Influence of urban structure and masterplan of small town on civic amenities
Abstract: The task of the analysis that preceded this publication was looking for connections between the civic infrastructure of a town, with a focus on commercial services, and the master plan as the basic planning document of each town. The analysis explored a total of 13 South Bohemian towns, summarised the quality of their public infrastukture and looking for connections with the masterplan. The first stage of the analysis was to define what it means to have a well-equipped small town. It is difficult to find hard indicator for this comparison, especially in such small towns where the existence of small commercial services is often a matter of chance. Yet one indicator seems ideal for describing such qualities. This is the number of kinds of services per 100 inhabitants of the town. In other words, the variety of services on offer. Such a number is a good representation of differently sized cities and at the same time eliminates the influence of a larger number of one type of service (e.g. accommodation in tourist attractive location). With a bit of exaggeration, “good living cities” are at the top of this ranking, and cities that are deprived and unattractive, on the opposite, fall in this statistic. According to Decree No. 500/2006 Coll. on planning analisis documents, spatial planning documentation and the method of recording spatial planning activities, the masterplan contains, among other things, the concept of public infrastructure, which clearly includes civic services. The study therefore focused on the form and definition of this conception in the text part of the masterplan, and the anchoring of this function in the graphic part, especially in the main drawing. The results are rather negative, as most of the masterplans limit the interpretation of the public infrastrukture conception to general phrases that do not illustrate the specific basis for urban planning in these cities. The graphic part then usually deals enough with the area need for facilities, but not so much with their location. In some of the analysed masterplans, the short-term perspective of the development of this function is noticeable. But paradoxically, the more important is the solution of the form of the services, which is part of the residential function. The differences between the forms of defining the residential function are significant, and while some plans place a strong accent on the precise definition of conditions, others combine incompatible types of development and leave the freedom to future developers. The conditions for the association of the services function are therefore well defined in only some of the studied masterplans. These deficits may result in poor location or definition of public spaces in cities. This may in turn lead to poor conditions for local businesses and ultimately to the absence of some services that similarly large cities easily provide to their residents. This is also the fundamental premise of the this study. The masterplan does not affect the quality of public infrastructure directly, but it does have an impact on creating conditions that in turn help generate the potential for business, i.e. especially the buying power in the right locations of any town.
