Can trees keep Prague cool as temperatures rise?
Prague is already feeling the effects of a warming climate, particularly during increasingly intense summer heat waves. Jan Richter, a climate change adaptation specialist at Prague City Hall, believes the answer lies partly beneath our feet: giving trees enough underground space, retaining rainwater and bringing more vegetation into even the historic centre. In this episode of Czechast, he also explains how a Fulbright scholarship in the United States and the urban farms of Detroit helped shape his ideas about the resilient city of the future.
Jan Richter has spent much of his professional life thinking about how cities can provide a good quality of life without exceeding the limits of the natural environment. Originally from the Orlické Mountains in eastern Bohemia, he studied landscape ecology and ecosystem biology at the University of South Bohemia. A lecture by American architect Michael Reynolds, known for his experimental sustainable “Earthship” buildings, encouraged him to connect ecology with architecture and urban planning. That eventually brought him to Prague, where he pursued doctoral studies and later joined the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, IPR. Today, he works at Prague City Hall on adaptation to climate change. “I'm someone who cares about nature and our environment that we live in,” he says. “Since I was a child, and even now when I'm forty, it's still with me.”
The Syracuse and Detroit experience
An important stop along the way was the United States. Richter spent ten months as a Fulbright scholar at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, upstate New York, researching urban food systems and ways of making cities more resilient through sustainable food production. One of the places that made the strongest impression on him was Detroit, where population decline had left large areas of vacant land. “For me as a European, it was kind of like a post-apocalyptic image,” he recalls. But Richter was particularly interested in how some abandoned lots were being put back into productive use through urban farming and market gardens.
That experience has relevance for Prague, although the two cities could hardly be more different. Richter points out that around 39 percent of Prague's administrative territory is devoted to agricultural uses, including arable land, pastures, orchards and gardens. He sees considerable potential for peri-urban agriculture that could produce local food while helping preserve open landscapes around the built-up city. “There is actually a huge potential for more sustainable agriculture within the Prague administrative border,” he says. Prague's green spaces, he argues, should increasingly be seen as multifunctional landscapes combining nature protection, recreation and, where appropriate, food production.
Trees as Prague's natural air conditioning
The more immediate challenge, however, is adapting Prague to increasingly hot summers. This is particularly difficult in the historic centre, with its narrow streets, stone surfaces and dense underground infrastructure. “The medieval city was not built for this climate and was definitely not built for the future climate,” Richter says. One of the most effective answers is nevertheless remarkably simple: large, healthy trees. They provide shade and cool the surrounding air through evapotranspiration, effectively working as natural air conditioning.
Planting them successfully is more complicated. Instead of simply digging a hole in the pavement, Prague is experimenting with structural substrates that create much larger spaces for roots beneath streets and sidewalks. These underground systems can contain crushed stone, compost and biochar and can also collect rainwater from surrounding surfaces. The result should be healthier trees with larger crowns, while traditional paving can remain on the surface – an important advantage in historically protected parts of Prague.
Richter would eventually like to see much more functioning vegetation throughout the capital: street trees, climbing plants and green roofs, alongside changes in transport and energy use. Prague has committed itself to working towards carbon neutrality by 2050, but Richter stresses that the challenge is not only for governments. Climate change can feel overwhelming, he acknowledges, but individual action can counter that sense of powerlessness. “I would ask everyone to do even small steps in your personal lives, in your professions,” he says – an approach neatly captured by the old environmental maxim: think globally, act locally.
You can listen to the full version of the interview with Jan Richter here or on any other major podcast platform. Just look for Czechast.
about programme
Czechast, Radio Prague International
Czechast is a regular RPI podcast about Czech and Moravian culture, history, and economy.
