The first citizens' assembly
in Czechia ever.

Petr founded the initiative with a vision of doing right by citizens — working for citizens, with citizens and shaping the future on the basis of informed recommendations and the search for consensus.

He began working with the Prague 1 district because he wanted Prague 1 to serve its residents too — not just businesses and people who came here primarily to make money and don't even pay their taxes here. After more than five years of work on participation and the Strategy — and after thousands of personal meetings together with his son Honza — he came to the conviction that citizens deserve a platform of their own: one where they are not overlooked, where someone hears them out and transparently shows the results.

"Citizen participation makes sense when it gives rise to a community that truly cares about its district. That community is, in the end, what holds Prague 1 together."

Petr invested years of effort into the Sustainable Development Strategy of Prague 1 to 2035, working to develop the district. But when he realised that this complex document had been approved yet nobody was actively using it in daily practice, he decided to try a different path — to connect the content of the Strategy directly with civic activity and give people a tool to bring it back to life from the ground up. After consulting the advisory board of representatives of local associations that have long been active in Prague 1, he submitted the citizens' assemblies project to the district's participatory budget for implementation under the district's leadership. The project passed both the citizens' vote and the council's approval. Yet it was never carried out — after the results were announced and following further consultations with the authority, it remained on paper only.

Paradoxically, this confirmed to Petr that people in Prague 1 do care about their locality — after all, they approved the project. All that was missing was someone to actually set it in motion. Citizens' Assemblies Prague 1 are the step he took himself — from the ground up, outside the authority, as a civic initiative. And while Petr was preparing materials for the Strategy, he met people through his work, but also on weekends, at night and in any weather. Without that reach the research would never have been representative — the views would have come from just one group of users. Prague 1 is, after all, more complex than almost any other city: housing, an office floor, cultural institutions, overtourism, short-term rentals, transport — all at once.

At this stage we work bottom up — this is emerging from residents' needs, not from a commission. But we are not opposed to the reverse process either, should a topic be set by the state, the city, or even a developer. The fact that citizens' assemblies are taking place in Prague 1 today is not a dogma — the format is transferable and can run anywhere else where there is demand for it.