Alexander Lozhkin
architect, urbanist, advisor to the mayor of Novosibirsk “The Moscow Urbanforum continues to be the main communication platform in the country for urban specialists, officials and developers (although the participation of the latter, it seems to me, should be more active). The interdisciplinary nature of the forum and the fact that discussions are conducted around specific applied research seem to me to be its most important feature. Two valuable innovations of the FUF-2014: the third (festival) day and a regional conference.
The festival day was radically different from the last year, when a few visitors wandered in confusion among the ruined stands. This year everything was lively, interesting and fun. The forum reached out to the city and the city came to the forum. This format should be developed and to a greater extent correlate the topics of the sections and research of the forum with the program of the festival. It is very correct that an open discussion platform of the "third day" has appeared, where in a more free format there is an opportunity to discuss what was heard at the forum.
Discussion of the regional agenda is also important. But it would be right that the speeches of the mayors were not limited to reports on the work done and the successes achieved. Here, it seems to me, it would be possible to focus on interesting regional cases, the discussion of which would be useful for both Moscow and other cities. Such cases can be identified by interviewing key experts, as well as during regional conferences of the FFM - the forum could somehow summarize their results.
I didn’t like the fact that the content of some sections and plenary sessions duplicated each other. I managed to see one of the presentations three times (!) At different sections and plenary sessions (and had the opportunity to see it again at the festival round table), I don't think this is the right waste of limited time. It is worth more rigid approach to the program in order to exclude such duplication.
It is worth more actively using the format of “pre-forum” lectures-webinars to familiarize participants with the research results. Ideally, of course, I would like, of course, to familiarize myself with the publications of the research before the start of the forum, and at it already go to a meaningful discussion, but I understand that this is unrealistic. However, a more detailed lecture-webinar than a 20-minute lecture can at least partially solve this problem. Perhaps it makes sense to hold "post-forum" round tables in order to outline ways of implementing the research results.
There are many topics for next year's forum, as well as the problems facing Moscow. Among such topics - the issue of choosing a model for the development of a city (compact or dispersed), a model of urban regulation (legal or design-directive), preserving the identity of territories and urban planning heritage, relations between Moscow and the Moscow region and the development of the metropolitan agglomeration. There is a serious problem of forming the settlement system of the Russian Federation, the role of small and medium-sized and large cities in retaining the territory of the country, but this is more likely an agenda not for the Moscow, but for the federal urban forum."
Irina Irbitskaya
architect, urban planner, Director of the Center for Urban Development Competencies of the RANEPA under the President of the Russian Federation, Head of the Design Bureau Platform “First, in four days the Forum presented a basic snapshot of what is happening today at the level of Russian officials, international experts and within Russian society. Without knowing this context, no thought, idea, project in the field of urban development, urban planning, and even architecture and design can be sustainable. After all, we create physical and managerial packaging for complex urban processes occurring now and in the future.
Secondly, almost everyone is delighted with the impeccable organization and script in which the festival program appeared. As a rule, such forums are of a purely official nature, and the Moscow Urban Forum of past years also corresponded to the official international format. The festival reduced the degree of officialdom of the entire Forum, influencing the plenary part as well. We can say that the confessions of Moscow officials, their, I would say, grungy rhetoric are just a demonstration of openness. However, what happens in a game format sooner or later turns into a format of real openness of relations. I would say that the beginning of a dialogue between the authorities, business and the expert community has come to the starting point. Dialogue is possible, which means that a city is possible that cannot exist without dialogue, cannot exist without a contract.
Next year, I would expand the line of research to the forum, which have become traditional. Fact, Russia, unlike many countries, is terra incognita. We need facts, knowledge like air, and not just opinions and blind versions of what we are dealing with. Research is needed, and if the Forum becomes its initiator, a center for dissemination and discussion, we will come closer to the international standard for the development of our cities. After all, any model of the future, without knowledge of the past and the present, will be just a random projection without guarantees of success."
