Experts from Russia, Europe and Asia discussed the creation and development of innovative incubator cities within the framework of the City as Innovation conference tour - we have already published a detailed report on the discussion. The main interest of the audience was caused by the stories of the heads of six real innovation centers: foreign projects have been for decades, and domestic ones have been developing over the past five or six. Although we can already talk about the results of this development. So, let's talk about the cities of innovators.
*** Innopolis / Kazan / Russia
RSP Architects Planners & Engineers
It has been implemented since 2010, 40 km from Kazan on the right bank of the Volga.
The total area of the site is 2200 hectares, 1200 hectares of which are planned to be built up as the new city is settled. It is assumed that by 2030, 155 thousand people will live here.
Masterplan - RSP Architects. Project manager Liu Tai Ker, former Chief Architect of Singapore.
The territory is picturesque, ecologically clean and beautiful, it is one of the most beautiful regions of Tatarstan. Several sports and recreation centers are being built nearby: a ski resort, a golf course. The Volga is also nearby. Innopolis specializes in IT and education. Already, more than 35 companies are listed as residents, and 600 people study at a private IT university, where teaching is in English.
The initial idea of an IT cluster was transformed into the construction of a self-sufficient satellite city of Kazan. The master plan is focused on the natural environment - the half-rings of the building are open to the Volga, ravines and rivers are included in the context of the plan. The city will have different building densities and heights - from one to nine floors. The average height of buildings is from three to seven floors. The projects of individual buildings and landscaping are carried out by the Kazan bureau Innopolis Architect.
Residential development now consists of sixteen six-storey buildings with cozy courtyards and first non-residential floors. The parking lots are hidden underground. Most of the apartments with the necessary set of furniture and household appliances are rented at a small rate - 8,000 rubles. for a one-room apartment and 10,000 rubles. - for a two-room apartment. In addition to apartment buildings, residents will be provided with townhouses and cottages.
Construction began at the end of 2012, with the first completed three years later. It includes the basic infrastructure that allows Innopolis to live and work: the administrative and business center. A. S. Popova; technopark them. N. I. Lobachevsky; sports complex; the campus of the university with the building of the university, connected by an underground passage with four dormitories; residential complex for 5000 people with a kindergarten, a boarding school for information technologies at the university. The expenses for the construction of infrastructure and social facilities were covered by the state. The rest of the facilities are being built through public-private partnerships.
The project of Innopolis, according to Mayor Yegor Ivanov, who spoke at the conference, “is built around the key elements: proper education in the field of IT, a real industry that creates jobs, the urban environment itself as an instrument of competition for the best personnel and a real alternative to moving to another country. or the central cities of Russia”. “The key indicator of the efficiency of the Innopolis mayor's office is the happiness of its residents,” says the mayor of the city, Yegor Ivanov.
*** INO Tomsk / Russia
The federal project was launched in 2015 in the Tomsk agglomeration, where the main industries and universities already exist, and in addition to them it is planned to build several more factories, optimize the transport network, create a network of integrated urban areas - "parks" that will serve as growth points for the Tomsk agglomeration …
About 800 thousand people live on an area of more than 1 million hectares. It employs 400 companies, more than 8 thousand researchers in twelve scientific organizations. 65 thousand students study at six universities. The intellectual structure of this place began to take shape back in 1878, when the imperial university was opened, as a result, now 44% of the region's residents have higher education.
Research and development is carried out in such areas as petrochemistry, nuclear technology, electronic instrumentation, information technology, pharmaceuticals and medical technology, forestry, renewable natural resources and unconventional sources of hydrocarbons (hard-to-recover oil reserves). Within the framework of the project, industrial, promotional, scientific and educational, historical and cultural, medical and sports parks are being developed.
Thus, a plywood veneer plant has already been built - this is the first of ten factories of the Russian-Chinese Asinovsky Timber Park. It is planned to open a plant related to the pharmaceutical industry. The existing enterprises are undergoing reconstruction, modernization, new workshops are being completed. The educational and research programs in the city's universities are being improved and expanded.
A sports park is under construction, the Voskhod football arena has already been opened. Key projects: Academic Park - a sports and family recreation center, Arena Tomsk ice sports palace, a regional sports and rhythmic gymnastics center, a martial arts center, a canal for rowing slalom and rafting. Medical park with an area of 21.4 hectares, also known as the Northern Medical Town) - this is 8 under construction and already functioning medical institutions: OKB, perinatal center, radiological canyon, surgical building of the Tomsk regional oncological dispensary, pathological center, children's infectious diseases hospital, medical unit No. 2, maternity hospital №4.
