Professor Valery Nefedov's book "How to return the city to people" tells about where, when and why a person feels good. By what means can this be achieved, how to make the external conditions of well-being sufficiently stable. In five chapters, the author examines examples of international practice in the arrangement of public spaces: there is also about the Nature Park Schöneberg in Berlin, and about the 8 House residential complex of Bjarke Ingels. This analysis should help residents of Russian cities, in the end, form a social demand for a different quality of the environment.
To whom is this book, published by the publishing house "Art - XXI Century" addressed? Professionals to get an accurate picture of landscape urbanism. At the same time, and the broadest readership interested in choosing long-term priorities for the development of their own habitat. This readership - without professional and other boundaries - already exists: in addition to scientific and teaching work, Valery Nefedov is actively
shares information on social networks. His posts - like mini-lectures - teach you to observe and read the meanings in various pictures of city life. The photographs show, in general, the plots familiar to all of us from overseas trips. We admire them, admire them, capture them, but often we cannot say, in fact, what caused our inspiration? Nefedov explains lucidly, and it turns out that this unexpected feeling of belonging, consonance and proportionality that flooded you in foreign lands is reflected in the title of the book: it’s good if the city belongs to people, and to each person individually.
Perhaps the name will seem similar to the election slogan of some candidate, but no candidate in reality proposes this, and even more so on the basis of providing descriptions of the exact criteria and qualities. It's a pity … It is very important to figure out why mass domestic landscaping with its seasonal painting of borders and cutting grass is certainly no higher than 15 cm, tons of petunias, pretentious paving and cemetery aesthetics of small architectural forms - all this is just working out on a knurled basis, a waste of the budget. Lightweight - not for money, but for meaning! - irresponsible decoration. And all the usual landscaping plans in our cities with quantitative indicators are outdated long ago, if the numbers are not integrated into an integral landscape and urban planning system.
The peculiarity of the book is precisely that the author not only talks about entertaining methods of arranging streets, squares, embankments and courtyards. There are artistic and utilitarian examples on one and a half hundred pages: sculptures, small architectural forms - visual codes of spaces, a vertical layout that allows you to collect rainwater. The main thing is that it shows how individual elements interact, and landscape designers are directly related to urban planning. The Parisian district of La Defense, the Finnish embankments - absolutely convincing. Nature plays the role of the richest plastic material, at the same time, urban planning solutions include such a principle as maintaining biobalance. One of the topical components of the landscape and urban planning system has become the former industrial areas, after reconstruction, filled with wildlife (Citroen and La Villette parks in Paris, MFO in Zurich, High Line in New York).
From individual phrases, starting with the preface, it may seem that the author is in a lyrical mood: “to try to“warm”the soul of a person who is outside the home.” However, it is difficult to suspect him of excessive romanticism: Professor Nefedov is clearly worried about the material being assimilated and, in conclusion, even gives a list of problems that must be solved, first of all, in order to create a balanced city. But the warmth that erupts from the author in the text and photographs unexpectedly brings to mind the story of Walt Whitman's collection. It is not so much about the structure of Leaves of Grass and the world democracy that the American wrote about (by the way, there is one illustration in Nefedov's book on this topic: the sculpture “Monument to the Centenary of Finnish Democracy” on Mannerheim Avenue). The poet talked about the interconnection of all things, drew people's attention to what was not accepted to talk about … The stereotypes of our consciousness also still prevent us from dispelling the haze of cubic meters, the release of useful areas, spells about zones and infrastructure. We think about the city in these categories. Although the concept of "lifestyle" already influences the definition of the quality of real estate, the path to landscape urbanism is not a short one. But the time has come to turn in this direction.
Valery Nefedov. How to return the city to people. Moscow, "Art - XXI century", 2015.
ISBN 978-5-98051-142-5
Format: 195 × 260
Volume: 160 pages.
Circulation: 1000 copies.
Cover, color ill.
