The last time they tried to hold such an event in our country was in 1933. Not held - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, just at that time changing the course of development of Soviet architecture, changed his mind about holding the International Congress of Modern Architecture in Moscow and Le Corbusier and his comrades urgently had to look for a new place for him. Found on a steamer sailing from Marseille to Athens. As a result, the program document, which for decades determined the vector of development of world urban planning, was named "The Athenian Charter". And it could be called the "Moscow Charter".
Probably, this article should be started with a pretentious statement that Russia has waited for the event that has been waiting for 79 years. But no, I did not wait - and the congress of the International Society of Urban and Regional Planners held in Perm in September was not particularly noticed either by the federal officials responsible for regional planning, or by the all-Russian media. This is indicative: despite the fact that urban planning problems in Russia have been at the forefront of public discussion in the last couple of years, these problems are completely different in our country than in the rest of the world. Both in our country and abroad there is a crisis in the field of urban planning, but these are two different crises. Ours is due to the fact that professional tools from the times of the very Athenian Charter are used here: strict functional zoning, a stake on an apartment building as the only possible type of dwelling, a stake on creating a system of norms and rules unified for all cities, reliance on the architect's artistic vision, as a guarantee of the quality of urban planning solutions.
There was such a crisis in the West, too, but for a long time: it happened there 30-50 years ago, and now in Russia, little by little, there is a realization that not everything in the state is in order with urban planning. But it does not appear in the professional environment, but in the blogs of civic activists. It was they who, after traveling abroad and returning home, began to compare the quality of the urban environment here and there and to convey to the general public the available world experience. The development of public spaces, bike paths, pedestrian zones, public transport, the idea of a compact city with high-density, but not multi-storey buildings, the participation of residents in planning the fate of territories, seem to the inhabitants of domestic microdistricts an unattainable utopia.
But what about the professionals? For the last couple of decades, our city planners have tried to do the same as they did in Soviet times and developed general plans and planning projects according to the templates that had been used for many decades before. These "Athenian" patterns were borrowed in the West at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s (after which the USSR reliably protected our city planners from the pernicious bourgeois influence with an iron curtain of secrecy), and so took root on domestic soil that they seem to many to be part of our national identity. Any attempts to introduce new Western experience into Russian urban planning are regarded as an attempt on the Russian town-planning school. But now 5-7 years have passed since the approval of the first general plans, developed after the adoption of the City Planning Code of 2004, and it became obvious that it was impossible to implement them. However, no one was going to work according to the plan in conditions when decisions on the development of cities are made by officials spontaneously, without an expert assessment of the consequences.
The ISOCARP Congress could not have taken place anywhere in Russia except Perm, since Perm turned out to be the only city in the country included in the world project culture of urban planning. Trying to remove the blinders of Soviet urban planning and introduce modern tools of territorial planning into urban practice, a team from the Dutchman Keis Christians was invited to the city, who developed the Strategic Master Plan for Perm in 2010. On its basis, in the local Bureau of Urban Projects, a master plan of the city (linked to budget planning), a plan for the implementation of the master plan, local standards for urban planning, urban planning regulations, planning projects were developed in which modern urban ideas, which are so popular today among bloggers, were adapted to the Russian system of legislation. Alas, today, after the recent change of the governor, the further implementation of the Perm town-planning model is questioned.
So, in Russia people are still asking the question of whether urban planning is necessary at all, or the best method of development is the unexpected decisions of the authorities to satisfy someone's immediate interests, or is it just necessary to artistically group buildings in space? And is it necessary to borrow the modern tools of urban regulation used in the world, or do the post-Soviet ones have their own pride, and we prefer to build microdistricts of "affordable housing" in the fields, and their quality is regulated by the collective intelligence of the Architectural Councils and the personal talent of the chief architects of cities?
A somewhat different agenda is relevant in the world at this time. No one is concerned about the struggle to preserve the light principles of the Athenian Charter, but there is an obvious problem associated with the fact that in recent years modern methods of urban planning have been actively used not only in the "old" countries, but also in cities experiencing an economic, demographic and construction boom. Asia, Africa, Latin America. The rulers there are not too inclined to consult with their own citizens on any issues, while urban planning affects not only spatial, but also social, economic, environmental, cultural aspects of society. And Western urban planners, using the existing urban planning tools, are forced to solve completely different problems than at home. Externally, the projected cities are very similar to European ones and one can even find in them a couple of principles of “new urbanism”, but the possibility of a full-fledged urban life and self-generation of urban processes seems very doubtful.
It was the topic of urban planning in developing countries that became the focus of the international program of the congress. Here, the development processes are rapid and the theme of the Perm ISOCARP congress - "Fast Forward: Dynamic planning in the changing world of cities" is inspired by the need for an adequate response of city planners to them. The question of finding a balance of interests of citizens, business, government was considered at various sections. How applicable is Western experience in Eastern countries, to what extent should local specifics and cultural context be taken into account? Unexpected things came to light - for example, the fact that in China, which we are accustomed to consider a model of authoritarian government, they study public opinion and negotiate with business when making decisions on the planning of territories. And today, in the context of the completion of the processes of hyperintense urbanization, characteristic of the previous three decades, they are again looking for tools to humanize the urban environment and increase the competitiveness of cities. For the countries of the “third world”, issues of sustainable development and rational use of resources are becoming no less important than for the “old” states. And they no longer need urban planning as a way to decorate urban spaces, which until recently was typical for Kuala Lumpur or Dubai, but as a way to solve real-life problems.
It turns out that urban planning tools are still basically the same for different parts of the world, and the requirement to take into account local specifics does not mean the need to abandon modern design methods, but only requires their competent application. The main issue is the setting of tasks, the formulation of urban planning policy.
Alas, this question is simply not raised in Russia. The government orders urban planning documentation, not to solve urban problems, but only because "it should be." The government does not see or does not want to see the future, the urban planning policy has no goals, and the policy itself does not exist either, unless, of course, we consider the requirement for a constant increase in the number of square meters to be introduced, which governors and mayors report to the federal center. Rare exceptions, as in Perm, only confirm the rules.
It turns out that Russia is not even on the list of third world countries, it is already in the fourth world, where the future is not supposed to be. And while all the other countries gathered on a steamer that had already sailed from Athens, we found ourselves in the middle of the sea on a fragile raft without a rudder or sails, and without much hope of salvation.
