The OMA team scored 7.8 out of 10 points, ahead of the second participant of the competition Ricardo Bofill (Spain) by 0.2, and from the third - Antoine Grumbach et Associes (France) - by 0.4 points. Thus, the first stage of work on "Greater Moscow" has three leaders, and one of them is the main one. However, it is easy to see that the differences in estimates are small.
The main reason for the existing problems is the director of the OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Netherlands) research center, Rainier de Graaf, considers the hypertrophied role of the center of Moscow. In his opinion, it is required to develop centrifugal force, which would be able to strengthen the periphery. For this, the Dutch designers propose to create four large nuclei with a population of 2.5 million people on the basis of four Moscow airports. Aeroexpress trains, which still have the potential for further development, provide a reliable connection between the airports and the city center. And to connect the airports with each other, it is proposed to use the projected Central Ring Road. The possibility of obtaining additional investments should be provided by the logistics parks in which the business is interested. Each "New Moscow" will be unique - with its own set of functions and face. They will include "dacha cities", which will also become part of the Moscow agglomeration in administrative terms, which will make these territories attractive for permanent residence, for example, for pensioners. New jobs will also attract a more economically active population here. The designers note that the presented concept will help relieve the center - for example, the Garden Ring will finally return to its representative appearance.
The performance of the contestants was completed by the Ricardo Bofill bureau (Spain), which was included in the top three. In the development of the transport system, emphasis was placed on the formation of new radial-chord connections between airports. Speaking about the structure of the annexed territory, the designers proposed to create a linear polycentric city integrated in the natural environment, elongated in the meridional direction, with an intelligent public transport system, a high standard of living and various institutions.
French designers Antoine Grumbach, Michel Wilmotte and Borina Andrieu from Antoine Grumbach et Associes (France), whose work was also included in the top three, consider the idea of building a city from scratch disastrous, since the dynamics of development always ahead of infrastructure development. For the annexed territory, they propose a linear concept of the "Bolshoi Boulevard", which will stretch from the Moscow Ring Road to Troitsk.
The organization of the development of this corridor presupposes high levels of provision of transport and recreational infrastructure - the distance from the development to highways and natural clusters should not exceed 500 m. And the team considers the best option to determine the boundaries of the agglomeration by overlaying a zone of one and a half hour car accessibility of Moscow and the territory with the highest population density … As a result, we get "scrambled eggs", which have spread almost throughout the entire Moscow region, inside which sits an "octopus" with tentacles stretching along the federal ray highways and the "Bolshoi Boulevard". These are multifunctional zones for the development of innovative technologies, logistics and shopping centers, etc.
Borina Andrew considers the cultural and recreational missions to be especially important, referring to the surrounding estates, monasteries, forests and rivers. According to the French team, the transport frame needs to be strengthened with additional highways with various types of high-speed transport, including concentric ones. In addition, it is planned to connect highways with express roads that could connect waterways: west with east, the Baltic and the Northern Sea Route in the north with the Black Sea in the south. New stations may appear at the crossroads of these roads. It is proposed to introduce a single tariff for all types of public transport, which will increase the demand for its services.
Vladimir Korotaev, director of the Institute of the Central Research Institute for Urban Planning of the RAASN, sees the main problems in the lag in road transport construction at the federal level and ignoring the capitals of neighboring subjects as centers of growth in the development scheme of the Moscow region. The Institute of Urban Development is betting on the implementation of the existing ring structure. In addition to it, it is proposed to create bypass rings with a sequential increase in their radius by 50 km, which will take on the logistics burden and lead transit out of the city. “In the first circle” will be the cities of the near Moscow region: Zelenograd, Troitsk, Pushkino, Podolsk. In the next - Klin, Sergiev Posad, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Voskresensk, Obninsk. And the largest "hoop" will unite the centers of the regions adjacent to Moscow.
The team of Andrey Chernikhov's workshop and the Urbanika Institute for Spatial Planning (St. Petersburg) proposed a project with growth centers formed at the intersection of concentric highways and elements of a mesh road network. The emphasis is placed on the formation of a "super-periphery" with the same comfortable conditions and high social indicators as in Moscow. However, the authors see no less sense in solving existing simple and obvious problems in the current urban boundaries. Creation of an efficient road network, revitalization of typical buildings and former industrial territories, opening of land “behind fences”, etc. - all this will give the city opportunities for self-development and will be the answer in the fight against the outflow of qualified professionals, the mismatch of interests of business, government bodies and the city community.
Anton Finogenov (Urbanica) emphasizes that planning should be multivariate, with a large number of forks of possible solutions that will be useful in the future.
