From 6 to 8 September in the center "Sakhart" on the territory of the former Krasnopresnensky sugar refinery, in one of the outdated industrial workshops, an exhibition of master's works of the first graduates of the Higher School of Economics was held. The colon from the name of the exhibition - "City:" - suggests clarification. Indeed, each of the 13 master's theses presented made visitors look at the city from its own particular perspective. Moreover, some works are already in line with the practical application of the acquired knowledge, while others only open up new research areas.
According to the Dean of the Higher School of Economics Alexander Vysokovsky, the projects and studies exhibited are radically different from traditional domestic urban studies: “Usually you come to the exhibition and see a lot of more or less beautiful pictures, but there is always a misunderstanding why they are still needed, in addition to demonstrating ability to draw. Here - at the stands and in the works themselves - you can finally see how urban problems and processes are being analyzed. This is a small step towards the legalization of urban studies in the scientific community."
The event curator Yuri Milevsky, a research fellow at the Higher School of Economics, commented on the non-random choice of the venue and format of the exhibition. Sakhart, a former industrial zone, is located practically in the geographical center of Moscow, but at the same time has the characteristics of an urban periphery. This platform metaphorically reflects the state of the emerging science of urban planning: despite the fact that urbanism in Russia is the subject of intense discussions, the depth of discussions is not great, and serious scientific research in this area can still be counted on one hand. Thus, the imaginary periphery of the industrial zone inhabited is combined with the periphery of the intellectual. Urban studies deciphered in the key of "urban studies" are still not mainstream for scientific research and conscious actions of city authorities. The central problems of Russian cities have not yet come into the focus of today's research, but the hour is not far off when the former workshop of the refinery will become part of the City, and the presented studies will become a solid basis for further research. Let's look at them through the eyes of the students themselves and the dean of the Higher School of Economics.
City: Which greens are more important?
Author: Kristina Ishkhanova
HAcademic Supervisor: Alexander Vysokovsky
Commenting on the course and results of Kristina Ishkhanova's research, Alexander Vysokovsky assessed her as "super-effective and interesting." Firstly, because it has already received a public response - within the framework of the study,
rating of parks ordered by RIA Novosti. For this, a special research technique was developed, which was worked out and refined in the course of work.
Secondly, I was inspired by a powerful result: we managed to come to a new understanding of what is happening in the city with parks now. In fact, a new concept was introduced - the consumer properties of the park. Until now, a park meant either a commercial enterprise with the provision of services, or an environmental complex. It turned out that it is worth focusing not on environmental protection and not on generating income, but on improving consumer indicators, which include a lot of parameters.
City: University in space
Author: Anastasia Evsyagina
Academic Supervisor: Alexander Vysokovsky
If you think about this, you will easily understand that universities are not just academic buildings, but whole complexes of objects, different in purpose and form of ownership, and Anastasia Evsyagina studied how all these objects fit into the urban environment.
Alexander Vysokovsky noted that the study turned out to be valuable from a methodological point of view, because in its course it was possible to test a lot of hypotheses. In particular, it turned out that at the moment, in Moscow's realities, the campus development of universities is an urgent, but not an easy task. The difficulties are associated primarily with the fact that the campus is an integral system, and in our latitudes, each of the elements of this whole strives to isolate and live in the same way as urban objects of a similar typology. For example, hostels, like all dwellings, tend to the periphery, and places of employment and training tend to the center. And this is just a single example of a spatial gap. An article written by Anastasia based on research work in collaboration with her supervisor, published in
"Notes of the Fatherland".
City: Interaction with the university
Author: Marina Sapunova
Academic Supervisor: Alexander Vysokovsky
One of the main objectives of this dissertation is to explore how the university is involved in shaping the urban environment. “It turned out that these possibilities are simply endless,” Alexander Vysokovsky notes with surprise. The only question is what strategies the university uses, how actively it manifests itself, whether its representatives have the motivation to develop the university space.
Of course, a private American university that independently forms the agenda, and a large, but state European, are completely different stories, as evidenced by the results of the analysis of the spatial organization of the 30 largest world universities (including HU (Holland), UvA (Netherlands), KU (Denmark), Pitt (USA), Penn (USA) Marina's work, like that of Anastasia Evsyagina, is part of the HSU project, which at this stage is
the concept of the HSE distributed campus (note that this is not an architectural project, but a concept of spatial development). The practical part of the dissertation, firstly, showed how to reform the university space, and secondly, it answered the question: is it possible to arrange a distributed type campus through additional lease of buildings.
City: Children talk and show
Author: Vera Goshkoderya
Academic Supervisor: Vladimir Nikolaev
The central place in this work was taken by the method of participatory planning. For the townspeople to feel the city “their own”, they need to be involved in the formation of the urban environment, it is important that they understand that their opinion is taken into account. We must not forget that children represent no less, and maybe even more important than adults, a group that already uses and will use urban space. International experience, the opinions of the expert community, as well as the research carried out suggested that opportunities for involving children in urban planning do exist: even in Russia - in Moscow or, for example, in
Yaroslavl.
The practical part of the master's work was carried out in conjunction with the City Friend project (with the support of the White City Project), the goal of which is to create a child-friendly environment from the bottom up. The results of the parent survey showed that adults are in favor of involving children in planning, but as a rule, no initiatives come from them. Also, creative activities were conducted with children of preschool and school age in order to understand how children evaluate the areas in which they live or stay. This format of work turned out to be really good, but for the effective participation of children in planning, it is necessary that some specific problem be solved, you cannot say: "Children, let's plan something" - you get an imaginary participation that rather discourages than attracts interest. In the course of the study, it was possible to confirm the idea that a system of interaction between planning decision-makers with a children's audience should be built.