Alexander Antonov
chief architect of the project of the Center for Spatial Information of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Moscow Region "NIiPI Urban Planning", member of the board of NP "Association", expert on territorial planning of the CAP "This year, the IV Moscow Urban Forum included in its program the National School of Young Planners ISOCARP - an educational project aimed knowledge in the field of urban planning and the implementation of the practice of solving various problems of modern cities. I acted as one of the organizers and tutor of the School, which took place in parallel with the Forum on December 9-12, so I had to devote almost all the time of the Forum to this project. We presented the work of the school of young planners ISOCARP on transforming the territory of VDNKh on the first day of the Festival as part of the Urban Forum on December 13 and, it seems, presented successfully.
The occupation of the school planners largely prevented participation in the eventful program of the Forum; I attended only sessions and round tables, in the preparation of which I was directly involved.
There was not much to expect from the session on the prospects for New Moscow. The session turned out to be more informational than discussion: representatives of the Moscow Government and the General Planning Institute spoke about the main provisions of the finally developed TINAO scheme, Grigory Revzin presented the first version of the study of new territories, prepared by Strelka KB. As a result, the future of New Moscow remained unclear, with the announced growth prospects and the value of this asset for Moscow still raising many questions.
The round table on comfortable housing and the environment in the Moscow region within the framework of the urban talks program of the Festival Day turned out to be interesting, but, as always, there was not enough time to talk about everything. The round table brought together development analysts, economists, journalists, architects, urbanists, transport specialists, and in this interdisciplinarity, not that new ideas were born, but old ideas were more clearly formed and new questions were concretized.
For the second time, I found myself inside the Forum kitchen and again admire the fantastic working capacity of the “female” team, which organizes all this, balancing between show, officialdom and science, and somehow keeping it all within the framework of a single concept. Not everyone knows, but preparations for the Forum this year for a number of reasons started unforgivably late - in September. As a result, no one noticed any signs of time trouble or some kind of disruption.
For Moscow, this is a bright and undoubtedly useful event, but for me it has already exceeded the limits of perception. The forum is becoming more and more, so we have to position ourselves as a small cog in a huge mechanism."
Anton Kalgaev
curator of special projects at Strelka Institute “I'm not a very experienced visitor: this is the first forum I've attended. I can only judge the previous ones by the published materials. But even for people who did not participate in its preparation and work, the forum has become a useful and interesting event in three years. And this is an achievement for a generally narrowly professional event. It is especially important that the content of the forum is formed not only from a lively exchange of opinions during discussions, but also formed by special research. I really hope that this tradition will continue.
The organizers of the forum have created a comfortable atmosphere, so it is not surprising that some of the "verbal interventions" of Moscow officials are revealing. Although these same casual admissions of professional unsuitability indicate a frivolous attitude towards the issues discussed and the status of the forum. However, during the already famous report by Grigory Revzin, I - it just so happened - watched the correspondence of some officials from a department unknown to me: “I attracted the audience to my side … I presented achievements as failures” - everything was very serious, a front-line report.
In general, the regulars of the forum found something to complain about, but I, in principle, liked everything. Especially, of course, the mood of desperate, almost doomed enthusiasm."
Lara Kopylova
architectural critic, editor-in-chief of the online magazine EKA.ru Liked
An energetic atmosphere of knowledge, will, decision-making, competence. Interesting people and discussions. It’s a pity we don’t have time for everything.
I liked that the chief architect Sergei Kuznetsov personally promised me that as a result of the competition, not only beaches and skating rinks would appear on the Moskva River, but also my favorite classical architecture. “We will take into account Moscow's identity,” said the chief architect. Hurrah.
Grigory Revzin's speech at the session on architecture. It was a brilliant speech, ironic, stylized as the speeches of the 1930s. Its sole purpose is to draw attention to the fact that architecture is also a driver of a metropolis, but this has somehow been forgotten. Nothing of artistic value has been built in four years.
