Archi.ru. Vitaly, at the beginning of this year you were offered the post of chief architect of Samara. Did you expect this offer?
Vitaly Stadnikov. This, of course, was unexpected. At that moment, for me, perhaps, it was more likely to be hired as a sailor on a dry cargo ship in Buenos Aires than to be an official. But one fine day, my friend from Samara wrote to the mayor's blog, where he offered to appoint me the chief architect of the city (this position remained vacant for a long time), after which I received a serious call from the city administration. Well, here's the result.
Archi.ru. Did your participation in the project developed by JSB Ostozhenka for the renovation of the historical quarters of Samara influence this decision?
V. S. Of course it did. “Ostozhenka” gave rise to hope in Samara that it would be possible to amicably resolve the issue of urban environment regeneration, taking into account the scale of historical development, as well as the interests of the city and developers at the same time - just as it happened on Ostozhenka Street in Moscow. Of course, it is not entirely correct to compare Moscow and Samara: in the capital, the transformations on Ostozhenka have always been perceived rather painfully, especially by the champions of authenticity and city defenders, while Samara, frankly, has no time for fat, there is no ArchNadzor, there are no activists, there is not even a semblance of workshop mutual assistance … To stop the construction of 25-storey buildings in place of 2-3-storey wooden mansions would already be a great victory. The center of Samara is now in a flawed condition, literally falling apart before our eyes. So when the city was asked to preserve the character of the environment, despite the inevitable need to replace many buildings, it gratefully jumped at the opportunity. In particular, our project provides that new construction within the historical boundaries of households will be carried out taking into account the rules in force at the time of the emergence of historical buildings, i.e. even before the 1917 revolution. I hope this project will develop. By the way, for the current year, the city budget managed to allocate funds for the development of a concept for the development of the historical part of the city.
Archi.ru. Has the experience of working in the bureau of Alexander Skokan been useful to you as the head of the Samara Department of Construction and Architecture?
V. S. It came in handy, and not only at the post, but in general in professional life. This is a unique firm, an absolutely viable structure, self-sufficient, cluster, in which there are no irreplaceable people. And if one person falls out of it, at any level, the mechanism still continues to work successfully. This is a great business system. The organization of work at Ostozhenka taught me a lot. But, on the other hand, the more difficult it is now to be in an irrational state system. I still can't believe what happened, as if I jumped in a time machine not only into Soviet childhood, but into an epic timelessness.
Archi.ru. But you understood from the very beginning how things are in the city and the region?
V. S. Of course. I had no illusions. The chief architect of Togliatti was killed in 2004 - frankly speaking, it's hard to forget about that. But it was interesting for me to get acquainted with the existing system, so to speak, from the inside. After all, any practicing architect, especially in a metropolis, always becomes a victim of the system of division of labor, often not understanding the logic of promoting his projects on the sidelines of power. It was very important for me to understand this mechanic.
Archi.ru. Now, can you somehow influence the final architectural decision?
V. S. To the best of my ability. With my arrival, it became much more difficult for developers to live: suddenly faced with architectural and urban planning requirements, they simply do not really understand what they want from them. The problem is that, unlike Moscow or St. Petersburg, in Samara the architectural workshop has completely dissolved, it has become so unimportant that the architects themselves bring projects for the planning of the territory, without even thinking about the construction of buildings. The chief architect, according to the City Codex, from a legal point of view, cannot influence the quality of an architectural project. According to the established practice, demanding the draft stage is on my part voluntarism, an excess of authority, since the projects for the planning of territories are the only project action that should be controlled by the municipality. The last effective leverage is the terms of reference for the development of territorial planning projects, which should be as detailed as possible. But today I mostly have to deal with projects developed according to terms of reference, written before me.
Archi.ru. What tasks did you set for yourself in the first place in your new position?
V. S. It is necessary to recreate the very system of urban planning processes management in the city. The fact is that in Samara, as in many other large cities of Russia, it deliberately collapsed as they realized the value of the land - people who understood at least something in urban planning were pushed out of it, because they got in the way. As a result, now we are faced with the fact that the accounting and analytics system is extremely weakened, there is no monitoring of changes in the city. It is not clear what happened yesterday and what is happening today.
But the most important task is to create a city development plan. The city does not understand how and why it is developing. And the saddest thing is that most Russian cities do not have such an analysis. Shrinking cities are trying to present themselves to the federal authorities as developing ones, because if the city is recognized as shrinking, then its funding will immediately be sharply reduced. As a result, the priorities are incorrectly set, again related exclusively to political accountability. The main goal and meaning of urban development is getting budget money, and not creating an attractive investment climate, but the task is to come up with what this money can be allocated for. As a result, the funds are knocked out with blood, and go to waste.
