to include measures to keep rainwater in the soil instead of draining it via sewerage into rivers. The recent updates No. 7 and No. 9 of the national Spatial Development Policy in 2024 and 2025 respectively identified areas appropriate for solar and wind generators and simplified the approval processes for smaller generators. 

Territorial disparities, as the side effects of transformation and privatisation, loomed large in the 1990s after the previous state control of the economy through regional planning was abolished in 1990; the gap between prosperous and lagging regions subsequently became entrenched. Former industrial regions with a history of coal mining, energy production and heavy industry as well as peripheral rural regions have been hit by these disparities. 

The Act on supporting regional development (Act 248/2000 Coll.) reintroduced regional management and laid the foundation for economic support for the lagging parts of the country. Since the country’s admission to EU in 2004, structural funds have been a major resource for regional development support. In the 2021 to 2027 EU programming period, the EU-initiated Just Transition Programme is supporting the Moravian-Silesian, Ústí nad Labem and Karlovy Vary regions, not only in economic restructuring and remediating environmental issues like the devastation after strip mining (North-West Bohemia) or mining depressions and soil pollution (Ostrava), but also in social aspects such as education and the general improvement of the quality of life.

Cross-border cooperation has been an important issue for spatial planning. Since the 1990s, Euroregions have existed along all the borders with neighbouring countries, which has helped to improve the infrastructures along the borders and re-establish traditional links, e.g. in Ostrava–Upper Silesia, Cheb–Oberfranken and Liberec–Zittau.  

Economic growth is the prime issue in all debates and the prevailing criterion for decision-making related to spatial planning and management. 

Infrastructure and, in particular, transport development is the constant priority in most plans. From the national scale to regional and local plans, all planning instruments are required to create the legal and technical preconditions for the development of new infrastructures. Act 416/2009 Coll. (as amended) on accelerating the construction of strategically important infrastructure bypasses and streamlines certain procedures of the Building Law to speed up the preparation of major projects for transport, water and energy infrastructures. 

Digitalisation of spatial planning. – Since 2007, all spatial planning outputs are published online and all planning data are available in digital form. Currently, there is a further shift towards interoperability between individual levels of spatial planning and linking spatial planning outputs to the National Geoportal of Spatial Planning. In the target solution, the Geoportal should (1) store data on spatial planning documentation; (2) enable the submission and processing of comments on draft plans in electronic form; (3) provide data from valid plans in the form of open data; (4) ensure interoperability throughout the Czech Republic with an overlap within the EU. 

Standardisation is a prerequisite for the creation and functioning of the National Geoportal of Spatial Planning. The implementing decree for the new Building Act 2021 includes standards for the graphic elements of plans and related terminology, including attributes in GIS and CAD exchange formats.

Planning culture plays a central role in how planning systems and, particularly, planning institutions influence spatial development, and also affects the actual position of planners as professionals in dealing with those processes. It is framed by the system of planning, the history of planning and the style of administration of the country. 

A specific feature of the Czechoslovak / Czech planning system is that two planning subsystems have historically formed: socio-economic regional planning and spatial or ‘territorial’ planning, based on the tradition of Städtebau. This duality or planning dichotomy persists to this day. 

The Czech spatial planning system inherited its strong legal position from the communist period, with a top-down hierarchy of planning and building authorities and binding statutory plans. During the post-1989 transition, the basic organisational pattern of planning and building authorities was maintained but most of the former state controls and directives apart from spatial plans were abolished. Since 1998 all of the 6,000+ Czech municipalities were granted significant autonomy in their planning decisions: the regional tier of planning may not interfere with the powers of municipalities. But their human and institutional capacity is limited, especially in small municipalities, which in practice weakens the formally strong hierarchical spatial planning system. 

As plans are prepared by private individuals / companies, the elaboration of a plan is a business. To be successful in the business, the client must be satisfied. As such, plan makers tend to be neutral or ‘value-free’: they deliver what their clients require. Thus, politicians and officers are the actual bearers of planning values. 

The planning culture that was originally anchored in rational planning and programming flavoured with the art of Städtebau thus moved towards adaptive ‘value-free’ attitudes and habits. While the top-down principle of the spatial planning system remains unchanged, the techno-bureaucratic administrative culture moved gradually towards a more pragmatic and entrepreneurial style. 

In addition, a gap exists between formal planning as represented by its systems and the informal components embedded in planning cultures. The officially proclaimed objectives of planning, like sustainable development based on balancing social cohesion, environmental protection and economic development, may not be reflected in the actual behaviour of the actors (officials, politicians, investors) involved in planning processes; they tend to favour particular economic interests on account of their societal and environmental impacts. Within planning systems, the goals and objectives proclaimed in national policies and strategies may be biased by local power coalitions between councillors of the town hall and development groups. Given that economic growth is presently the overwhelming priority, the role of planning is reduced to merely servicing development. The ‘value-free’ position of planners further contributes to this. 

Planners are recruited from various professional and academic backgrounds. Most spatial (‘territorial’) planners trained as architects, while some have a background in civil engineering or geography. Regional managers often recruit economists, and regional analysts are mostly geographers. The diverse professional background of planners and the fragmentation of planning into different branches of territorial management contribute to a weakness and lack of clarity in the role of a planner or a planning administrator. 

Spatial planners must be authorised to practise by the Czech Chamber of Architects. The spatial planning education recognised by the Chamber encompasses the study of Architecture and Building Construction programmes at the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Technical University in Brno or the Technical University in Liberec. The only specialised bachelor and master degree programmes in spatial planning are offered by the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. Graduates from other programmes (e.g. geography) have to demonstrate a longer period of practice and proficiency to be authorised. 

For planning administrators (‘commissioners’) no specific education is required. They are usually recruited from technical universities (civil engineering and less frequently architecture). They are required to pass special professional competence exams for spatial planning.

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