A little over a month has passed since the announcement of the list of teams participating in the concept development, and the results of the work, of course, were very preliminary. This, the first, discussion, however, took two whole days (the program can be seen here) and became rather a discussion about the problems of the city and ways to solve them. Design teams viewed Moscow at various levels - global, European, national, regional. We assessed the position of the capital in various ratings, compared the current situation and the prospects for its development with the experience of other megacities. They discussed the imperfection of the capital's infrastructure, the problems of Moscow's isolation from the region. Finally, we spoke about the need for a more effective dialogue between urban planners and experts.
Let us recall that among the designers of Greater Moscow there are both Russian and foreign architects, and among the latter, the developers of the concept of the development of Greater Paris, which is perhaps the closest to us in terms of ideology and scale of the urban planning project of the last decade, prevail.
The famous French urban planner Antoine Grumbach and the equally famous designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who was invited by him as a partner in the development of the Moscow project, began by studying the key aspects of the Moscow agglomeration. They studied its geopolitical position using night space images, comparing them with similar images of the largest European cities. A curious thing immediately emerged: if in Europe large cities almost merge with each other (forming a "blue banana", so named by experts in the form of an urbanized territory), then in Russia only two bright points, located far from each other, are shining, Moscow and St. Petersburg. … For example, between London, Paris and Rotterdam, which form the main triangle of the European agglomeration, their residents can travel no longer than two hours, and the road between Moscow and St. Petersburg takes at least 4 hours. In the long term, according to Antoine Grumbach, Russia could form its own highly urbanized zones: the Russian "banana" should be stretched from south to north through Sochi, Rostov-on-Don, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and from west to east from Moscow through Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan.
And yet, French architects have no doubts that Moscow is a metropolis of global importance. Among the "signs of a world city" they, in particular, referred to culture, in terms of quantitative and qualitative development parameters of which the Russian capital is confidently ahead of almost all other cities on the planet.
French architects paid a lot of attention to assessing the city's connections with nature, or rather, even to the fact that the city is predetermined by the landscape. So, in France, all borders of the country's regions coincide with the valleys of the largest rivers, and it is the river system that provides optimal communication between settlements. The theme of rivers was also touched upon in their report by the Italian architects Bernardo Secci and Paola Vigano. They cited, for example, Brussels - the Belgian and now the pan-European capital, the structure of which is largely determined by the configuration of the valleys of the three rivers within which it is located. Today Brussels is considered the most important crossroads between the largest European agglomerations, in particular, Rotterdam, Paris, Ruhr, London.
Both teams mentioned - French and Italian - also paid a lot of attention to transport problems. Bernardo Secci spoke in detail about how the current transport structure of the "Greater Paris" was formed: initially, the French capital, like Moscow, had a radial-circular structure, but local centers were identified on the territory of the agglomeration, resulting in a dense network of "magnets" - elements transport system. Italians also note that although it is difficult to imagine a city without cars today, pedestrian zones need to be gradually created and expanded. Grumbach and Wilmott drew attention to the fact that the transport network of the territory annexed to Moscow is extremely poorly developed, so much so that they consider it possible to raise the question of the advisability of expanding the capital to the southwest of the region. According to the architects, it would be better to develop transport in Moscow by creating multi-level transport hubs, a kind of “city over city”. This is both cheaper and more convenient, as it will allow you to link different types of transport into a single network. By the way, Secchi and Vigano are also perplexed about the idea of expanding the city into areas undeveloped in terms of infrastructure, while the current territory of the city needs drastic rehabilitation measures.
The renowned Dutch bureau OMA is working on the Big Moscow concept together with the Strelka Institute and the Project Meganom architectural bureau, and invited Siemens (transport systems and equipment) and McKinsey & Company (business efficiency assessment) as consultants. The team studied in detail the plans for the development of Moscow, developed and implemented since 1922, as well as the state of the current urbanized territories of the Moscow region, and, as an alternative to the prominence to the south-west of the region, proposed the idea of developing a metropolis evenly within the borders of the entire region, which will turn it into the largest city in the world. increasing the population of the city to 19 million people. OMA sees the main development potential of such a megalopolis in the unification of urban and suburban railway networks and the use of today's forest areas as future recreational areas.
The partners of TsNIIP Urban Development are the Japanese architectural bureau Nikken Sekkei Ltd., the British architectural design and planning company RTKL, as well as international real estate consultants Knight Frank. The head of the institute, Vladimir Korotaev, noted in his speech that his team considers raising the standard of living of the population a priority for the development of the Moscow metropolitan area. As for the comparison of “Big Moscow” with similar global projects, specialists from the Central Research Institute of Urban Development came to the conclusion that the most comparable example is Tokyo (where a “tail” was also attached to the city, albeit in the northwest). The Greater Tokyo Development Concept was adopted in 1958 and has since gone through several stages. In particular, since 1976, the development of this agglomeration began to be carried out according to the principle of multi-core: neighboring independent cities were included in its composition, and the transport system was supplemented with ring elements. The current stage of development of the Tokyo metropolitan area, which began in 1999, implies the creation of a structured dispersed regional network, including business and production centers and circular support cities with a single transport system of the "Big Ring", providing the shortest connection between individual areas. Throughout this period, there was a dispersal of various metropolitan functions (industrial, residential, research, logistics, production, government, etc.). Experts from TsNIIP Urban Development think this scenario is the most suitable for Moscow. Moreover, in the territory of the future Greater Moscow, it is already possible to single out some functional centers, in particular, science cities near Moscow.
The architectural studio of Andrey Chernikhov, to work on the concept of the development of Greater Moscow, gathered around itself teams from several countries of the world (USA, Denmark, Great Britain, Croatia, Bulgaria, Ukraine) and the largest Russian specialists (A. I. Treivish, A. M. Kurennoy, V. Knyaginina N., Kasyanova T. A., Gromyko Yu. V., Gradirovsky S. N.). So this group of developers includes economists and geographers, specialists in the agricultural sector, ecology, urbanists, large urban planners, designers of door handles, BAM, Kazan, Domodedovo airport, Olympic facilities in Sochi and authors of the reconstruction of the New York railway system. According to Andrey Chernikhov's team, the most serious problems are created by the gap between the population and the quality of life. Over the past decades, Moscow has lost its role as a "logistics center" of intellectual, cultural, spiritual values and today is actually engaged only in the distribution of goods - the architects say. Chernikhov's team paid special attention to the idea of developing Moscow industrial zones and transport exclusion zones, including embankments (although it must be admitted that other teams also raised the topic of unused land). These territories are now dead, although they are surrounded by full-fledged infrastructure. The creation of a similar infrastructure in the southwestern "tail" of the agglomeration, according to the team, will require a fabulous investment, which, most likely, will never be found. The maximum that the development of this territory can end with, Andrei Chernikhov is sure, is the construction of new panel arrays there.
So we see that four out of five teams that presented their preliminary reflections last Saturday opposed the creation of the southwestern "prominence" of Moscow in favor of other solutions. And only one - TsNIIP Urban Development, found an analogy supporting this decision in the history of Tokyo. We will share the opinions of the other five teams shortly.
