Sofia Romanova, editor-in-chief
Urban magazine / Courtesy of Urban magazine
The very trivial question of how the public space of the city is seen on the cover of this year's first issue may seem very general and vague to some. Of course, as an urban planning term, the concept of public space has existed for a long time, but the practical understanding and active creative formation of this type of territories in Russian cities is a trend of only recent decades. And if other functional areas can be planned and created exclusively by architects and urban planners, public spaces take those forms that are most comfortable and in demand by the townspeople.
By the decision of the URBAN editorial board, we deliberately made a certain bias towards the issues of reorganizing industrial territories, since this problem is extremely urgent for many Russian cities and occupies an important place in their architectural and urban planning strategy.
"A technological boom awaits Moscow," says Oleg Bocharov, head of the Moscow Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship. In his opinion, the industry cannot develop actively without fresh scientific developments and business ideas, science is not able to move forward without practical implementation, and entrepreneurship without science and industrial environment will be represented only by trade and services. These processes are closely related to new industrial sites and the emergence of technology parks. Why the city needs them and what are the trends in their development in the capital - this was discussed in an interview that Oleg Bocharov gave to URBAN magazine.
We discussed the topic of investment attractiveness of post-industrial territories, as well as immediate plans for the development of Moscow industrial zones with Konstantin Timofeev, Chairman of the Moscow City Committee for the Implementation of Investment Projects in Construction and Control in the Field of Shared Construction (Moskomstroyinvest).
An academic point of view on the model of transformation of depressed cities was presented by Brent Ryan, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), who has been involved in the revitalization of the urban environment for many years and has extensive practical experience in Europe and the USA.
A whole block of materials (I. Ilyina, P. Chernyshov, I. Dolinskaya, V. Sidnev) is devoted to the past, present and future of science cities, technopolises and educational clusters.
We could not ignore the anniversary date: in 2015, Vyacheslav Leonidovich Glazychev, an architect, scientist, publicist, would have turned 75 years old, who was practically the first to introduce the concept of urbanism into modern Russian science. In this and subsequent issues of URBAN, we publish the memoirs of his colleagues, students and like-minded people.
The heading "Portrait" presents the architect Pavel Andreev, one of the most successful contemporary Russian architects. In his creative biography, there are many iconic objects in the center of Moscow - his hometown, where Andreyev lives and works and where he is often called the standard of "architectural gentleman".
As always, the issue contains materials from our own correspondents abroad: readers will be able to get acquainted with illustrated reviews of public spaces in Tokyo, Paris, Tehran, London.
