June 29^th, 2023 saw yet another inspiring ULI Poland session and debate of international experts during the Places + Spaces meeting. This time the event, held in airy Kinogram spaces in Warsaw’ Norblin Factory, revolved around the topic of “The Rise of Public Spaces”. Gathered audience and invited high-profile designers, investors, and researchers debated the importance of synergies, potentials, impacts and limitations to their public space ideas and implementations.

“Why do humans need public spaces? We crave social interaction. We love recreation and leisure. We like cultural events. We enjoy watching and observing other people, having a sense of belonging. We appreciate escaping from an urban jungle for a little bit as well,” Soren Olsen, the chair of ULI Poland, kicked off the event with a welcome speech and introduction to the planned presentations and a panel discussion that were to follow.

It can serve as a great example and benchmark for a smart, working, sustainable public-private cooperation and management in the fast-changing world, and effectively an investment that pays off in the long term to everyone involved. According to Paolo Micucci, CEO of CityLife, the benefits delivered through the multi-purpose project, the maintenance costs of which hover at around EUR 2 mln per year, to users, the society and the environment are going to be “greater than costs.” A thought through maintenance cost participation scheme might help keep relatively self-sufficient green and public spaces too. The park that makes up a part of the CityLife development belongs to the municipality, but is managed by Smart CityLife, which is free to generate revenues from organizing social or sporting events there to cover the costs of maintenance.

According to her, well-allocated maintenance costs – which should be seen rather as an investment overall – can translate into a 100% occupancy rate and even waiting lists for those interested in renting out such public spaces. In the Fabryka Norblina project, the company actively invests in initiatives, activities and partnerships that engage and help out not only visitors and local residents or communities, but also tenants. For that reason, it developed an app that serves all the stakeholder groups that explore and benefit from the space, with the aim of facilitating their experiences, as well as connecting them with one another.

Real changes to the tune of ESG

How to effectively introduce innovative solutions with sustainability in mind? How to best address the ESG goals and priorities of both the developer, investors, and local municipalities? The innate character of public spaces allows to blend the “E” and “S” factors together and highlight their importance and role in the process of sustainability reporting expected by regulators, legislators, investors, and clients themselves. Polish designers and local communities learn how to implement and benefit from ESG requirements in the new public space projects, as exemplified by a project presented by Dariusz Malinowski of Malinowski Design Urban & Landscape: the 10 ha, 1,750-apartment Sobola Biel housing estate investment in Suwałki for Rutkowski Development assumes the creation of a 2-ha park.

And it might be the case that Polish market still lacks points of reference and precedence that could prove to the public administration representative that multi-stakeholder public space projects are both financially and non-financially valuable, worthy and trustworthy.

Kinga Nowakowska noticed that although the Polish public administration can be at times an esteemed partner to an investor, it can also be sometimes a source of confusion when issuing contradictory guidelines or being non-responsive. As observed first-hand by Paweł Jaworski, although it is a city’s task to aggregate and facilitate the collaboration of stakeholders in the public space projects, and yet it is still rarely seen in Polish projects. Despite all the growing pains of the Polish market, as Dariusz Malinowski pointed out at the end of the debate, we are now living probably in the best times to work on and innovate public space projects in Poland.