Italian architects Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano of Studio Associato Secchi-Vigano have proposed a wide range of strategies that take into account the shifting priorities of urban planning in one direction or another. Representatives of the team note that territorial disproportions of all world megacities, without exception, are repeated in Moscow: the western and southwestern parts of the city are the most prosperous in comparison with the eastern and most depressed northern and southern parts. Therefore, the development vector directed to the southwest will continue to work within the framework of this scheme. Paola Vigano proposes to return to the General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow in 1935, developed by the architect VN Semenov, in which the “fingers” - the axis of development - move away from the city-palm. According to the team, this plan is very similar to the implemented Copenhagen development program, which proved to be successful. With regard to the southwestern "tail", a proposal was made to continue strengthening the monumental line Kremlin - Lenin Library - Vorobyovy Gory, i.e. to create here a stately and at the same time friendly city, where it is possible to transfer these or those institutions, areas of new housing construction. This cluster model assumes that the development islands will be linked by green corridors.
Secci and Vigano were in solidarity with many colleagues that the main problem of Moscow's transport system is its circular structure.
The Moscow Architectural Institute has developed a system of rock and natural organization of the territory. The current closed transport system needs disclosure, transformation of the scheme into a tangential-chordal one. The main rokades can pass both through the centers of the regions (and on the scale of the Central Federal District and the entire country), and along their outskirts, which will redistribute tension and provide stimulation for the development of new territories. Professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute Nikita Kostrikin considers natural landscapes to be an equally important component of the structure. As for the boundaries of the agglomeration, the team identifies 18 social entities throughout the Moscow region, forming them on the basis of the unification of lands with a total population of 1 million inhabitants.
Designers Urban Design Associates see the prospects for creating satellite cities not only within the annexed territory, but also along the main transport routes of the Moscow region. As a rule, settlements are stretched along the roads and their internal infrastructure does not receive diversified development, remaining focused only on the magnet highway. At the same time, between the built-up areas, there are nothing unreasonable voids that need to be built up and organize multi-beam connections within such compact clusters. According to the project of the American bureau, they will be surrounded by forest complexes.
UDA connects the problems of the capital with the circular transport structure in combination with single-purpose development of urban areas and suburbs. It is important to mix functions, which will ensure a more efficient use of urban areas, balancing the number of population by time of day, seasons, etc., This will serve to combat the cause of traffic jams. The team notes that the planning methodology that compares Moscow to other metropolitan areas seems unacceptable to them - it's like “trying to pull the skin of a tiger on an elephant,” when each city has its own DNA.
When defining the boundaries of the Moscow agglomeration, the Ostozhenka architectural bureau investigated the natural-ecological, road and railroad frames of the city and found that both well-organized "prominences" outside the city and "gaps" within its borders can be clearly traced.
Taking into account these trends, the team proposes to place the constituent elements of the federal center in four promising territories: ZIL, an unbuilt vacant lot south of Moscow State University, lands of the protected natural zone "Moskvoretskaya Poima" (namely, an island formed by the loop of the Moskva River and the Karamyshevsky straightening, where it is now the village of Terekhovo is located) and the unbuilt land of the urban settlement Rublevo-Arkhangelskoye (between the villages of Zakharkovo, Golyevo, Arkhangelskoye, Novorizhskoye highway and another river zigzag). The railway ring, provided that it is effectively embedded in the public transport system, should play an important role in revitalizing the central industrial zones.
Another French team - L'AUC - sees the agglomeration as a square shifted to the southwest. In addition to the officially annexed territory, the square will cover the lands to the south and west of Moscow, approximately up to the concrete ring A-107.
There is a circle inside the square, symbolizing the territory of the city within its current borders. Further, the relationship between these figures develops almost as in the "Suprematist tale about 2 squares" by El Lissitzky - it is important to maintain a balance between the inclusion of IN and EX territories in the structure of the agglomeration. The result will be A, i.e. “Amenity” - friendliness, softness, pleasantness of the urban environment, for the achievement of which it is necessary to implement five basic principles:
- increasing mobility within the city due to the implementation of polycentricity;
- increasing the degree of attractiveness for residents, Russian and foreign tourists;
- the principle of "open metropolis", when the development of a unit of area in the EX zone occurs in parallel with the reconstruction of a unit of area of the internal IN space;
- simultaneous movement towards the development of high technologies and preservation of the environment;
- elaboration of a strategy for the development of a world city, which will lead to the formation of a sustainable boundless agglomeration.
Summing up, it can be noted that all teams, with the exception of Central Research Institute of Urban Planning, agree on the need to move from a circular transport structure to an extensive network. And the proposed options for the boundaries of the agglomeration are based on the same transport framework - growth clusters lie at the intersection and along the circular and radial elements, chords of communication between airports.
An exhibition of projects will take place in September 2012, and the final version of the concept is scheduled to be formed in early 2013.
