The network continues to debate around the publication of the report of independent foreign transport experts on the capital projects of the North-West Expressway and the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt. New food for discussion was provided by the mayor's office itself in the person of Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin, who recently unexpectedly spoke out sharply against the authors of the study. As they write in the Echo of Moscow blog, the official directly accused the American urbanist Vukan Vuchik of corruption: “Well, you understand, dear Mr. Vuchek, here you are not engaged in urban studies, you are engaged in politics. You were paid money and you are politically telling what people want to hear. At the same time, Khusnullin's main argument is that the Alabyano-Baltic tunnel, already built for 77 billion, is the main part of the future expressway.
As Andrei Chernov writes in the RUPA urban community, such “political decisions” can be rebuffed only by calculations: “Everyone pounds themselves in the chest,“I swear by my mother, this is how it should be done,”instead of sitting down and counting. Does the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan have no transport model? And if there is - well, put the results of modeling in the open. " Making a new model is long and expensive, so a truly independent calculation will not work,”Yaroslav Kovalchuk notes. And Alexander Lozhkin believes that the mathematical transport model is very conditional and in the absence of experience in implementing transport projects on a city-wide scale, it will not help. “The model is only needed to confirm decisions dictated by experience and common sense,” the critic notes. "But if there is no experience or common sense, no models will help."
However, this does not stop the emergence of more and more "experts" in the capital's transport on the network, willingly entering into the "popular" discussion. For example, in the same Echo of Moscow blog, Oleg Kozyrev discusses the problems of public transport in Moscow. As urbanist Alexander Antonov remarked at RUPA, “of course, both the author and the commentators have a little rubbish in their heads in places, and sometimes logic suddenly jams, but the share of good comments is very high. This is the community that professionals need to work with. Explain a little, show the contradictions a little”.
Meanwhile, as Oleg Kozyrev writes, Moscow has one of the highest levels of OT use in the world, and before convincing motorists to change to trams, it is necessary, the author believes, to improve their quality and not yet force people to go through the whole city to a clinic or kindergarten. "The ground-based OT was built as a lead to the metro, and not a backup, as in other countries, so it is not surprising," the user mostovoy notes about the quality. bin_cat offers to solve traffic congestion problems by "increasing the sparseness of the building", and rerkbyf - by reducing pendulum migration.
Another option is offered by City Projects. The priority of OT and, mainly, trams, bloggers Maxim Katz and Ilya Varlamov showed in the form of an eloquent picture in which more than 700 cars are in a deadlock on the Garden Ring; activists believe that these 700 people could travel in two trams. However, netizens found the calculations unconvincing: “711 people in two trams are just on each other’s heads,” notes, for example, user dimon22_g. "Moreover, the tram does not go where these 711 people need it, but where it has a route."
In the stream of popular judgments about urban planning, meanwhile, there is an acute lack of authoritative professional opinion, especially with the departure of the classic of modern urbanism Vyacheslav Glazychev, about whom the philosopher Alexander Rappaport recently wrote in his blog: “The energy of Glazychev's speech is due to the individuality of his approach, personal surprise, affection by the visible, personal immersion in problematization”. Elena Gonzalez adds in the comments that Glazychev was characterized by the ability “not only to get carried away by the topic, but also to focus on it - and to keep this concentration for a long time. Without this, there is no “moment” and no “situationality”. Well, and a taste for thought. Not journalism, but essayism. The genre in our business is extremely rare”.
Meanwhile, urban experts in the RUPA community have given serious thought to the growing wave of protest movements of urban activists. “A year ago, the overwhelming majority of experts believed that public hearings and any kind of participation were a whim and a pointless waste of time,” writes Alexander Antonov about the scandalous construction in the center of Izhevsk. - However, the need for the help of specialists is clearly visible. Are activists ready to accept this help? Meanwhile, in Izhevsk, in addition to the public, architects spoke out against the construction of a microdistrict on the territory of the green zone. As a-karenin says in his blog, in particular, the architect Mikhail Khazanov, invited by the developer to the jury, opposed the construction of a multi-storey monster, but was prudently removed from the chair with the veto right.
In Cheboksary, a wave of protests was triggered by the project for the development of the Park named after the 500th anniversary of the city, where they are going to build the ethno-complex "Amazonia". The blogs fear that a loud application will result in the development of the park with banal commercial objects, and even at the expense of the budget. More details can be found on the solovjovnikolay blog.
An interesting professional discussion of the prospects for standard construction was launched in the blog "Private Architecture" at this time. Architect Anton Knutov proposed for discussion the project of the modern residential building Krafthouse developed by him. Everything that is conceived in it is not news, the author writes, these ideas have long been voiced, moreover, they are all implemented separately: co-investment, eco-village, monochrome environment, vertical gardening, corniceless roofs, etc. etc. The news is that Anton Knutov's project is free and the author's idea is to create freely distributed projects by analogy with free (open) software.
Colleagues in the shop, meanwhile, argued whether such "charity" was appropriate in the market. For example, the user Architipai believes that such a typology and philosophy creates unhealthy competition, although it would fit well for social housing. A blogger under the nickname Johnny, on the other hand, writes that among the freeloaders who use the project for free, there will certainly be those who agree to pay extra for the functionality they need; as a result, such projects will help to oust the squatter from the market and improve the quality of execution.
In the blogs "Fontanka" and "Living City" in recent days, passions were seething around a letter from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a proposal to remove the centers of almost all historical suburbs of St. Petersburg from UNESCO's care. Following this information, the deputy of the Legislative Assembly Alexei Kovalev was denied by the official departments, but the letter managed to make a lot of noise. For bloggers, the reason is clear - “first exclude the city from the list of World Heritage Sites, and then accept it again. Well, in between, you can turn around … but at least with the same renovation of the center ", notes, for example, the user mar_. - “UNESCO asked to be determined. Well, we decided happily,”adds Arnor, implying that the recommendations of the 36th session of the committee, which took place a year ago, have not been implemented in Russia.
But in Perm with protected zones, changes for the better are outlined: as architectural critic Alexander Lozhkin writes in his blog, a new method was used to develop them, the essence of which is to consistently substantiate restrictions and adopt clear regulations: “You will not have to go to the Ministry for approvals culture and conduct expensive historical and cultural expertise / … / regulations will immediately give a clear answer: is it possible to build, or not, and if so, what? Everything will be completely transparent,”concludes Lozhkin.
And finally, the architect Sergey Estrin in his blog shares his impressions of the international exhibition of contemporary art Art Basel and, in particular, of the architecture of Basel itself and nearby towns: “You expect to see baroque, modern, art deco facades along the entire route. You are looking for rich palaces and massive cathedrals. What do you find? Neat square houses named after the hostel in Mytishchi”. Estrin writes that architectural “Protestantism”, it turns out, was imposed by the local church, so as not to “lead into temptation by the beauty of new buildings”; however, the impressions are compensated by the famous exhibition, which, according to the author of the blog, presents the most unusual and intellectually refined designs from around the world.
