Finding Profit in Preservation

May 31, 2002
Dec 14, 2017

By Benjamin Fried

If you're ever lucky enough to take a stroll through the Czech countryside, you'll be privy to one of the great unintended benefits of Communist rule in Central Europe. Interspersed between rolling, grassy hills and pristine woodlands, you'll find an almost unspoiled landscape, dotted with historic small towns, including many that date from the Renaissance and medieval eras.

The historic town square of Telc is one of many stops on the Prague-Vienna Greenway that will be featured during PPS's tour of the Czech Republic.

You see, for all its problems, the Communist government was also an unwitting preservationist--because without market mechanisms the old regime had little incentive to alter the historic character of the small towns that dot the Czech hinterland.

Ironically, the introduction of free markets and privatization poses the gravest threat yet to the civic and ecological inheritance of the Czech Republic. A dedicated group of activists is proving, however, that a capitalist economy won't lead inevitably to Western-style development. In fact, they have turned the tables by creating a market for preservation. Their chief instrument is a familiar concept in the United States: the greenway.

"We told them, 'Hey guys, preserve what you have. Don't sell out to developers to get some big hotel or supermarkets. Keep this!'"

The Czech greenways were modeled on an American counterpart--New York's Hudson River Valley Greenway (HRVG). HRVG used the Hudson as a unifying element to connect communities through a corridor of walking and biking trails. The idea inspired Lubomir Chmelar, a Czech displaced by World War II who raised his family in New York, to return to his homeland and establish Greenways/Zelene Stezky (GWZS, or Czech Greenways), a program now overseen by the Czech Environmental Partnership. "The concept is an old one," said Suzanna Halsey, administrator of Friends of Czech Greenways, an outreach and fundraising organization based in New York. "We just took the concept of connecting communities through nature and providing safe ways to go from town to town."

The route of the Prague-Vienna Greenways

Chmelar rallied a group of enthusiastic Czechs to his cause, and soon the Prague-Vienna Greenways took shape, connecting two old Austrian Empire cities well known in the West. From a marketing standpoint, the goal was to draw tourists who would normally visit only the large cities into all the small towns that lie between. But Western tourists were not the only targets. Czech Greenways hoped to encourage residents of Prague and Vienna to travel the route as well. "The idea was also to get people from these two big cities outside, to the smaller towns, which have so many cultural and natural treasures to offer," said Halsey. The greenway would even serve to connect residents of the smaller towns to each other--the livelier the local scene became, the more inviting it would be to others.

The routes for the Prague-Vienna Greenways were chosen by Chmelar's group for their aesthetic, historic, and ecological merit. The selected path meanders south from Prague along the Vltava River Valley to Cesky Krumlov, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, then loosely follows the Czech-Austrian border east to the town of Mikulov, and winds south again to Vienna. Much of the needed infrastructure was already in place, thanks to a 150-year-old tradition of hiking in the Czech Republic. The hiking trail system was already dense and well-marked, but bike trails were virtually non-existent. Lacking the money to pave new trails, Czech Greenways selected existing roads that received very little auto traffic and used them to complete the system.

"Under the old regime, people would be made to do tasks that didn't benefit them directly. As a result, they were wary of people asking them to volunteer."

When Czech Greenways took their message to the mayors of the small towns along the route, they stressed the economic benefits of their proposal.

Bicyclists enjoy Telc's renaissance town square

"We told them, 'Hey guys, preserve what you have,'" said Halsey. "'Don't sell out to developers to get some big hotel or supermarkets. Keep this! Keep this hill; keep this little square, because the tourists will come. If you preserve your historical monuments, if you fix your square and put flowers in the square, or if you fix this church, people will come, and they will spend money and buy your products. Smaller merchants and smaller artisans and smaller enterprises will be supported by the tourists.'"

The small-scale, local enterprises could only be preserved by the kind of tourism promoted by the greenways--that is to say, on bike and on foot. Tourists coming on buses from Austria and Germany bypassed the smaller towns for the major tourist destinations. Not only did the smaller economies suffer, but the influx of traffic also threatened to bring about ill-conceived road-widening projects. The greenways, in contrast, were a sustainable system that distributed the tourist dollar evenly and created links between local communities.

Once they understand the principles behind the Greenway, they want it to include their village.

The mayors along the route were won over and signed on to the project with enthusiasm. Many towns joined, and the work of restoration and beautification ahead did not seem so daunting.

But despite the many influential people who supported the project, it did not yet have grassroots support; the initial success of the greenway concept became tempered by the ghost of Communism. Halsey explains, "Under the old regime, people would be made to volunteer their time on the weekend to pick potatoes, say, and do tasks that didn't benefit them directly. As a result, they were wary of people asking them to volunteer, they didn't understand that if they volunteered they would be helping themselves."

New greenways in Central Europe use waterways as trails

In the years since the introduction of the Greenways, Halsey has learned a few tricks at appealing to Czechs' self-interest. In a nation with a long tradition of summer homes and dual residences, there are significant numbers of city dwellers with a vested interest in preserving the areas around their country houses. Once they understand the principles behind the Greenways, they want the Greenway to include the village where their summer house is located.

Less than ten years after it was established, the Prague-Vienna Greenway is an unqualified success, and the work of Czech Greenways is making a discernible difference. "People are coming," says Halsey. "There are little establishments popping up along the road all the time - new pensions, new little restaurants and wine cellars."

Perhaps the best way to measure the impact of Czech Greenways is to look at the proliferation of new greenways in Central Europe. In the Czech Republic, a new greenway called Moravian Wine Trails, launched in 2001, has organized local vintners, allowing visitors to travel from wine cellar to wine cellar. There are five other new greenways in the works in the Czech Republic alone. No mere trend, greenways are now a full-fledged movement in the post-communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Greenways are underway in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine, many under the auspices of Greenways for Central Europe, a program of the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe (EPCE). These innovative partnerships are a potent means of preserving the cultural and environmental wealth of post-communist Europe as it makes the difficult transition to capitalism.

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