At the end of last May, at the IV Moscow Biennale of Architecture, the concept of reconstruction of the pedestrian zone in Troparevo "Inhabited Island" was presented. This plan was included in the exhibition by curator Elena Gonzalez because it is practically unique: residents and officials worked together on it.
An area within a triangular microdistrict bounded by 26 Baku Commissars Street and two avenues - Leninsky and Vernadsky is planned for reconstruction. It includes a wide boulevard and several adjacent areas. This plan is part of the program for creating 10 pedestrian zones in the ZAO, but the authorities “did not pay attention” to the fact that the zone in Troparevo existed from the beginning and that it can only be dealt with taking into account the urban planning and social context, which they did not bother to study.
It is important to note that the “built environment” here deserves a respectful attitude. The microdistrict was created in 1968-1980 as an example of Soviet experimental town planning; as the quintessence of the typical buildings of modernism, he acted as a scenery for the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath". The boulevard was conceived by a team of architects led by A. B. Bergelson as the semantic center of this residential area and really became the focus of Troparev's social life (you can read more about the history of the microdistrict here).
The initial version of the project, created by Berendey LLC, which won the tender for its development, did not delight the local residents. According to this plan, the width of the boulevard narrowed greatly, the usual paths were ignored, but dubious decorative elements appeared in the form of winding paths, artificial hills with grottoes and a gazebo blocking the usual path to the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station and shops. The project did not take into account the realities of the microdistrict at all and was never discussed with the local population, so the initiative group of residents “Inhabited Island” created for this purpose developed an alternative concept for renovating the boulevard. In contrast to the "Berendey" version, here the design was based on the wishes of the townspeople and the peculiarities of the use of public spaces that have developed over the 45 years of the microdistrict's existence. The group included residents of the district who have the professional skills necessary to work on the project - designer Alexander Pishchalnikov, civil engineer D. I. Kisurin, who in the 1970s participated in the design of Troparevo-Nikulino, and retired from the post of head of the Technical Department of the GlavAPU of Moscow; they were consulted by prominent experts - Alexander Konstantinov, Ilya Zalivukhin (Yauzaproekt), Anna Andreeva (Alphabet City), Anna Adasinskaya (MOX).
The resulting concept "Inhabited Island" (the name is associated with the history of the microdistrict: Arkady Strugatsky lived there) does not provide for radical changes in the existing architectural and planning solution; its main goal is to create a comfortable and connected pedestrian network within the block, which is now interrupted by unorganized parking. The principled position of the residents is to preserve the proportions, scale and outlines of the boulevard. It is supposed to lay a strip of red asphalt, lost during the re-laying of heating systems passing under the boulevard, thus restoring the historical design, on the sides - to use ordinary asphalt and tiles, and along the boulevard and around the adjacent children's educational institutions - to lay a promenade from a granite dropout. It is planned to replace the curbstone, increase the number of benches of various configurations, install exhibition stands, shelters from the weather, and equip a platform for performances and film screenings.
On the undeveloped territory - a clearing in front of the "Polskaya Fashion" store, adjacent to the boulevard, a public garden will be created, which is very much awaited by the residents; the children's playground located there will increase in size, and pedestrian paths will be improved. The space is supposed to be left as open as possible visually, so trees will be planted only along the edges of the site: they will separate the clearing from the roadway. According to Alexander Pishchalnikov, the head of the initiative group and the main developer of the concept, several times residents managed to defend this territory from infill development (multi-storey residential buildings were supposed to appear here, and once under the guise of an extension to the Theater in the South-West), and for them it is very important that this place be preserved as a green recreational area in the future.
The reconstruction project was revised by the contractor, Berendey LLC, in accordance with the new concept and approved in February this year by the Council of District Deputies and an initiative group of residents. Then he went to various authorities for approval.
However, the real possibility of the townspeople to influence the appearance of their own courtyard has become increasingly foggy since then. In the process of approval, the project changed to such an extent that it lost the main positions for which the initiative group fought: the width of a significant part of the boulevard is reduced from 8 m to 4.5 m, the existing high lanterns are replaced by several dozen low garden lanterns "antique", the existing 150-meter gap in the pedestrian zone remains a carriageway without a sidewalk, and the territory of the meadow has been removed from the project altogether.
