Since urbanism got into fashion trends, profane "knowledge" has poured into the previously closed professional sphere. A difficult and dry science - for those who "served 20 years at the Research and Development Institute of the General Plan", and for active citizens, urban studies are fun and easy. Elena Gonzalez writes on how traditional urbanism became “ecstatic urbanism”. On the one hand, "the awakening of urban consciousness" is not bad, the archcritic notes; but when a mass “advanced urbanist” is trained in numerous courses (and, by the way, one can become a “professional” without them), there is cause for alarm. What does today's urbanism demonstrate - a show or the beginnings of public policy in this area? Journalist Alexander Ostrogorsky insists on the latter; according to him, “the city does not belong to urbanists, it belongs to everyone,” and therefore, the more people participate in the discourse, the better. By the way, in modern media it is the opinion of the “participants” of a public conversation that becomes more significant than the professional one, Ostrogorskiy adds: urban bloggers will give their commentary in five minutes, and NIIPI employees may disdain - “then there is no need to complain in the end that their professional opinion has not been taken into account ", The user concludes. However, as Elena Gonzalez notes, they "disdain", probably due to "a little more knowledge about the subject."
According to Irina Irbitskaya, today urbanism is a show that, nevertheless, makes the city better: “Still, graffiti is better than shabby Soviet concrete fences; are pushing speeches in scientific offices. “Let everyone be an urbanist,” declares Denis Vizgalov, “just not to discredit urbanism as such.” And Alexey Savolsky is sure that bloggers are not capable of this, in fact, their influence on the city is negligible.
Another post from "enthusiastic urbanists" was discussed at this time in the RUPA community. Alexander Antonov again sneers at Ilya Varlamov, whose bike path is a symbol of democracy, and the underpass is a sign of totalitarianism. Varlamov repeats about underground passages after the popular urbanist Jan Gale, who advises to remove them from the capital and replace them with ground ones, because all advanced countries have done so. “Deliberation, more like religious intransigence or partisanship,” with which bloggers promote their “correct ideas,” according to Alexander Pishchalnikov, instantly creates a split and directs the discussion into an unproductive channel. Urbanists themselves believe that there is no need to argue - ground "zebras" are more convenient, which, however, does not negate the need for underground passages; as Alexander Strugach notes, “There are different techniques. Such things are solved by professionals within the framework of specific project tasks, for specific places."
In the same RUPA, Dmitry Khmelnitsky proposed for discussion the strategy for the development of New Moscow, recently announced by Sergei Kuznetsov, which, according to the chief architect, will not become a “suburban suburb”, but will develop in the form of several “islands of urbanization”. In this case, writes Dmitry Khmelnitsky, “Muscovites do not have to rely on low-rise construction, in the areas of one-two-apartment houses (except for the very wealthy). Only multi-storey (read large-panel) typical buildings. There is no individual housing market and there will never be”. However, the group did not come to a consensus about which development model would be suitable for the Moscow metropolitan area - the example of Los Angeles, the "compact city" (taken as a basis in the Perm master plan) or something else. By the way, one of the ideologists of the master plan, architect Alexander Lozhkin, shares his ideas about a comfortable modern city on the blog elena-chestnykh.livejournal.com. Among other things, Lozhkin, for example, warns about the "marginal" consequences of the construction of cheap housing on the outskirts - France and England this path has already led to social unrest, therefore, the architect concludes, we should look for "new business models, reorient developers to the reconstruction of existing territories." …
Mikhail Belov at this time analyzes the next results of the competition policy of the Moscow mayor's office using the example of the new building of the Polytechnic Museum on Lomonosovsky Prospekt and the building of the NCCA on Khodynka. The architect is perplexed: why the rejected project of the PTAM Khazanov Museum “is less original and relevant than those projects that were received after long and expensively paid international competitions”? Apparently, not architecture, Belov concludes, because the new Polytechnic Museum in competitive projects is a set of deformed rectangles on the podium, and the new NCCA is about the same. Contests, however, are not to blame, the author of the blog is sure, the "tough construction yoke" is to blame, making architects "annoying midges", "puppets and boys for public whipping", behind which the huge construction plans of the mayor's office are being implemented, concludes Belov; "Our destiny is to discuss unrealizable and unnecessary in the conditions of the crisis and the strict sequestration of the budget, competitions for incomprehensible objects."
At this time, Alexander Mozhaev wrote an article for Vesti about what happens when politics interferes in the preservation of the historical heritage. And the reason was the wave of attacks on the Shchusev mausoleum that rose in blogs with calls to demolish the world-famous monument. From the events in Ukraine, where the previous day the remarkable monument to Lenin by the sculptor S. Merkurov was thrashed, a thread stretched to Moscow - they talk about "ideological vandalism" quite seriously, for example, in the blogs users.livejournal.com and golishev.livejournal.com. According to Mozhaev, the architectural value of the mausoleum is unshakable, but in order to preserve the monument, Lenin must also be preserved in it: removal of the body will immediately lead to the question of demolishing the structure, whose other function is impossible.
By the way, the same Alexander Mozhaev, surprised by the appearance among the supporters of the demolition of his "colleagues in local history", writes in his blog about the Vologda defenders of antiquity, who organized fundraising for emergency work around the house of the merchant Shakhov. According to Mozhaev, Vologda is an exceptional case "when citizens take the initiative and when a monument lives on the stubbornness and love of one person." But the news about another loss spread on the blogs of Moscow city rights activists - this is the Proshins' apartment building at 22 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya. "All this time, illegal work was shamefully covered by a police outfit, so that connoisseurs of old Moscow could only powerlessly observe and count the losses" - Andrey Novichkov writes in the blog. At the moment, only the facade wall has survived from the historic building.
