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In this episode of The City Citizen podcast, Michał Olszewski, Warsaw’s Deputy Mayor, describes the city’s efforts to improve the quality of life for all citizens.
For the last couple of decades, Warsaw has been facing challenges common to cities of its size, from climate change to social inclusion. More recently, its physical and cultural closeness to Ukraine has also put it on the front line of a migration crisis.
In this episode, the Deputy Mayor of Warsaw, Michał Olszewski, tells Meghan Mills, EY Strategy and Operations Leader – Government and Public Sector, about the initiatives used to tackle these challenges.
The discussion shows that making a city a better place to live, work and invest is never easy. Switching energy sources requires more sophisticated skills, but possibly fewer (better-quality) jobs. And while securing funding to tackle the climate crisis can be straightforward, convincing citizens to change their behavior is an ongoing task.
That said, Michał believes the Polish capital has a key advantage in the global competition for talent and investment: an open society. The Mayor won the last election with the mandate “Warsaw for all,” and the city has integrated many Ukrainian refugees.
Key takeaways:
Invite citizens to suggest ideas for the city to implement, and consult them on plans for urban transformation, to make them feel more included.
Build a sharing economy—for example, by providing food exchanges—to help citizens waste less and create a more sustainable city.
Preserving green spaces is crucial for quality of life as well as for biodiversity. As part of its next stage of transformation, Warsaw wants every home to have a view of green by 2050.
A full text transcript of this podcast is available too.
Jingle
The City Citizen from EY.
Meghan Mills
Hello and welcome to The City Citizen Podcast series from EY, examining how cities can transform to be more resilient and sustainable places to live and work.
I'm your host, Meghan Mills, Strategy and Operations Leader, Government and Public Sector for EY. Joining us from Poland's capital city is Michał Olszewski, Deputy Mayor of Warsaw. Hello, Michał, and welcome.
Michał Olszewski
Greetings from Warsaw.
Mills
Michał, you've been Deputy Mayor since 2011, responsible for the development strategy of Warsaw, which has a population on par with Barcelona and central London. Can you give us a sense of some of the challenges you've been facing in Warsaw over the last couple of decades related to this transformation?
Olszewski
Warsaw became a real central European capital in the last few years, and is now the most important economic hub in this part of the region. The war in Ukraine is also a factor.
The current migration crisis following the Russian activies in Ukraine is reinforcing the importance of the city. So we are facing the same type of challenges and problems like climate change, carbon neutrality and also social inclusion.
Mills
So the challenges that you mention around climate, net neutrality, migration, social equity and inclusion are challenges that cities are trying to address all around the world. How have you gone about communicating with your citizens and getting them to engage with your plans to support the city’s sustainable initiatives like urban regeneration and transformation?
Olszewski
Of course, in the modern world, you cannot just implement changes in development without asking your citizens about the direction which we want to follow. And so, generally speaking, in Warsaw, they have their own character and when you ask Warsaw citizens about the quality of living (because we are asking actually twice year), generally speaking they say, yeah, we are satisfied. The city is offering what we expected.
Of course, when we go deeper into the expectations, it's maybe not such a nice image of everybody feeling happy and everybody seeing the city as a good place to live, because the city is also a complex of small local centers. We have 250 local communities, local zones where citizens are actually focusing their activities. And then when you ask about their neighborhood, what they want to improve there, what they want to change in their neighborhood, of course they come back with feedback:
I want to have a new sidewalk. We don't have a good access to the park. And we are offering our citizens a participatory budget or citizen budget, where they can send their proposal for what they want to change and then other citizens vote on the proposal. We are obliged to implement those projects which are accepted and adopted and voted for by the citizens.
The second type of activity which we offer is consultation platforms, for everything which has an impact on citizens, like new zoning, a new master plan for the city, a new strategy for the city, implementing a clean air zone, a clean emission zone, implementation of new parking rules in the city.
Mills
Those are great initiatives, and we have learned over time that when people feel included in decisions and feel that they have a voice, their pride and overall satisfaction and quality of life definitely improve and increase.
Michał, you've mentioned Ukraine already. It's just a distance of under 500 miles from Warsaw to Ukraine, and millions of refugees and migrants are moving across the border into Poland and living in Warsaw, in its vicinity. How has the city been integrating or communicating with that population?
Olszewski
First of all, we are very close to Ukraine, not only by distance but also by culture. We have a very similar language so Poles and Ukrainians can communicate and they can mostly understand the language.
The second factor is that, as our economy grows, we have low unemployment in the city, so everybody can get work.