Talented presenters. Aleksey Muratov enlivened other streamlined speeches with joking questions ("So you think that Moscow on this scale is between Makhachkala and Beijing?"). Greg Clark worked with the audience as an entertainer (“Raise your hands, who wants to fish in the Moscow River,” “Raise your hands, those who are willing to pay for new infrastructure on the Moskva River”).
Amazed
A study on Russian cities, presented by Alexander Vysokovsky, with an unexpected result: such “strong” cities as Samara and Perm are outsiders, and the leaders are Makhachkala and Belgorod (not counting Moscow and St. Petersburg, of course). They were compared in terms of the number of students, people with higher education, mortality and salary levels. They found that people in post-industrial cities are happier than in industrial ones.
I was surprised that they want to organize a chamber of architects in addition to SRO, CA and licenses. Like German. The architect will enter the chamber as a creative person, and not as an organization. Pavel Andreev read a report on this topic. It seems like a good thing, the role of architects in society should grow. But it won't grow. She is low, in my opinion, not because of the lack of a chamber. Even in the West, where there are chambers, it is low. They write books like "An architect, is he needed at all?" The very type of architectural knowledge has become so arbitrary that it is not clear why there is an architect at all, if there are designers, engineers, builders. Form follows function. Soon the buildings will be designed, loaded into a computer program, and printed out on a printer. To distinguish the simple chords of the minimalist Philip Glass from the amateur band, you need to know the academic Shostakovich. To distinguish the House of Narkomfin from the Brezhnev series, you need to know the House of Pashkov. Professional complexity lies between professional simplicity and amateurish simplicity. She remained in music education, but not in architecture.
Inspired
Inspired by the team of the mayor, three K: Kapkov, Kibovsky, Kulbachevsky and especially Andrei Sharonov. Surprised by a rare combination of business activity, academic solidity and management skills. Although he left the Moscow government as rector of the Skolkovo School of Management, he continued to cooperate as an advisor and urbanist. In general, I like what they did with Moscow. That it now has its own Altstadt (from Kamergersky to Kuznetsky) with Christmas markets, where you can walk without risking being splashed with dirty snow porridge; that there are boulevards and skating rinks shining with lights - a symbol of winter happiness. Add classical architecture along the banks of the river, in industrial zones and residential areas - and it will be very good.
It is encouraging that Marat Khusnullin considers the research carried out by the FFM to be invaluable information and a basis for decision-making. Western experts suggested specific steps, in my opinion, sensible.
Outraged
One hundred people were waiting for the announcement of the results of the competition on the Moscow River. But the results were reported only to Mayor Sobyanin by ear. He, just as intimately so that no one would hear, answered NTV's questions. The rest of the journalists standing around saw only the back of the heads of the bodyguards. Why not give the mayor a microphone? Yuri Grigoryan, the winner of the competition, made a presentation personally for Sobyanin. Then a press conference took place, but without the mayor."
Sergey Kulikov
architectural historian, critic “The Moscow Urban Forum has undergone an interesting evolution in four years. Organized for the first time by the Institute for Regional Policy in 2011, when very few people understood what urbanism was and what was the difference between urban planning and urban planning, the forum had the format of a kind of educational program for officials. A glossary of basic terms was published, and some prominent figures in the Moscow government even read Jane Jacobs's book The Death and Life of Large American Cities, written half a century ago.
In 2012, when the Strelka Institute was already organizing the forum, urbanism became fashionable, and its local version began to resemble a cross between a cargo cult and a euphemism. Under the patronage of the Moscow government, a translation of Jan Gale's book "A City for People" was published, the enthusiasm for bike paths and pedestrian zones began, people flocked to the updated Gorky Park, and prominent officials learned such terms as gentrification and sustainable development, although when they were used they often meant completely other things.
