Prague is facing problems with affordable housing. The premise of the study is that in the market driven environment supplied mostly by private development, the length and complexity of the building process (from initial study to building approval) is a key factor. Public investment is lacking while the length of the approval process becomes longer every year in the Czech Republic. The study focuses on Prague, which has the biggest housing market. Roughly four apartments are built per 1,000 inhabitants, which means around 5,000 apartments per year in the city of Prague. The demand for apartments is estimated to be between 6,000 to 8,000 per year. According to the World Bank, the Czech Republic is ranked 156th in terms of time required for building. The length of project preparation from the initial stage to finalization in Prague is very long, taking up to 10 years. Even the OECD shows that as the fragmentation of administration increases, production decreases. The study examines possible ways to improve governance and administration and thus improve the building process to ensure a sustainable city for all. The article will present ways to make planning and building permit procedures more flexible and effective by changing local government responsibilities for various types of planning and building permit procedures. The governance structure will be derived from the several analyses provided by GIS and use a new planning division proposed by the new Land Use Plan of Prague. Research combines expert knowledge, based on deep analyses using data collected at the Institute. Different possible administrative divisions will be justified with possible interactions calculating density, local character, distance to centers, number of permits issued and complexity of the area.

Housing has become an issue around the world, both in emerging and developed countries. The affordability of housing is decreasing globally; however, the governance system can be harnessed as a tool to help to turn the situation around, the benefit being that it is in the hands of the local or national administration. The analysis of state of the art data, together with qualitative research based on the knowledge and experiences of experts, have been used to examine the case of Prague. The aim is to prove a direct link between the approvals processes for buildings and the governance system, including the decisions made by different levels of public administration in last two decades. The hypothesis, based on early outcomes, shows a strong relationship between governance systems (including administrative divisions) and the length and complexity of the building approvals process. The results of these analyses are the main outcomes of the article, while designing changes will be the subject of subsequent research. The article should help with the debate and open up the topic, which is, in our globalized and increasingly complex world, an issue for a growing number of societies. The question of balanced, inclusive and sustainable growth will be part of the research agenda.

Why do cities shrink and what should be done about it? This paper explores this issue with a particular focus on the implications for spatial planning and land use in the city of Łódź, Poland. It focusses on the institutional structures which constrain and shape policy responses to urban shrinkage and offers comparative analysis of this phenomenon in metropolitan areas of the OECD. While Łódź has embarked on a strategy of investment and urban renewal in order to reduce the trend of population decline, a lack of metropolitan governance together with incentives for sprawl and peri-urbanisation threaten the fiscal viability, and economic, social and environmental sustainability of the metropolitan area. The national government has a critical role to play in creating the right incentives for shrinking cities like Łódź to be able to successfully adapt to its changing dynamics. The city cannot tackle this alone. The objective of this paper is to unpack the processes that are driving population shrinkage in Łódź and to recommend institutional responses and policy incentives to manage these processes. KEY WORDS: Łódź, "shrinkage" of cities, spatial planning, metropolitan governance, central government policy, sustainable development ABSTRAKT: Dlaczego miasta się kurczą i jakie w tym kontekście działania należy podjąć? W prezentowanym artykule podjęta zostaje problematyka kurczenia się miast ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem implikacji dla planowania przestrzennego i użytkowania ziemi w Łodzi. Rozważania skoncentrowane zostały na strukturach instytucjonalnych, które wymuszają i kształtują działania polityczne odpowiadające na proces kurczenia się miast. Przedstawiono także analizę porównawczą tego zjawiska w obszarach metropolitalnych krajów OECD. Choć Łódź rozpoczęła strategię inwestowania i odnowy miejskiej w celu ograniczenia trendu depopulacji, brak zarządzania metropolitalnego oraz sprzyjanie procesom niekontrolowanego rozwoju przestrzennego