City: (Out of) the law
Author: Evgenia Vorontsova
Academic Supervisor: Maria Safarova
Assessing the impact of law enforcement practice on the development of urban planning legislation is a rather difficult, but very important task. In order to trace this connection, an analysis of judicial practice on issues of urban planning activity was carried out: the decisions made by the courts were considered, the normative legal acts adopted by the public authorities were analyzed. It was possible to reveal that the number of court precedents is growing every year. Having considered the collisions demanded in judicial practice, arising from the application of the norms of urban planning legislation, Evgenia selected and analyzed the most resonant cases, for example, about the sensational project "Okhta Center" or about legislative innovations in force on the territory of New Moscow. The work was able to assess how the legislation is being observed, and its significance lies in the fact that it allows us to assess the prospects for the development of urban planning legislation in Russia and the urban regulation system as a whole.
City: Discussion platform
Author: Daria Zhmurko
Academic Supervisor: Victoria Antonova
Cities cannot live arbitrary lives. At the state level, there is a strategic planning tool, and recently more and more Russian cities are starting to use it. The modern problem of domestic strategic planning is its ineffectiveness: quite often the developed strategy becomes a tribute to fashion or “closes the hole”. However, the study confirmed that the document can be useful: it is able to consolidate the urban community, unite the interests of citizens, establish communication, and can also help city managers to make not “passing” decisions, but really correct decisions.
City: What do the youth want?
Author: Lilia Burangulova
Academic Supervisor: Victoria Antonova
Investigating the demands of Norilsk youth to the city, Lilia Burangulova conducted a sociological survey there and made a list of pressing problems on its basis. The most active group of townspeople, schoolchildren and students, would like to improve the environmental situation and improve the quality of the improvement of Norilsk; overcome the disadvantages caused by geographic remoteness; cope with climatic challenges; to fill in the list of missing infrastructure facilities, as well as to establish telecommunications - the Internet works unsatisfactorily in the city: the speed is low, there are few providers, there is no broadband access. The results of the study can hardly be called comforting: answering questions about their future, less than 20% of respondents consistently associate it with life in Norilsk.
City: (Not) Childhood Problems
Author: Zilya Vafina
Academic Supervisor: Victoria Antonova
In principle, it is difficult to talk about the “friendliness” of the urban environment in a metropolis, while working on a space that is “friendly” to children is even more difficult. Zilya Vafina, having questioned the parents, identified problems in communication between the city and the child (at the level of the state, society, family), and also formulated the general characteristics of a space favorable for the life and development of children. Naturally, the emotions of the parents did not remain behind the scenes: today, most of them strongly doubt that a large city can be a comfortable environment for preschoolers.
City: Reload
Author: Arina Miksyuk
Academic Supervisor: Grigory Revzin
City branding is a complex and urgent task, it is not easy to solve it and, at the same time, it is very important. A well-developed brand helps to correct the image of the city and increase tourist, investment and migration flows. The research was aimed at identifying the image of the city, which consists of objective and subjective components.
Therefore, the practical work consisted of analyzing the tourism market, analyzing news portals and conducting a survey. The respondents who took part in it - Muscovites, residents of regions and foreigners - see the capital as an active, exciting and prosperous, but at the same time uncomfortable and unfriendly city. Such results pushed the author of the work to the idea of a brand based on
ideas of initiation: everyone who comes to Moscow turns out to be an eyewitness or the main character of an “adventure or trial”, for which he will subsequently receive encouragement.
City: the space of sound
Author: Margarita Chubukova
Academic Supervisor: Grigory Revzin
Probably, today the study of the sounds of the city is not a primary task, because it is difficult to call it practical. However, the author of the term "soundscape" - the soundscape - Canadian environmentalist composer Murray Schafer clearly demonstrates that sound is a full-fledged part of the ecosystem. There are many approaches to the study of urban sound environment, but they do not have a common basis. To classify the data collected "in the field" - the sounds of the Arbat region - and analyze them, on the advice of the scientific advisor,
the principle of binary oppositions, invented and legalized by structural linguists. Streets can be differentiated on different grounds: sounds can be dominant and subordinate, linguistic and non-linguistic, technogenic and natural, dynamic and natural, anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic - this could once again be seen at the exhibition by listening to the recordings made in May 2013 during the field research. In addition, it was possible to establish that each of the sounds carries information about the space under study: the soundscape reflects the features of local and city-wide identity. It is clear that there are still no methods of working with the sound environment, but in order to invent them, you first need to thoroughly study the subject itself.
City: Borders of Identity
Author: Ksenia Osipova
Academic Supervisor: Victoria Antonova
In the study of the problems of a multicultural urban community, the hypothesis was tested that national characteristics and the duration of residence in a certain territory determine the attitude towards a place. The result showed that the stereotypes associated with the national question have no basis at all - it is not ethnic characteristics that affect the perception and development of urban space, but everything is hidden in the individual characteristics of each city dweller, and the extrapolation method is not suitable here. This conclusion was made possible by a series of interviews within three thematic blocks “I and my house”, “My yard-micro-district-district”, “Third place / social connections and contacts” with representatives of different cultures living in Moscow.
City: Step rate
Author: Nikolay Zalessky
Academic Supervisor: Alexey Krasheninnikov
The work answered the question of how socialist ideas about the ideal arrangement of residential areas and pedestrian spaces have changed over almost a century. From the study, you can learn how and why urban planning norms changed, and the “timeline” presented at the exhibition indicated the turning points when the norms for designing residential areas changed.
