Andrei Golovin, who oversaw the development of the strategic master plan for Perm in 2008-2010 and led the team of the master plan for the city's development, was detained on April 10 at Sheremetyevo airport, from where he was going to fly to Gdansk for a conference of the heads of the European Schools of Planning (AESOP). The reason for the detention was the violation of a recognizance not to leave, taken from Golovin in the framework of a criminal case initiated on the fact of embezzlement of funds allocated for the development of a master plan for Perm. On April 11, the Leninsky District Court of Perm made a decision to detain Golovin; on April 16, it appointed an unprecedentedly large bail of 20 million rubles for his release. Now fundraising for bail is underway (the money must be collected by April 20), a page has been created on Facebook, where you can find out news and details of several extremely confusing investigative cases opened in Perm against Golovin since 2009 (for details, see, for example, in "Rossiyskaya Gazeta", "Kommersant", as well as in the text of the open letter of 2011). To put it very schematically, Andey Golovin is accused of spending budget money to pay for the work of the Dutch architects of the KCAP bureau on the master plan for Perm, which investigators consider ineffective, although a new master plan of the city has already been adopted on its basis.
The arrest of the director of the Bureau of Urban Projects caused a wide response in the professional community. The founder of KCAP Architects & Planners Kees Christians wrote an open letter to the Perm City Duma, the head of Perm Igor Sapko and the Governor Viktor Basargin, in which he recalls that “the master plan agreement was concluded with the consent of the Perm City Duma and the Perm Territory government, and Andrei Golovin was only the executor of the will of his superiors. " NP Association of Planners also sent a letter to the court in defense of Andrei Golovin.
The ex-governor of the Perm Territory, Oleg Chirkunov, on his Facebook page commented on the situation: “Not Andrei Golovin, but I was the initiator of the creation of the master plan for the city, and I am proud that Perm now has such a document. If there is a trial, then I will insist that my opinion be heard. In defense of Andrei Golovin, the vice-speaker of the Perm Duma, Arkady Katz, spoke. On the other hand, signs of an opposite reaction to the arrest of Golovin were not slow to appear: right on the day of the arrest, Perm architect Igor Lugovoi spoke on the air of Echo Perm with a desire to revise the city's town planning plans. And on April 16, the Union of Moscow Architects suddenly categorically refused to hold the previously planned session on master planning in Russia within its walls.
We asked two well-known experts in the field of urban planning, Alexander Lozhkin and Alexander Antonov, to comment on the current situation around the master plan for Perm and the fate of one of its main developers.
Alexander Lozhkin
an urban architect, author of a blog and many articles, including those devoted to the development of a master plan and a general plan for Perm, told Archi.ru that the statute of limitations for bringing Andrei Golovin to responsibility for the first case opened on him expired back in September 2012 - it's not was closed only because Golovin himself refused to sign documents about it. “In legal terms, the expiration of the statute of limitations is not a rehabilitating circumstance, and Andrei wanted the court to officially prove his innocence,” explains Lozhkin.
But instead of a trial in December 2012, a new case arose - on abuse of office: the investigation accused Golovin of improperly spending 1.2 million rubles on the remuneration of a lawyer. And on March 27 this year, another case was initiated - this time under Part 3 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (large-scale fraud). “And if the first two did not provide for punishment in the form of imprisonment, now we are talking about a possible imprisonment for up to 6 years,” emphasizes Alexander Lozhkin. Apparently, the “higher” status of the case prompted the investigation to take drastic demonstrative actions: having signed his own recognizance, Andrei Golovin had previously traveled on business trips abroad, coordinating them with his lawyer, but only now the investigating authorities suddenly drew attention to this.
“Without the master plan, the general plan of Perm would not have taken place,” Alexander Lozhkin is sure, “and the master plan, in turn, is a rare example of real planning for Russia, linked to the real budgetary possibilities of the city. Let me remind you that, in fact, Perm owes its drastically changed world image to the emergence of the master plan - today this city is considered to be a leading city in the field of urban planning, it is no coincidence that the 48th International Congress of Specialists on Urban and Regional Planning ISOCARP was held here”.
Alexander Antonov
Member of the Board of NP "Association of Planners", Chief Project Architect of the Research and Design Institute of Urban Planning, member of ISOCARP:
“The master plan itself and the PZZ defined in today's legislation are not enough to formulate the spatial development policy of the city; this requires a different instrument - a higher conceptual level. A strategic master plan is a document that defines the basic principles and directions for the development of a city or its part, both substantive and spatial principles. Perm (first of all, in the person of the governor Chirkunov) understood this and dared to make such a document. As a document with its own ideas, it is good.
He is new and unusual, so he was greeted with hostility by part of the professional community. In addition, it turned out, as it were, the implantation of foreign experience, which also turned out to be unacceptable for many. But the document itself is undoubtedly a breakthrough in Russian planning. It enunciates principles that until recently were not used by us, such as intensive development without city expansion, for example. Yes, building according to these principles is more expensive for investors, but operating a city built according to them is cheaper for the authorities. For the future government, which will come to Perm in 10-15 years”.
In other words, there is a paradox: a rare project, truly highly appreciated by the world professional community, in Russia has become a reason not for pride, but for a trial, which now also threatens at least one city planner with a real prison term. Archi.ru will continue to monitor the situation.
