Even before his inauguration, Sergei Sobyanin called the most ambitious urban planning project in the capital - MIBC Moscow City - a mistake, but admitted that it should be completed, and as soon as possible. Last week, the new mayor personally visited the construction site, and this Monday he considered the City issue in a closed meeting. As reported by RIA Novosti and Vremya novostei, the meeting discussed the main problem of the complex - an acute shortage of parking lots. Some of the officials suggested placing them on the site of long-term construction - the office of the City management company or the buildings of the mayor's office and the Moscow City Duma. But so far, the new city administration is not ready to take such extreme measures - as Izvestia reports, additional parking lots will be designed on vacant lots.
During the first detours of Moscow construction sites, the tradition of which Sobyanin decided not to cancel (although, unlike his predecessor, he does not warn where exactly he was going with an inspection), the new mayor was shocked by the scale of traffic jams in the city. The situation on the square of the Belorussky railway station was considered especially critical. According to Gazeta.ru, Sobyanin promised in the near future to solve the problem of the square and generally to clear the roads from the stalls that blocked them, and to use budget funds for the implementation of two major transport projects - the reconstruction of Leningradsky Prospekt and the construction of the Fourth Transport Ring.
This week, Sergei Sobyanin also held a meeting of the Public Urban Council for the first time, at which he announced his intention to adjust the master plan for the development of the capital until 2025, in particular, to bring it in line with the master plan of the Moscow region. For this, according to Kommersant, a permanent urban planning and land commission is being created in the mayor's office with the involvement of experts.
On this day, it also became known about a new key appointment - the former head of Rosokhrankultura, Alexander Kibovsky, replaced Valery Shevchuk as head of the Moscow Heritage Committee. Izvestia reports on this in more detail. It is curious that, without waiting for the new head of the committee to put at least some order in the field of heritage, Sobyanin personally canceled one of the most scandalous projects of recent times - the construction of a business center on Khitrovskaya Square. It was decided to create a public garden on the space vacated after the demolition of the college.
On the eve of such a significant decision, public forces, represented by several heritage protection organizations, as well as media representatives, held a special forum in Skolkovo, at which they called on the new mayor to pay attention to Moscow's architectural monuments as a valuable economic asset. Grigory Revzin wrote about this, in particular, in the Vlast magazine. An architectural critic, however, considers such a formulation to be premature: "To name the architectural heritage as the main economic asset of Moscow in the tourism market, this market must be created." Izvestia newspaper looks more optimistically at the results of the action in Skolkovo.
The Moscow Heritage Committee unexpectedly decided to make its own contribution to improving the city's appearance - on Monday it held a rally against advertising thoughtlessly installed in the historical center. True, as Vremya novostei says, only representatives of the media showed interest in this event. Unfortunately, another important event for architecture and design remained completely unnoticed - the closure of the Interni magazine, published in Russia since 2007. More about this - the OpenSpace portal. But still in the center of attention is the struggle of residents against the construction of an eight-story apart-hotel by Nikita Mikhalkov's studio "TRITE" that unfolded in Maly Kozikhinsky Lane. As Vremya novostei explains, back in the 90s, the studios were leased out buildings of the 19th century, which were then taken into ownership by a creative organization, and this summer they were demolished, since they did not have the status of protected monuments. In their place, the construction of the hotel began.
The topic of restitution became very topical again in early November. In the light of the impending final approval of the bill, two well-known art experts - Vladimir Sarabyanov and Lev Lifshits - have compiled a complete set of churches on the territory of the Russian Federation, dividing them into three categories: especially valuable and vulnerable, requiring a permanent storage regime, monuments that allow the joint use of the church and state museums under certain conditions, and those that have already been transferred to the church. This collection came into the possession of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. The attempts of experts to draw the attention of the public and the authorities again and again to the situation with the transfer of monuments to religious organizations, alas, have the most serious grounds. So, in the Kaliningrad region, the Russian Orthodox Church has just been handed over with lightning speed 10 monuments, and among them there were many Catholic churches and churches in which cultural institutions are located. Nezavisimaya Gazeta tells about this situation in more detail.