It turned out that the boulevard is included in the zone of a natural complex, therefore, in order to meet the standard for the percentage of landscaping, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection proposed to reduce the area of asphalting. It turned out that another project was being developed for the meadow - a new building of gymnasium No. 1543, which the customer of the boulevard reconstruction, GKU Directorate of Housing and Communal Services ZAO, learned only in March 2014 (although this building may well be built on the site belonging to the gymnasium). It turned out that in order to create the currently missing pedestrian path between the three schools and the shopping center, it is necessary to solve problems with land acquisition.
By the way, the oddities with the "improvement" of this Troparevskaya pedestrian zone began even during tenders for design and implementation: the project of the future winner of the design tender, Berendey LLC, was presented to the district council of deputies a few weeks before the deadline for applications to participate in the tender; The tender for the implementation of the project was posted on the public procurement website two months before the completion of work on the project and the start of its approval in the authorities.
After a number of publications in the media and a meeting between the IG and the prefect of CJSC Alexei Alexandrov, construction work was suspended. On June 30, at a meeting chaired by ZAO Deputy Prefect Yusif Samedov, the customer, contractor, officials and the initiative group came to a "common denominator." The works should, if possible, take into account the project approved in February: the existing width, configuration and lighting scheme of the boulevard is maintained; a convenient pedestrian path with a length of about 150 m, continuing the line of the boulevard past the Polskaya Fashion store, is being created; additional funding is allocated for the high-quality and full-fledged implementation of the project, including the replacement of old curbs on the boulevard with granite ones; all work is carried out in close contact with IS.
However, already at the beginning of July, the situation rapidly changed for the worse: the resumed landscaping work is being carried out according to an unpublished project that neither IS nor the rest of the district residents has seen, in a great hurry, including at night, and the growing there are trees, because next to them workers, in violation of environmental legislation, are digging trenches for a new lighting system (see above), rejected by the majority of residents, although according to the IS project and according to the agreements reached in the prefecture, the boulevard was supposed to keep the existing typical tall lanterns uniformly illuminating its entire width. With a request for help, local residents turned to the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin: 862 people put their signatures under the open letter.
Recent events raise doubts about the successful conclusion of this story. The dialogue built by IS with the authorities made it possible to hope that the opinion of the townspeople would nevertheless be taken into account, and all the necessary changes in the plan that turned out to be in the process of implementation would be discussed with its “consumers” - local residents. After all, improvement is not a gift: the reconstruction with a total budget of 70 million rubles is carried out with taxpayers' money, with the money of Muscovites, with the money of the residents of Troparevo-Nikulino! Isn't this the most compelling reason to take their opinion into account?
At the same time, the initiative group partially completed the work of officials: it analyzed the urban planning situation in the district, conducted a survey of residents, collected their wishes and maintained a dialogue with them throughout the work on their project. In fact, this is the optimal scenario for the reconstruction of public spaces, especially those that have long been established.
Until recently, it seemed that the dialogue between residents and the authorities in Troparevo would create a precedent that could turn Moscow's urban planning policy towards a human being. However, now everything has started rolling again: officials are carrying out reconstruction for the sake of the reconstruction itself and the use of funds, and not for the convenience of residents, who in this case find it difficult to make any claims: they clearly expressed their vision of this convenience, were ready to discuss all the details and go compromise.
Gleb Vitkov
project manager of the Higher School of Urbanism, National Research University Higher School of Economics: “Troparevo-Nikulino is an unusual district for Moscow, one of the few where there is a very strong civic spirit. There is a significant number of educated, caring and active residents there. And, of course, this is a colossal mistake of people in power - the fact that they ignore this fact and try to act there within the framework of the standard management methods that have developed in Moscow.
