The capital will have a new government this week. And the elections have already answered that the main topics of the next four years will be mainly the lack of apartments and their high price or transportation. But what will the metropolis look like in the middle of the 21st century? Economists, transport experts, developers and architects tried to answer this at the Prague – Vision 2050 conference organized by Mafra.

Prague as an important part of Europe

“Prague will be influenced by various trends. In 2050, we will be part of the Earth, where there will be almost ten billion inhabitants. Various pitfalls will result from this. For Prague, one of the biggest will be that the dominance of the Euro-American world will move to Asia. Of course, Prague will be part of Europe, but it will be a whole that will no longer economically determine the development of our planet,” predicts Křeček.

According to him, in the coming years we should primarily build an energy self-sufficient city, because almost ten inhabitants who will live on the planet will need more precious resources than today.

While the world will experience population expansion, according to Křeček, Europe itself will lose its population. Residents will live to a greater age, but due to the low birth rate, the elderly will be older than they are today. “This is also a challenge for Prague. It should be adapted to the needs of its residents, who are significantly older. At the same time, Europe will already be losing its economic dominance and there will be significantly fewer resources for this adaptation than we are used to,” says Křeček. While Europe will lose population, the Czechia will maintain more or less the same population level, according to the economist. Not so the capital, which is estimated to grow to 1.6 million inhabitants.

Prague will merge with the Central Bohemian Region

According to Křeček, however, Prague will essentially merge with the Central Bohemia region, which will experience an even greater population expansion than the metropolis itself. “People will move to Central Bohemia because there will not be enough space in Prague, Prague and the Central Bohemian region will essentially merge into one large agglomeration, which will have 3.4 million inhabitants. In terms of population, it will be the entire third of the Czech Republic, which will be the most educated and will also be the economic engine of the entire republic. That’s why they should have tried to adapt the capital city and the region to it,” says Křeček.

At the Vision – Prague 2050 conference, the quality and comfort of life and living in Prague were addressed.

According to Tomáš Lapáček, director of the Strategy Section at the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, questions about whether it makes sense to plan only the city, but would it not be better to plan the entire region, are already arising. According to Křeček, Brno and the South Moravian Region will merge in the future, similar to Prague and the Central Bohemian Region. On the contrary, some regions will “shrink”, including Karlovy Vary, Ústí, Olomouc and Zlín regions. According to the economist, the Hradec Králové, Pardubice, Liberec and South Bohemian Regions will maintain their current position.

Moreover, according to Křeček, Prague will not be a poor city. If similar developments occur in the next 30 years as in the past 25, then in 2050 the metropolis will have an economy of 86 billion, compared to 54 today, at current prices. By 2050, more than 2,200 billion crowns will flow through Prague. Křeček also predicts that skyscrapers will be built in the wider center.

“The cornerstone of all the changes that should take place should be the people of Prague, not the sale of Prague scenery to tourists,” says architect Josef Pleskot.

Finding housing will be difficult

According to economist Křeček, housing in the metropolis will have the same problem as today – the center will become more and more expensive and unaffordable for many people – according to forecasts, Prague will grow not only in height, but also in width. “Prague currently has a desperately low building density, it is one of the worst European metropolises, which of course means that you have higher costs for education, for urban transport, and public infrastructure and its maintenance are also expensive. Prague needs to be densified mainly from the inside,” says developer Radim Passer.

High-speed lines will also play a role in the future. According to Křeček, thanks to them, the capital will become a kind of hub and people from other regional cities will be able to commute to Prague, as it will take less than an hour.

However, according to transport expert Peter Moose, it cannot be determined that high-speed trains would stop all over the country. “It will be possible to connect regional cities with lines at a speed of 160 kilometers,” predicts Moos. I would like to add that in 2050, the inner and Prague ring roads should be completed in Prague, as well as the so-called agglomeration ring. It will also look a little different on the roads. According to him, students are already engaged in the design of small vehicles that they could use on the principle of carsharing. “Through information systems, it will be possible to call such a vehicle and use it within the framework of the shared economy. Similar things are already being tried in Copenhagen, for example, Moos explained.

Radim Passer, founder and CEO, Passerinvest Group, as and Petr Moos, Institute of Applied Informatics in Transport, Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Transport.

According to Pavel Antonín Stehlík, the commissioner of the Czech participation in the world exhibition Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Prague must first of all have a vision. Without it, Prague will never return to the days of Charles IV, when it was the famous capital of Europe. “I had a bad dream about Prague in 2050. Citizens stood in line in front of the building authorities for building permits for snowmen. The Immigration Commission of Prague has just processed the request of a Brno resident for a sublet in Prague. The municipality’s transport department has just approved the re-introduction of tram service on the last functional bridge in Prague – on Karlovy Vary. And a thousand migrants are lined up in front of the municipality – they don’t want to go in. They are people from Prague, they want to leave,” explained Stehlík. According to him, the city is being built for decades ahead, and a new vision of Prague by 2050 should therefore be created as soon as possible.