Tomáš Hudeček

Tomáš Hudeček (born 10 May 1979 in Olomouc) is a Czech university (assoc.) professor and former politician. He is currently the head of the Department of Public Administration and Regional Studies at the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies of the Czech Technical University in Prague, a former local (non-party) politician and the Mayor of the Capital City of Prague. He is married, has three sons, lives alternately in Prague and Ostrava.

In 2010 he was elected to the Municipal Assembly in Prague as a candidate of the TOP 09 party. On 24 November 2011 he became a member of the executive council of Prague and the Deputy Mayor of Bohuslav Svoboda. Hudeček was elected deputy mayor of Prague between 24 November 2011 and 23 May 2013, then deputy mayor with the responsibilities of Mayor during the flooding of May and June 2013 days in Prague, and Mayor of Prague between 20 June 2013 and 26 October 2014.

Early life, education and scientific research

In 1997, after completing grammar school in Olomouc-Hejčín, he began his university studies at the Faculty of Science, Palacký University in Olomouc specializing in Mathematics and Geography. After graduation, he continued his doctoral studies in Social Geography and Regional Development at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, which he completed in 2008 with a dissertation titled ''Accessibility and the Impacts of its Change in the Czech Republic in the Transformation Period: Relation to the Settlement System'' and he was awarded the title of Doctor of Natural Sciences (RNDr.) and Ph.D. In 2019 he was awarded the title Associate Professor in the field of City Engineering (City Governance and Administration).

He serves as the Head of the Department of Public Administration and Regional Studies at the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies, CTU in Prague, where he conducts lectures and research focusing on the evolution of complex systems, decision making process in cities, future and resilience of cities, strategic planning, public administration and politics. He also lectures at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava and the Faculty of Economics of the University of Economics in Prague.

He is a member of Mensa Czech Republic (since 2002, when he passed the entrance test with the result of 160 - maximum of the test), the Czech Geographical Society (since 2006, when he was employed at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague), the Czech Union of Civil Engineers (since 2018, when he was employed at VŠB-TU in Ostrava). He is the author or co-author of dozens of publications and monographs. One of his latest publications is a three-volume monograph dealing with the administration of cities as a part of General Systems Theory, which was first published in 2019 also in online form (download
book 1book 2book 3
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From 2003 to 2017 he was employed as a scientific-pedagogical worker at the Departments of Applied Geoinformatics and Cartography and Social Geography and Regional Development of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague ^{/sup> where he delivered lectures on public administration, regional development, geoinformatics and cartography. There his long-term scientific research was focused on the analysis of the relationship between regional development and transport.}

Politics - Lord Mayor of the City of Prague

He has been known for establishing an "expert participation" as a system of managing the city. For this reason more than 1500 experts, urban planners, geographers, architects, engineers and technicians, economists, as well as philosophers, theologians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and many other representatives of professional chambers, as well as representatives of civic association (NGO) and major business corporations participated in more than 200 round table discussions and conferences with the aim to aggregate additional - even soft - data, information and knowledge. His reform of territorial and strategic planning of the capital city of Prague included 10 projects.

He initiated and started the transformation of the then Development Department of the Capital City into a modern Institute of Planning and Development of the Capital City of Prague.

He proposed started the preparation of a new land-use plan, the so-called Metropolitan Plan. The Prague City Council approved the acquisition of this plan in June 2012. He appointed a university lecturer at the FA CTU in Prague, urbanist and architect prof. Ing. arch. Roman Koucký as the Director of the Office of the Metropolitan Plan at the Institute of Planning and Development of the Capital City of Prague.

He announced the project called "Prague for People", within which public debates, workshops and discussions for citizens' associations, representatives of Prague, city districts, experts and the general public were organized in the urbanistically problematic parts of Prague.

To provide expert discussion on the development of the capital city of Prague, he established an expert forum called Soundboard which met 4 times a year and discussed all strategic documents and development plans of the city's political leadership.

He was the proposer and initiator of the creation of the new Prague building regulations, enabling the development of a compact city of short distances. These included also the regulation of advertising and the blanket ban on billboards within the built-up area of the city which, according to many, eventually cost him the Mayor's seat in the elections of 2014 after the billboard and advertising lobby and political opponents, both from other parties and his own party, actively opposed to it.

Within the Institute of Planning and Development, he initiated the establishment of the Office of Public Space and subsequently implemented the Public Spaces Manual created by this office as well as the Conception of the Prague banks and embankments into the city's decision-making processes.

As one of the highest priorities he had and completed the update of the Principles of the Territorial Development of the Capital City of Prague that was returned by the Court. This document, the latest version of which was, in the areas of the Prague Ring Road and the extension of Prague airport, suspended by the decision of the courts in 2011, was approved by the Prague City Council in September 2014. The new discussed update of the Principles of the Territorial Development again enables to lead the Prague Ring Road in the parts of D1-Běchovice, then in the northern part in the tunnel via the Prague - Suchdol Municipal District, as well as the possibility to realize the second parallel runway at Václav Havel Airport Prague.

He started the completation if of the update of the Strategic Plan of the Capital City of Prague. And also started the realization of the Information Center of the Capital City of Prague and the Institute of Planning and Development - the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hudecek, Tomas
1979 births
Politicians from Olomouc
Palacký University Olomouc alumni
Academic staff of Charles University
Mayors of Prague
TOP 09 mayors
Living people