And the third factor is that, generally, this crisis has also shown that Poles are very open as a nation. My mayor ran for the election, for this mandate, Warsaw for all, because we really believe as a city authority — with the concept of an open city, an open kind of society — we can win, let's say, the global competition with others for talent, for the economy, for good quality of life.
Mills
I love that slogan, “A city for all,” and also, again, very inspiring how you've managed a humanitarian crisis. Shifting gears now to one of the other challenges: the climate crisis. Warsaw is the first city in Poland to join the €2.4 billion European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Green Cities program. How is that membership helping the city to become climate neutral?
Olszewski
It's very easy to get a loan from EBRD, it's very easy to build the infrastructure. It's much more complicated just to go to the boards, the citizens, and say to them: Now you have to use this infrastructure because it's better to use public transit, it's better to leave your car at home. It's better not to use fossil fuels for heating, for example. And for us taking a loan from EBRD, it wasn't just taking a loan like money for the infrastructure, it was entering into one of the programs where we are also gaining experience in how to convince citizens just to take this next step forward.
I believe that we are still moving towards this goal but, still ahead of us, we have, let's say, to change the mind of the people and change the way of living.
Mills
Is there a sense that this green transition funding is also helping to stimulate economic development and job creation?
Olszewski
We are exchanging coal for renewables or, for example, for gas, and the change of technology from one to the other means that we have to have more educated staff, much more educated, or a much more sophisticated infrastructure. Maybe we have fewer job opportunities, but the quality of those job opportunities is better.
But also, the environment, access to the forest or green areas, and quality of local food, local attractions; these can be very important for those who come on business or choose Warsaw as one of the preferred places to work remotely.
Mills
Reducing food waste is another way of lowering our carbon footprint. I know that, in Warsaw, you have a slogan, “We eat, not waste.” How does that work in practice?
Olszewski
Poland has quite a good situation with food production, because we are mostly producing many products locally. Of course, maybe wine, we are still importing more than we are producing. But in many areas such as milk, cereals, we are still exporting a lot.
Cities are like vacuums, they are always taking everything in big masses. So what is very important for us as city authorities is just to address the interests of our citizens on the issues, maybe to buy less, just to eat what we are buying, what we are producing. Not to waste food. And we have many such initiatives in the city, where we have places where you can exchange food for food. We are offering venues in the city where you can deposit the food that you do not need anymore. And then you can grab what you want from this, let's say, sharing area.
By doing this, we want to show that if you have something which you don't need, you can share it. And then you can share it the other way round, and you can grab what you want. And the sharing economy, it's one of the triggers that could make our city much more sustainable.
Mills
I love that concept of a sharing economy — it’s something that I wish and hope that more cities in more areas adopt. It's work that I do here in New Jersey as well around food justice, considering we have, I think, 40% of our food in the US going to waste. So definitely a hot topic and inspiring to hear how Warsaw is tackling that through a sharing economy.
Finally, when you have a break from your busy workday, what is your favourite part of Warsaw where you like to spend time?
Olszewski
When I have a break from my work and I can handle with it with the time, I usually go cycling. And as Warsaw is surrounded by forest and many natural areas, usually I take my bike and go along the Vistula River. So actually, maybe not the place but a type of landscape which I really appreciate — the Vistula — the contact with the nature.
And what is generally a lesson learned for me, as someone who was responsible for part of the change in the city, was that many cities are really not appreciating contact with the nature. And sometimes they are demolishing part of nature which is very important — maybe not just for daily use of day-to-day services, but for the comfort of living in the city, nature is very important.
And many cities are separating environments, dividing them into the urban environment and the natural environment, trying to build a barrier or set a limit between them and say that here you can build, here you cannot.
But at the end of the day, the most important part of cities are the areas where [nature and people can] mix together. That's the reason why, for the next programming period which we are now planning for the development of the city, we want to introduce a rule that everyone in the city in 2050 is going to have a view of green from their home, because contact with green, contact with green or blue — so water — and nature is very important for the comfort of life in the cities.
Mills
Wow. I appreciate that Warsaw, and you also, are bringing that into the quality of life, right? We've seen that, not only from a biodiversity perspective, preserving green spaces in urban areas is important, but also for the mental health of the people that live here, and the quality of life, having access to green space.
So thank you so much, Michał, it's been fascinating and thank you very much for taking part in this series.
Olszewski
Thank you.
Mills
Do join us again to meet more special guests discussing the future of cities. Also, you can subscribe to this series, so you won't miss an episode.
From me, Meghan Mills, and Michał Olszewski, goodbye.