Now in Samara, in the absence of a city development plan, there is a constant, targeted expansion. Every day there are wonderful proposals for the development of federal or regional money for a noble purpose - the construction of a health complex, a railway for children, a stadium, an archive, etc. Land is needed for everything, but it has been distributed, for many years the territory of the city has been simply torn apart in a barbaric manner. As a result, plots for important infrastructure facilities are being sought out in a hurry, in the most ridiculous places. And this has been happening for decades! I have to balk like a ram, promoting the idea of master planning and subsequent updating of the master plan.
Archi.ru. What has already been done?
V. S. At the moment, we are working on the development of the RZZ and local urban planning standards and are starting to create a master plan, which will become the basis for making changes to the current master plan. Our task is to provide all these developments with one team, in one methodological base, otherwise these documents can hardly be conveniently and effectively used. Let me emphasize that the developer is a local company with deep knowledge of the city and extensive experience in working with such documents.
During the year, the city administration carried out sessional work to develop a development strategy for Samara until 2025. It was a public work involving the entire active population. Its meaning is that a person who is a specialist in a certain area is forced to talk about completely different areas of activity. Thus, an over-abstract form of discussion is artificially moderated, due to which any narrow-minded specialist drops out of the cage and leaves. And all those who are able to think fully, remain, grouping into different teams - on transport, ecology, creative development of the city, etc. - and try to formulate the main tasks for each of the chosen areas. Based on the results of this work, a document for the development strategy of Samara until 2025 should soon appear, after which a strategy for the volumetric-spatial development of the city - a master plan - will be developed. Ideally, within the next year.
We also managed to do something about the management structure. The main task here is to establish an information and analytical system of urban regulation, which is not subordinate to the chief architect, it is a separate diocese. The same is with the department of public hearings, which exists independently of the chief architect of the city. These are two very important threads, which under the current City Codex could have been pulled by the chief architect, but both of them are now torn off. The town planning council in the city did not function for a long time, it had to be created anew, from scratch, in order to somehow counteract the developer's dictatorship.
Another problem, not only for Samara, but throughout Russia, is that the specialization of the urban planner is not separated into an independent profession. For a regional city with its own architectural institute and even more projectile ideas about urban planning than in the Moscow Architectural Institute, this problem is taking on colossal proportions. There are simply no specialists in this area. Nevertheless, I gathered a team around me - the city analytics and monitoring department to control the process of developing urban planning documents. We, of course, have to improve our qualifications in the field of planning and urban planning, and at our own expense, because the municipality of the city did not need it. We went to study with Alexander Vysokovsky at the Higher School of Urbanism. This was his first recruitment - a group of about 15 people, which is interesting, almost all of them consisting of chief architects of regional cities and administrators of large design institutes.
Archi.ru. The transport situation in Samara is probably not as catastrophic as in Moscow. And yet there are some difficulties - traffic jams, underdevelopment of the road network … What is being done in this direction?
V. S. The problem is actually no less acute than in Moscow. For example, I live 8 km from work and get by bike in half an hour, and by car - in 50 minutes. Samara is, in fact, a linear city with pronounced longitudinal ties, which are catastrophically few, and transverse absent. In this regard, two roads of the city in the morning are in the direction of the center, and in the evening - out of it. In general, the situation is similar to that in Moscow - unidirectional migration, concentration of jobs in the center, etc. Of course, one of the strategic goals is to shift the points of attraction of activity, and to make the transport network as dense as possible. The general plan of the city provides for the development of main directions, the construction of interchanges, but all this rests on the realities of the city budget.
At the same time, in recent years, rather strange, pinpoint projects have been launched in the city, which are beyond any criticism. Let's say the construction of large and expensive bridges. One such bridge ate up the city's annual budget. Now it has already been built, but it rests exactly in the field, there is no further road. The project of another bridge, in the same way coming into a clean and even flooded field, is planned to be launched in the very near future. In the same place, in the field, a crazy construction of housing is supposed, in which the city can bury a few more annual budgets. The project is utopian. The dominance of the cheapest and low-quality 25-storey buildings with low ceilings is the scourge of the city. We are trying to destroy this approach, but developers are not interested in taking a new path: they have 2-3 types of serial buildings, which they scamper around the city, building all the same neighborhoods, only devoid of schools, kindergartens, clinics and shops.
Archi.ru. Are there no parking facilities there either?