A separate annoying fact in this story is the school expansion project. Of course, this is a wonderful and necessary task, I don't think anyone has anything against it. However, choosing a site without first discussing it is an extremely dangerous path. Of course, we can say that since the territory is municipal, it means the city and decide what to build there. You can console yourself with the thought that building up a public space with a socially useful object is no longer an infill and therefore “a little bit possible”. But counterarguments can also be cited right there. The fact that the territory is urban does not mean the city's monopoly right to freely dispose of it, without taking into account the opinions of residents. Any development without a complex project will be point-like in the meaning of "meaningless" and "voluntaristic". Will it be an absolute blessing to replace the "mental" central space of the district, which is this square, with a useful object in certain aspects? In my opinion, no. Not every open space in a city is empty. Its potential is always multi-valued, and that is why it is worth defining it in dialogue. I am sure that an optimal solution could be found.
If we try to analyze the situation, the main problem lies, in my opinion, in the absence of an integrated approach in planning the improvement and, moreover, in the development of the city. The current general plan is to a greater extent a strategic document, and its scale of elaboration does not allow working in detail with more local entities. The general plan, in fact, does not care about the life of local communities, and the procedure of public hearings is not enough to identify the specific problems of the district, the complex, heterogeneous composition of its inhabitants, to translate the concept of a generalized inhabitant into a person with his specific needs and perceptions, to identify the centers of territories in understanding residents, not planners.
At the moment, such techniques are simply not used. Instead of comprehensive improvement, current repairs are practiced, and many details or features of already landscaped areas are lost under the pressure of the utilitarian logic of the "household method". The participation of residents is not expected, and no one really knows how and why this should be done.
Comprehensive improvement would make it possible to determine the roles and specific requirements for each specific territory, to build a hierarchy of spaces. Already at the zero stage of work on the project, it is necessary to start discussions with residents, include activists in working groups, identify conflicts of interest, agree on a compromise, identify real needs and, on their basis, develop a technical task for designers. It is the integrated improvement that should solve strategic issues that cannot be solved when designing local areas."
Ilya Zalivukhin
head of the architectural and urban planning company "Yauzaproekt": "The development of territories within the Soviet micro-districts can raise their level to modern districts. Such areas outside the historical city center are now being made in China, this is a multi-storey building with a very well-thought-out improvement inside the microdistrict, and all public functions and spaces are located just inside such microdistricts, in contrast to the block development of the central part of the city.
Troparevo-Nikulino was designed exactly as such a microdistrict, but the lack of budget in the 1980s and transformations after the 1990s did their job. The importance of internal space for this type of development is not obvious to everyone, but this internal space is the most important thing in Troparevo-Nikulino. Therefore, it would be necessary to pay the same attention to it as to the Zaryadye park project - to formulate a terms of reference, hold a competition, and choose the best solution.
That is, such projects can only be carried out with a professional approach. There should be no "pass-through" projects: just projects on the outskirts of the city are much more important than in the center, not to mention such masterpieces of Soviet urban planning as Troparevo-Nikulino!"
Anna Adasinskaya
architectural and landscape bureau MOX: “The history of this project causes extraordinary surprise to me, which only intensifies over time. When I first saw the winning project, I was really surprised. But, if you think about it, this is very typical: after all, how the improvement will look like - very few people can understand looking at the plan, and not everyone is interested in this. And the question of norms, laws, estimates and budgets is of interest to everyone. The amazing thing is that usually the most ridiculous projects correspond to all norms. I was quite surprised by the activity of the residents, as well as the fact that they created a project that was quite adequate from a professional point of view and even achieved the consent of all interested parties: this was a pleasant surprise. And the current situation amazed me endlessly: some people came, began to "build" something, sawing the roots of trees, etc. Who! What? Why? - no one knows, and there is no way to stop them.
And all this takes place against the backdrop of a struggle against painting borders in the colors of the Brazilian flag: the same plot from an unwritten novel by Franz Kafka. It seems to me that the structures responsible for the improvement of the city look like a huge machine. An old car. Nobody knows how it actually works and why it performs this or that action. The last person who knew died and left no instructions. Some parts of this structure are being repaired and even modernized, but this has little effect on the car as a whole. And it rolls like a steam roller, crushing everything in its path. It seems that he has given the correct program and everything will be fine, but no: it will suddenly turn around and destroy everything in one fell swoop. Sad but true. I sincerely wish the initiative group good luck and hope that the trees with sawed roots will survive, and the “car” will be able to turn in the right direction."