Last year, the problems of the forum, like the problems of urbanism in general in recent years, have not changed much: a city on a human scale, environmental and economic sustainability, interaction between the authorities and citizens, an increase in the role of public transport, etc. At the same time, under the supervision of Yuri Grigoryan, the first large-scale interdisciplinary urban study of the metropolitan metropolis “Moscow. Archeology of the periphery”, and its results were published and presented at the forum. This somewhat shifted the center of gravity from the tracing of Western experience to the acquisition of our own.
At the last FUF, two similar studies were presented at once - Strelka's “Spatial strategy of Moscow: a tool for managing the future” and the fruit of the interaction between the Higher School of Urbanism and the Novaya Zemlya company - “Struggle for the citizen: human potential and the urban environment” in the regional centers of the Russian Federation.
If we talk about the program, the number of sessions and foreign speakers has been greatly reduced, but a large block dedicated to the regions has appeared, which is a natural reflection of more global processes. On the other hand, the recognition of urbanism as a phenomenon by representatives of prominent Moscow and federal officials has demonstrated amazing progress. First Vice-Permier of the Government of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov seriously spoke of Lazar Kaganovich as a beacon of urbanism, and Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnulin, against the background of the real state of affairs in politics and economics, argued that Moscow took second place in terms of development rates after Beijing among the world's largest megacities. At the same time, it was not explained that this is last year's ranking of Emerging 7 - the fastest growing cities, where, in addition to Beijing, not London or Paris, but Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and Mexico City compete with Moscow, and here quantitative rather than qualitative indicators are taken into account. In general, if earlier it was a hybrid of a cargo cult and a euphemism, now we can talk about the preconditions of a new genre in urban studies under the conditional name geopolitical psychogeography, somewhere on the border of psychoanalysis and contemporary art."
Peter Ebner
head of the architectural bureau Peter Ebner and friends (Munich) “To begin with, in general, I liked the Moscow Urban Forum and, if it is held next year, I will come to it again. I would like to note a very pleasant atmosphere, a good design of the main stage, an exposition of developers, a variety of topics selected for discussion. I understand how difficult it is to organize an event of this magnitude, since I myself have repeatedly organized conferences. At such events, everyone tries to advertise themselves and get as much information as possible about the state of affairs, politics, culture of the country where they are taking place.
Despite the positive impression, a number of things should be noted that, from my point of view, could be improved. For example, as I understand it, the task of the forum was to obtain as much useful information and experience as possible for the development of Moscow, the Moscow region and Russia as a whole. If so, then the choice of guests was not very suitable for the task at hand. I think that, since Moscow has very specific climatic conditions, it would be much more logical to invite more specialists from the northern countries than, as it was at the forum, from Asia.
The format of the discussions, perhaps, too prevailed over the lectures. It seems to me that sometimes it would be better to hold only lectures, without additional discussions - this would help to go much deeper into the topics, problems and tasks under consideration. And so - the discussions were often very superficial.
On a positive note, representatives of the administration, administrative structures and politicians spoke at the forum. But it seemed strange to me that many of them left immediately after their performance. I think it would be useful if they stayed to listen to the speeches of other speakers and participated in the discussions. This would help them better understand in which direction it is better to develop the city.
The scale of the event was probably too large. I would prefer it to be more intimate, and the speakers stayed on the forum until the very end, so that some additional details could be discussed.
I really liked that there was simultaneous translation, but there was also a very inconvenient moment: many speakers had slides only in Russian. Probably, if the forum pretends to be an international event, it would be logical to show slides in English, or bilingual slides in Russian and English.
I liked the speech of the head of the Bank of Moscow, Mikhail Kuzovlev, very much: it helped me to better understand the situation in the country and gave me a certain understanding of Russian psychology.
In general, the program of the forum was rich and interesting: sometimes I wanted to be at several presentations at the same time, which, of course, is a very high indicator. Also, it seems to me that the audience of the forum was very grateful. Surprisingly, 60% of the visitors were under 27 years old. This is good, as such events help young professionals to understand the existing problems. ">