V. S. Are you kidding? There, underground parking lots are not being built at all, because no one in Samara wants to buy parking spaces. And if there are multi-level garages, then they are also not sold out. There is no purposeful strategy in this direction. The municipality cannot oblige the developer to make underground parking, because in this case the cost of the apartment will increase significantly. It might be justified if the municipality provided an alternative in the form of municipal parking lots. But he does not do this, since this is a serious budgetary obligation. Those decisions on the provision of apartments with parking spaces, which we wrote on the basis of Luzhkov's model immediately after my appointment, did not find any understanding. I see the solution in a more realistic approach, which presupposes a differentiated attitude towards different parts of the city: to the historical part - one thing, to new dense buildings - another, to the periphery - a third. But this again requires a full analysis of the urban environment. It is wrong to build parking lots in the historical part. The Moscow experience has shown that this leads to the inevitable demolition of valuable structures. Buildings are the main value quality of the environment, not the convenience of parking spaces. Therefore, there should be other methods - paid parking, fees for entering the center, organizing public parking, etc.
Archi.ru. And what about public transport in Samara?
V. S. There is an absolute dominance of minibuses in the city, there is a good tram system, which still works quite efficiently, and there is an incompetent metro. Construction began in the 1970s. from the industrial area. In the 1990s. this industrial zone has fallen into disrepair, and it turned out that the metro goes from nowhere to nowhere. Today, the metro line has quietly reached the periphery of the center, due to which the passenger turnover immediately increased by 40%. Theoretically, it is necessary to plan the renovation of the industrial area, from which the Samara metro will grow. However, this is still too distant a prospect.
Archi.ru. How is the city preparing for the FIFA World Cup?
V. S. A separate story is connected with this. In May last year, the administration changed. The previous administration considered the very difficult territory of the former river industrial port in the old part of the city, at the confluence of rivers, as the site for the construction of the stadium. With the change of administration, the city immediately began looking for a more intelligible site. As a result, we chose the territory of the radio center in the northern part of Samara, which is convenient both in terms of the landscape and in terms of infrastructure, next to densely populated areas. And, of course, in connection with the Championship, unrealistic plans immediately began to emerge for the construction of, say, twelve new metro stations (in the six remaining years!), Infrastructure facilities, hotels. In general, the money-making project is in full swing.
Archi.ru. We talked a lot about the problems of the city, but surely there are positive aspects in its development?
V. S. Of course, they are, I just need to think more positively myself, to notice behind a bunch of problems the good things that are happening in the city. So, we were able to hold an architectural competition for the development of a project for the development of two sites with housing with infrastructure - so that there are kindergartens, schools, and parking lots. According to the competitive system developed by us, projects were prepared, which will be implemented in the near future. I hope to establish such a scheme of work so that it functions in the future.
The development of a concept project for the renovation of one of the historic quarters in the mode of small-scale construction with simplified schemes for land management and registration of the construction itself was carried out quite successfully, when buildings up to three floors are allowed to be built bypassing bureaucratic procedures. This project was presented at the international exhibition of development projects in St. Petersburg and won the main nomination. In the future, it is supposed to be taken as a basis for real planning of the territory, surveying and distribution of small plots of households for renovation.
Also, now in Samara, finally, a new generation of people is being formed, which, I am sure, will be able to deal with urban planning management after a while. It can be seen that during this year there was an interest in the development of a concept for the development of the city, and even a certain competition arose. If a year ago no one needed it at all, now the regional authorities have ordered the Strelka Institute a master plan for the development of the Samara-Togliatti agglomeration. I was simply amazed by this fact. With the arrival of the new authorities and, in particular, the Minister of Construction of the Samara Region Alexei Grishin, a very lively and active person, something began to change for the better. Such players as, say, "Lengiprogor" and Yuri Perelygin, who were engaged in projects of the 130th wooden block in Irkutsk, courtyards-enfilades in St. Petersburg, etc. came to the local market. that interest arose in the oldest and most destroyed part of the city - Khlebnaya Square, turned into abandoned factory areas. Now there is talk about re-profiling this zone into a public one, connected with the Samarka and Volga rivers by a common recreational space. This is already a definite rethinking of the city.
Archi.ru. In general, what is it like to be the chief architect of such a large city as Samara?
V. S. I agreed to take this post largely out of civic motives, well, and to the extent of arrogance. The sphere of urban regulation is extremely interesting, God gave me the opportunity to face it directly, and I am happy that this happened, I do not regret a minute. These are completely different tasks, goals and colossal experience gained in battles. After that, many paths open up: if you want - continue to work as an architect, if you want - develop documents for the management of urban development, and in the economy there is already completely different knowledge, and in legal matters too. An architect in our country is an artist, which limits him extremely. Therefore, it is never harmful to move from one world to another. This is an extraordinary shake-up and a revolution in consciousness. If before I hated design, now I can't even dream of just talking to anyone about it. I don't care what style the house is built in, full of pomp or honest, I stopped thinking about the ethical aspects of architecture altogether. It makes no difference what it is, architecture, if only it was.
