Special trust in foreign experts and architects has been cultivated in Moscow for several years, but with the renewal of the leadership of the capital's mayor's office, foreigners have become part of the new urban planning policy. Thus, one of the “favorites of the Moscow government” today is the Danish architect Jan Gale, who, as Petr Ivanov writes about him on the urbanurban.ru portal, is very successful in selling us his concepts of “a pedestrian-friendly city”. However, as the author of the article believes, not the concept, but the legitimation of his own actions by a world celebrity is the ultimate goal of the mayor's office: “They buy the habit of an elderly professor, the status of a legend, the symbolic capital of an innovator,” concludes Pyotr Ivanov. “When proposals to limit car traffic come from Kuznetsov or Gnezdilov, this causes violent indignation. And the fresh look of a very venerable foreign expert nevertheless makes one think …”, Nikolay Lukyanov comments on the article on RUPA. According to Efim Freidin, "in order to learn the methodology, you need to invite and check for compliance here." Meanwhile, as Petr Ivanov notes, for this we do not have "an adequate public environment that would critically perceive the applicability of such expert knowledge." Well, this, in turn, leads to the fact that the same pedestrian zones, as Alexander Antonov writes, appear where people do not live, and where they live - "on the outskirts of the city, in boring high-rise buildings" - on the contrary, pedestrian spaces are completely eliminated for the sake of cars.
In the meantime, many questions from bloggers were raised and published
portal The Village abstracts of Gale's research, which was commissioned by the Moscow Research and Development Institute of the General Plan on the topic of pedestrian accessibility of public spaces. The radicalism with which Ian Gale proposes to squeeze motorists out of the city center, for example, by narrowing Tverskaya Street, caused an expectedly violent reaction. “Apparently, the author believes that behind Belorusskaya in Moscow there is scorched earth, a vacant lot, a vacuum,” writes ankhen. “The multi-lane Leningradka, which runs into two (but in practice, one) lane on Tverskaya, is a miracle of urban planning.” “Only those who have nothing to do all day need pedestrian zones. Parks would be better developed, in-yard areas, - comments the user Kirill. "Grandmothers will not walk along Tverskaya." But the main thing is that a metropolis with a population of 15 million cannot live according to the same laws as the 3.5 million Berlin, the blogger is sure: “If the population of Moscow is reduced to the size of St. Petersburg, everyone will live much more comfortably and then not a single person, including me, will not say a word against the pedestrian center."
But the Transport Program for candidates for mayor of Moscow, which was recently published by "City Projects", is sustained with the report of Jan Gale in the same tone. The main pathos of the program is aimed at the development of public spaces and pedestrian infrastructure, which in the capital, as Ilya Varlamov writes in his blog, should be dealt with by a special department. However, not everyone took on faith the “simple decisions” of urban activists, promising to improve the lives of pedestrians overnight. For example, funtastik is outraged - "again, motorists prevent millions of imaginary hipsters from lying on the grass in the yard." To make the center comfortable, according to the user, is much more difficult; To do this, it is necessary to withdraw state institutions and offices from it to New Moscow and on the territory of the former industrial zones, and make parks and parking lots in place of the demolished houses. You can also build 50 overpasses across the railroad tracks, "cutting Moscow into inaccessible cones" and establish normal rules for the hostel, such as visiting playgrounds, walking dogs, parking, drinking, etc., concludes funtastik. The blogger artemsidorov, on the other hand, likes the "pedestrian offers", however, according to the user, not only the center needs them, but more of the outlying areas, especially those adjacent to the "outbound highways" that are currently being reconstructed.
By the way, the key project in this program for the reconstruction of Leninsky Prospekt, as the media reported the other day, has been postponed. Thus, the mission of the City Projects, which, with the help of foreign experts, proved the harmfulness of reconstruction, can be considered successful. However, more pessimistic users emphasize that the project was not canceled, but only frozen for the duration of the mayoral election. anderson_mike, for its part, believes that the mayor's office simply did not have time to prepare a reconstruction project, which, however, in the opinion of bzikoleaks, sometimes it would not hurt to start construction, as in the case of the Troparevo-Salaryevo metro line, which at the time of approval by the mayor's office The planning project has been under construction for a long time, the blogger writes. In general, almost no one doubts that the reconstruction will return, so lynx_uw calls on the residents of Leninsky to act now, using the election campaign and demanding the cancellation of the project.
Meanwhile, during the VII Moscow cycling night held this weekend, the well-known propagandist of bike paths Ilya Varlamov himself could not stand the test of strength and left the race, which he honestly wrote in his blog. The night turned out to be rainy, but the event, according to Varlamov, did not succeed also because it gathered too many people, and the accompaniment on Mayak radio was boring, and then it was interrupted altogether. “He also left near the Moskvoretsky market for the same reasons,” writes sallinens. - Boring description on the radio, cramped, slowly, this annoying mess near Kant, when they drove everyone into the hole, and then had to go back. - “Maybe it made sense to start not with Tulskaya, but to exclude this belt of industrial zones and start farther from the center, where it is more picturesque, more interesting, more green spaces,” comments shurik_m. But onyx007 liked to ride in a huge crowd around Varshavka.
A sharp controversy surrounding the prospects for the Perm master plan unfolded at this time in the RUPA community. The urbanists were drawn into the discussion by the architect Igor Lugovoi, who declared on the newsko.ru portal about the complete failure of the most advanced urban planning document of recent years. The recent decisions of the Perm City Council really demonstrate a clear rollback, from which Lugovoy, in turn, concludes that the new master plan and the PZZ need to be corrected again in order to get rid of the illusions of a “compact city”, restrictions on altitude in the center, etc. And as a weighty argument, Igor Lugovoi cites the developer's recent refusal to implement a pilot project within the ideology of the master plan for the development of neighborhoods near the House of Culture of Railway Workers. On RUPA, they found an article with "vile demagoguery" covering a return in construction to 50-year-old technologies. “I think, nevertheless, that the current rollback is temporary,” comments, in turn, Alexander Lozhkin. - The master plan is a correct and long-lasting document. If the people in power are reasonable, they will return to it very soon, as soon as they receive the figures, which will result in the development of the private territories of Bakharevka for the municipality."
At the same time, the massive construction of "affordable housing", which the government, according to Kommersant, promises to solve the housing problem by 2018 in the spirit of the next congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, should inspire at least pessimism in supporters of advanced urban planning. Discussing the article on RUPA, Pavel Chipizubov writes about the need to introduce a moratorium on the construction of economy-class housing and prohibit construction according to standard series. Alexander Lozhkin is also in favor of stimulating high-quality and more expensive housing and a variety of offers on the market, according to whom more than enough cheap housing has been built in Russian cities. And it, as recognized at RUPA, meets the needs of the moment - it does not solve the housing problems of children born in it, does not contribute to the growth of high-quality demography, does not meet the requirements of the middle class, etc.
By the way, the results of the recent, fifth in a row architectural competition named after V. I. VL Glazychev for projects of low-rise economy class housing. “I think this is a form of scandal and shame,” comments Elena Gonzalez. - I am sincerely sorry for the cleverest and subtle Vyacheslav Leonidovich Glazychev, whose name is covered by this disgrace. It's a shame. " “Without reference to a specific technology of a specific company and without a guaranteed construction cost for a specific region (site), tenders for such standard projects are completely meaningless,” Dmitry Khmelnitsky writes, in turn, to RUPA. And as Vitaly Saakov notes, “Vyacheslav Glazychev could, like no one else, connect“high”with“low”. We just have to see the "high" in this competition."
