For three years, the GZK (urban planning and land commission), created by Sergei Sobyanin, who took office, audited investment projects from the time of Luzhkov. By canceling a total of 30 million sq. m., Sobyanin's team is now building even more, even faster. According to a recent review by The Village, Moscow will overtake any European capital in terms of the volume of new retail space. In total, the portal counted 23 shopping centers under construction. Among them there are real "whales" (over 100 thousand sq. M.), Like the "Aviapark" on Khodynka with a small (10 times smaller) "extension" of the new NCCA or the "Slavyanka" shopping center (comparable in size to the "European ») Of the same investor on the busy Kutuzovsky Prospect. However, retail space continues to grow even on the Moscow Ring Road - according to the publication, for example, a giant Vegas City is planned next to Crocus, which will even include a circus. According to Sergei Kuznetsov, the bulk of shopping centers are being built under previously issued permits; At the same time, such shopping centers are not always a mistake, the chief architect believes, since the outskirts, where the first floors of buildings are not adapted for trade, experience a deficit in this sense.
Enrique Peñalosa, ex-mayor of Bogotá and one of the most recognizable and eccentric urban consultants, meanwhile, considers shopping malls dangerous for cities. “When they become a meeting place for people, it’s a symptom,” the urbanist notes in an interview with Afisha. In the era of capitalism, it is cities, according to Enrique Peñalosa, that can create “a new type of equality that is not related to income levels,” but the shopping center directly indicates social status. Even if this is a super-project in terms of architecture, the city does not get better because of that, “a good city is one where people want to be on the street,” and not in shopping centers or museums. It is impossible to call a city comfortable in which "poisonous rivers" of highways flow instead of city streets, the urbanist concludes.
The appearance of a large impenetrable territory of a government quarter in its very center is unlikely to fit into such an idea of a comfortable city. In the meantime, Kommersant reports that the “upstairs”, after long tossing, have finally decided on the place of resettlement of officials - this is the quarter between Staraya and Red squares. The coordinator of Arkhnadzor, Konstantin Mikhailov, reminds that the New Moscow project has recently begun with the idea of relocating officials to Kommunarka, although not a single bureaucratic table has yet moved there. The urbanist and futurologist Willie Müller is surprised at such changes. In an interview with The Village, the architect told how his agency's project for New Moscow was supposed to move the entire administrative part to the new center of the agglomeration, thereby destroying the radial-circular layout of the city. Although officials will eventually be left in the historic center, the "city's gravity" still needs to be changed, Willy Mueller is sure, for example, by creating a high-speed train route that will pass through Moscow from north to south, capturing the torn off peripheral areas. Gazeta.ru at this time spoke with British urbanist Ricky Burdett: in his opinion, New Moscow is generally an unsuccessful project. The expert wonders why it was necessary to add new territories without understanding the problems of the existing ones.
Peter Ivanov on the urbanurban.ru portal, meanwhile, analyzes the content of the recent message of President V. Putin to the Federal Assembly, in particular, the points about municipal governance and the reform of the procedure for issuing land for building, which, according to the author of the article, will lead to another period of gushing panel house building. And architect Oleg Shapiro in an interview with Gazeta.ru told about the idea of creating an Internet bank of concepts and proposals for improving the urban environment of the capital under the Council for Public Spaces. According to the architect, this will make it possible to formulate the position of the professional workshop, which until now looked rather unconvincing in the emerging dialogue between the city authorities and the “active citizens”. At that time, Afisha magazine interviewed Elizabeth Diller: the head of the head of the consortium of winners in the competition for Zaryadye Park discusses the concept of “natural urbanism” and how he is going to control the progress of the project.
At the end of the review - news of the architectural heritage. Kommersant writes about a new application for the inclusion of the ancient city of Bolgar - a monument of the world's northernmost Muslim architecture - in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Experts who had been there the day before admitted that the museum's "new buildings" of the last decade did not spoil its appearance too much and the chances are very high. And the Kizhi Museum-Reserve, already protected by UNESCO, is expecting a large construction in the near future - the other day the Ministry of Culture approved a concept for the development of the museum, which includes housing for employees, visitor and children's centers and much more. However, all this should appear in the “outer zones” of the museum and not affect the architectural ensemble itself. And finally, in Tver this week, they discussed the fate of the legacy of the famous architect Nikolai Lvov, the author of magnificent classical manor ensembles, which have to be preserved by volunteers.
