Architect Ilya Zalivukhin presented a concept that solves Moscow's transport problems. A heated discussion on the Internet divided the professionals into opponents and supporters of such a decision. The essence of the project is that Ilya proposes to use the strategy of the Moscow master plan of 1971, which allocated reserve territories in the city for the construction of high-speed highways along the railways. Despite the fact that Ilya's impulse certainly deserves respect for his courage, after all, after the competition for the concept of the Moscow agglomeration, no one remembered this concept (and the agglomeration itself), his proposal does not stand up to criticism: firstly, reserve the territories to which Ilya refers are built up for a long time, and many people live along the railways, secondly, since 1971, the approach to transport problems has changed significantly, and transport analysts unanimously say that drawing high-speed highways in the city has become bad manners in developed countries. However, something else is interesting here: in the course of the discussion, a number of points emerged that reveal no less important issues.
Firstly, this is the devaluation of the profession of the architect, to which the architects themselves have put a lot of effort. When a Russian architect tries to regain the territory that was historically given to transport engineers, it looks terribly unconvincing and somewhat dramatic, since our architect has no experience of such work, and no one takes his word for it. Here, the need to rethink the degree of competence of the architect and his role in solving the most complex urban problems is obvious. Hiding behind the unknown what means in this case the concept of "professional", exposing him as a shield against questions about the essence of the project, without going into dialogue, without involving specialists, the architect himself signs a death sentence in a professional respect. If we turn to the world experience - at least on the example of the masterplan for Perm developed by KCAP - we will find that now, in principle, the approach to design is changing, transport problems are usually solved at the micro level, with the obligatory involvement of experts, and in no case is redrawing in in the spirit of Robert Moses' activity, but the jeweler's work on establishing existing transport links is encouraged.
The second important point concerns the relationship between the architect and the residents. The Russian architect has long forgotten who he is working for, and has turned into a sort of Architect Architectovich who draws boldly with a marker on a blank sheet of paper. The seriousness of the situation lies in the fact that this blank slate denotes Moscow - a metropolis with a complex organization and a host of unsolved problems. In this sense, Ilya Zalivukhin, despite his relative youth, shows himself to be a representative of the “old school architect” type. At the same time, the opposite trend is evident all over the world: even such corporate monsters as OMA are forced to speculate on the topic of cooperation with residents (see the interview with Rainier de Graaff and the Oude Dokken project).
Our situation is different: Moscow architects prefer to work alone, they do not like the residents and are afraid, and they speak about public hearings with disgust: "There are only crazy people." Let us suppose that there may be quite a few urban madmen there, because one must be truly insane in order to lay down one's life in order to timely learn about the holding of hearings, information about which is carefully hidden by the district administrations. However, there are citizens who are quite sane and sometimes very advanced in terms of the nuances of legislation and construction technologies. In response to the comments of these townspeople about the objective situation in their areas, the architect continues to bend his line, justifying himself by the fact that he could not foresee all the nuances.
Meanwhile, ignoring the current plans of the Stroykompleks, which is responsible for road construction in the city of Moscow (not to be confused with the Department of Transport, which is responsible for bike paths), poses even greater problems to residents. The two-circuit transport system of streets and highways, which is the basis of Ilya's project, may lead to the fact that the scandalous reconstructions initiated by the Department (Leninsky Prospect, which has only been postponed for a while, Mozhaisk highway, converted into a highway), will act as the first circuit, and new ones proposed by Ilya high-speed tracing. Will someone cancel these projects after considering Ilya's concept? Most likely, the contour of traffic-free highways will double, while no one gives a guarantee that work will be done to increase the connectivity of the road network, which remains in a rudimentary state.
But the point is not even in the project of the architect Zalivukhin, and not in whether this project is good or bad, outdated or still relevant - there may be different opinions on this matter. The point is that the project is not based on research. In principle, we do not have studies that allow us to evaluate a particular proposal - the most serious problem is the lack of basic statistics for Moscow: there is no data on commuting, there is no monitoring of flows, not to mention the transport model of the city, on which the solutions would be tested. In Berlin, such surveys are carried out every five years, and the websites of the Greater London Government and Transport for London are replete with various documents on transport strategy. What do we see on the website of the Moscow Department of Transport? Take, for example, the presentation with the ambitious name Mobile City: there are plans by the Moscow government, there is a funding schedule and not a hint of researching the current situation in the city and the metropolitan area. It turns out that the Department of Transport either does not carry out such work, or carefully conceals the results.
This raises a number of questions: what are the decisions that seriously affect the well-being of millions of Muscovites based on? Why doesn't Moscow have a unified development strategy? Which department is ultimately responsible for the transport situation in Greater Moscow?
Finally, it should be noted that the worldwide practice of holding various forums and summits devoted to transport problems (for example, the Transportation Summit 2013 in Chicago and the International Transport Forum 2014 in Leipzig) has now partly come to Moscow. A transport session is planned at the Moscow Urbanforum in December, where you can ask questions to representatives of departments and transport experts; and, by the way, the author of the concept, Ilya Zalivukhin, will also take part in the discussion on the polycentric development of the megalopolis.
