The chief architect of Moscow Alexander Kuzmin, deputy director of the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan Oleg Baevsky and vice-president of RAASN Yuri Sdoobnov came to tell reporters about the public hearings on the draft of the updated General Plan. According to them, an unprecedented public discussion took place in the capital, which revealed both a lot of opportunities for further improvement of the general plan, and many painful problems of Moscow urban planning in general.
Recall that the updated General Plan and the Rules for Land Use and Development of Moscow must be adopted before January 1, 2010, and according to the new Urban Planning Code of the Russian Federation, this cannot be done without preliminary public hearings. In total, as Alexander Kuzmin told the audience, over two and a half months of public discussions (and exhibitions dedicated to the Updated General Plan and the Rules were held in 125 city councils) more than 70 thousand questions and comments were received from residents.
The developers of urban planning documents, to put it mildly, did not expect such activity on the part of the population - and although Alexander Kuzmin solemnly promised that the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Construction would answer every question received, it is clear that officials and architects are in some confusion. This week in the Union of Architects of Russia one closed discussion of the results of public hearings has already taken place; in the near future, a similar meeting will be held in the RAASN. “At least the listeners have fulfilled their educational function one hundred percent,” says Alexander Kuzmin. “Now the language of the General Plan is understood not only by its developers and the staff of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Architecture, who conducted the hearings, but also by a lot of ordinary Muscovites.” As for the content of the citizens' questions, the overwhelming majority of Muscovites are concerned about transport problems, zones of existing and uncompleted buildings, the preservation of green spaces and cultural monuments in the city.
“Most clearly, the hearings have shown that the townspeople are very tired of the everyday disorder of our city and of the authorities' inattention to these problems,” Andrei Bokov, President of the Union of Architects of Russia, is convinced. “In addition to the actual questions on the General Plan, there were a lot of complaints about the lack of parking lots, playgrounds, constant puddles in the streets and the unsatisfactory quality of shops in the area.” The head of the CAP noted that these issues are outside the competence of urban planners (this is, rather, the concern of the chief architect of the district), and said that in the near future the union intends to urge young designers to go to the "zemstvo doctors", that is, to work with single window services and promptly to respond to the needs of a particular district - a kiosk, for example, to reconstruct or pave a path. Naturally, such a noble work should be adequately paid, and the SAR intends to seriously talk about this with the city leadership.
Another hot topic that came up during the discussion of the Updated General Plan is that, like its predecessors, the general plans of 1935 and 1971, it was developed without taking into account the development strategy of the nearest neighbor of the capital - the Moscow region. Architects in this case were strictly regulated by the City Codex, which prescribes to develop concepts for the development of cities exclusively within their administrative boundaries. However, it is clear that today the capital and the region are a single organism, both socially and economically, and it is at least shortsighted to ignore this circumstance when developing general plans. But what if there is not even such a thing as agglomeration in the city code? All that the architects have so far been able to come up with is an open joint discussion of all the projects being developed. And at a press conference, Yuri Sdobnov promised that the city planners of the Moscow region would be invited in full to the upcoming meeting at the RAASN.
In conclusion, Andrei Bokov informed the audience that urban planning in general and the Updated General Plan for the Development of Moscow until 2025 in particular will become one of the central themes of the Zodchestvo-2009 International Festival, and this triggered a completely different discussion. For more than a year, its organizers and numerous journalists have been thinking about what the main architectural festival of the country should be. It's no secret that Zodchestvo has long been perceived as nothing more than an exhibition of the achievements of the architectural economy of our vast homeland, which does not claim either the conceptual nature of the exposition or the topical theme, and even last year it seemed that nothing could change this stereotype.
However, the new leadership of the SAR thinks differently. And this year Yuri Avvakumov was appointed curator of the festival, whose fame as the organizer of memorable expositions has stepped far beyond the borders of Russia. At a press conference, Avvakumov personally presented his plans for reorganizing Zodchestvo. In particular, he told reporters that the theme of the festival this year was formulated as the “Sustainability Index”. Using the projects of young architects as an example, the curator hopes to reveal the strongest qualities of Russian architecture. As you know, "sustainability" in its English-language version of "sustainability" is generally one of the pillars of modern world architecture, a key concept for any of the Western masters. Therefore, one of the main expositions of "Zodchestvo" will be a collection of the world's best objects of green and energy-saving architecture, and its, perhaps, the main premiere - an exhibition of similar Russian buildings. Yes, yes, surprisingly, they are, and, according to Yuri Avvakumov, although there are only a few of them, they are still dozens, not just a few. And who knows, perhaps it is thanks to Zodchestvo that the number of green projects in Russian architecture will increase by an order of magnitude. And then the stability index will confidently creep up.
