In an interview with LRT.lt, the chief architect of Vilnius, Laura Kairienė, discusses what should be done with residential districts and why the urbanisation of the its suburbs is one of the biggest problems faced by the Lithuanian capital.
If you had to name one urban problem in Vilnius that should be a priority to solve, which problem would you name?
Urban sprawl remains a problem. It also generates another problem – traffic jams. After independence, expansion into the suburbs became very active. However, the infrastructure there is still insufficient.
We should manage priority territories more strictly and perhaps even completely restrict only-family housing development in areas where the necessary infrastructure is not in place. [...]
The Lithuanian gene is to have a house, to be independent, to live in large farmsteads, to work the land, to have neighbours far away. City culture is still not sufficiently developed. For example, in the Netherlands communities are accustomed to living densely. Cities provide better working conditions and togetherness, but in cities we must know how to coexist. Density is in the city’s code.
Either we live in the countryside or in the city. But today we have very many city dwellers who love the countryside and open space. Of course, the Second World War contributed to this – the destruction of the cultural layer, deportations, the killing of Jews. Because of that, we lost a lot of urban culture. We still do not know how to coexist in communities. We are still learning what it means to live in a city, to have a neighbor, to live in harmony. Often we want nothing to exist beyond our fence.
Or maybe this is also related to the desire to have more space at home? Buying a large apartment in Vilnius is difficult, so people move to more spacious houses in the suburbs.
The supply really has too few sufficiently large apartments for families. This pushes families to the outskirts. I understand these families, because to acquire a 100–120 sq. m home in the city center you need to be a millionaire.
If we look at historical apartments, for example on Kaunas Street, they are all large, spacious. People had a completely different quality of life. It is very important to agree on whether today’s standards are acceptable, because currently we do not regulate sizes, and developers do as they please.
At the moment we have no housing policy, but one should gradually emerge. We lived so many years in socialism, everyone was fed up with it, so no one wanted regulation, everything was left to the free market.
We have left the housing supply to private developers. However many they build, however much profit they can make, that is how much housing we have. Naturally, the private sector does not build too much, so there will always be a housing deficit.
Today rent payments are higher than mortgage installments and 3- percent of newly purchased apartments in Vilnius are for business, they are second or third homes intended for rental. Without additional taxes on such housing, it harms those who want to acquire their first home.
Do you have a vision of what Vilnius should look like?
All options should be considered. Owning private property is not bad, it increases loyalty to the state, to the city. We take better care of property we own, we defend it. Owning property in Vilnius makes us want to stay here. Those who rent can more easily allow themselves to change places. In the United States, for example, it means nothing to change residences every year if you don’t own property.
Today we can also think about municipal housing. Nobody wants to call it social housing, but we definitely have a middle class that will always have limited incomes – teachers, doctors, etc. They should be close to their workplaces, not commuting from another city because they cannot afford housing where they work. It is a sensitive issue, but it is time to discuss how we will regulate this.
Although we do not have a housing crisis, it is necessary to constantly monitor and assess the situation. A long-term, consistent housing policy is also necessary, covering both the improvement of housing affordability and the expansion of social housing, as well as balancing the rental market.
The Bank of Lithuania noted in its study that housing prices in Vilnius are growing faster than residents’ incomes, and affordability here is the worst among all major cities, while declining affordability may create challenges in the future for our city’s competitiveness.
Although it is naive to expect that with Vilnius’s growing economy housing will not be valuable property, it is important that the ratio of income to price does not exceed a reasonable limit (eg the European Commission’s threshold of 10). For example, currently, to acquire housing in Vilnius, 7.1 years of average income are required.
In Vilnius there are more than 5,000 old buildings, of which only about 5 percent have been renovated. What should be done with them?
Speaking of renovation, gathering the consent of 51 percent of residents is really very difficult. Repairing houses in critical condition is mandatory without any debate, otherwise the building will collapse. When it comes to the responsibility of maintaining property, we cannot have the kind of democracy we currently do.
I do not propose demolishing everything, but there are certainly houses in Vilnius that could be demolished, creating better quality. Of course, this does not add to sustainability.
Minister of Environment Povilas Poderskis has mentioned the idea of trying during his term to implement a project where an old apartment block is demolished and in its place a new, larger one is built, thus replacing residents’ apartments.
We sat down with the minister’s team to talk about this. We spoke more about how the municipality could build, while private developers did not figure in yet. For now, we would face legal issues: how to evict people who do not agree to be relocated, since unanimous consent is required.
Finding temporary housing for people during construction would be possible. But the question here is about costs. If this were a municipality-funded project, why should we allocate city money to one particular building?
Is it possible to implement such an idea within the next 5 years?
At the municipality we have made a list of objects that could be demolished. The project you mentioned has not yet come to light, because financing and a clear model are still needed, since the municipality has not yet set such a specific project as its expectation. So far everything is still in the conceptual phase.
I know that the Ministry of Environment has carried out a study that included more drastic principles, for example, dismantling the façade, cutting it off, leaving the load-bearing structures and replacing the façade with a new one assembled in a factory. Structurally, these are possible solutions, but there are many legal issues.
You mention that your goal is for the residential districts to become new centers of attraction, to bring life there. Are you doing anything about that?
Together with scientists we have carried out a study on Vilnius’s identity, to understand how neighborhoods differ from one another. To understand what measures are needed for planning them. We are starting with small pilot territories. Today we are working on Pašilaičiai, we will begin with Naujoji Vilnia, at one point work began in Vilkpėdė but was suspended. There is a desire to plan environments with public spaces and social infrastructure for all those districts. Perhaps some territories will need to be taken for public needs, because the network of schools and kindergartens is still not saturated.
The ruling party proposes turning the Palace of Concerts and Sports into a center for congresses, conferences, and cultural events. Do you support this idea?
I support the idea that it should finally be put to use and not stand as a ghost. But is a conference center the best function for this? I have major doubts. It had already been decided that for such a function a more flexible building was needed. In my opinion, it should be a new building, not an attempt to use this particular heritage object, which has an elaborate form and limited functionality.
What then would you see in place of the Palace of Concerts and Sports?
– The working group’s joint decision was a memorial to commemorate the history of the Jewish and Lithuanian freedom struggles. So far this is an abstract agreement that requires more detailed work to specify the possible program for putting the building to use.
Given today’s geopolitical situation, it is important for us to instill resilience in society, to educate the younger generation. Perhaps civic education for schoolchildren could take place there.
If you had to design Vilnius from a blank slate, how would you plan it?
I love Vilnius as it is. We have a given – the natural environment. I like the Old Town. What I would most want is to integrate the river into the lives of Vilnius residents. The skyscrapers have their own hill, and the charm of this is that it is of limited size and place.
My dream would be for us to have more compact little centers. So that one could go to Karoliniškės and have something to do there. For example, Naujoji Vilnia itself can be a separate centre with its railway line. Today we are even planning with Lithuanian Railways that there could be rail public transport, even though the track is currently intercity. Each district should have leisure, social infrastructure, and its own identity.
If I had an unlimited budget, I would allocate it to building pedestrian bridges. We have too few connections between the riverbanks, and the notion that transport bridges are also suitable for pedestrians belongs to the past century.
Although Vilnius is a city with as much as 60 percent of its area covered with greenery, in residential areas accessibility is not always sufficient. A lot of funds are needed to plan parks – acquiring land for public needs is not enough with a few hundred square meters, and after restitution, almost no consolidated plots of land measured in hectares remain.
The interview was edited for brevity.
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