To stimulate innovation, according to Andrey Antonov, Deputy Governor of the Tomsk Region for Economics, “public places for representatives of different communities, modern architectural and technological solutions in construction, small architectural forms, installations, as well as the right combination of traditions, the character of the city and innovations ". For this purpose, the development of urban spaces, parks and recreational zones is envisaged: "Sosnovy Bor", "Football Manege", "Kedr", "Left Bank", "Mikhailovskaya Roshcha", "Floodplain of the Ushaiki River", "Tomsk Naberezhnye", "Tatar Sloboda "," Academpark "," Museum of Science and Technology "," City Avenue "," Mavlyukeevskoye Lake "," University Mile "," Camp Garden "," Burevestnik-Yuzhnaya-Botanicheskiy Sad ". A historical and cultural park is being developed as part of the Tomsk Embankments project.
*** Masdar City / UAE
Foster + Partners
It has been developing since 2006.
Located in the desert, 17 kilometers from Abu Dhabi.
The project draws on the centuries-old experience of traditional Arab architecture and the most modern technologies of the 21st century, based on sustainability and operation on renewable energy sources. So the Masdar Institute is powered exclusively by renewable solar energy. The discovered system of underground reservoirs is used to cool the air and soften the microclimate. Twenty-three hectares of evaporating surfaces govern an interconnected system of groundwater and surface water. This effectively cools the air in sports and recreational areas. Water films are combined with shade canopies, creating a feeling of movement of air, water and coolness. Waste from Masdar City is used to enrich the soil of urban landscape areas and the fields and gardens surrounding the city.
Initially, it was planned to complete the project in eight years, but due to the economic crisis, implementation slowed down, and by 2014 only a few hundred people had settled in Masdar City. Today, more than two thousand people live in the city and another 2.3 thousand come here. The planned population of Masdar by 2030 is 40-50 thousand people. About a thousand of them are students of the Masdar Institute.
The goal of the Masdar City project was to create a new UAE economic sector around green and knowledge-intensive industries and to attract partners, including technology leaders, from abroad. Here, work is carried out in such areas as education, IT, biology and precision chemistry, environment and energy conservation. It will involve 400 resident companies, 5,000 researchers, 600 university alumni and 430 students. In total, it is planned to create more than 1,500 enterprises and institutions in the city, which specialize primarily in developments in the field of environmentally friendly technologies.
More than half of the funds in the implementation of this project are invested by the authorities of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. According to Anthony Mellows, Director of Design and Construction of Masdar City, who spoke at the City as Innovation conference, the main task in creating innovation centers is to develop effective mechanisms for transforming financial resources into knowledge. And spending on energy efficient and attractive infrastructure is one of them. “We wanted to transform the economy from oil production to knowledge production. We are investing $ 540 million worldwide in new knowledge and innovation. The key to innovation is to do a lot with a minimum of resources. Resources on the planet are limited and we must find a way to use them efficiently.”
*** Sophia Antipolis / France
One of the earliest projects presented at the conference "City as Innovation". It was launched in 1970 in the Alpes-Maritimes near Nice. Its area is 4800 hectares, where more than 100 thousand people live. The city was built in the foothills of the Alps, where there were no significant buildings and infrastructure before. Offices and buildings with a height of 3-5 floors are organically inscribed in the slopes covered with dense greenery.
Innopolis specializes in education, IT, biology and precision chemistry, environmental ecology and energy conservation. It houses the offices and headquarters of 1,400 innovative companies. Among them are such world leaders as: Hewlett-Packard, AirFrance, Hitachi, IBM, FranceTelecom, Honeywell. The park was designed for 28 thousand workplaces, and now it employs about 27 thousand people, so it is approaching saturation. Dominique Fache, the head of the Sophia Antipolis Foundation and co-founder of the Technopark, named the components of a successful “recipe” for this project: a business incubator, cooperation with public and private partners and with universities, a priority for new knowledge-intensive industries, and the provision of innovative services.
*** Technopolis GS / Gusev / Russia
Creative workshop "Astragal-design"
An exclusively private project of an innovation cluster. It was built in the town of Gusev, Kaliningrad Region, since until recently it had the status of a special economic zone. On April 1, 2016, the transition period ended for a number of enterprises that enjoyed customs privileges when exporting goods manufactured in the SEZ in the Kaliningrad region to the rest of the EAEU.
The project started in 2007, first as a business concept for the development of production in Russia, and then the founders of Technopolis set themselves more global tasks to create unique, competitive in the world market, innovative products and new technologies. A research center, a business incubator, industrial, educational and residential areas are located on an area of 230 hectares. By 2018, the population will be 4.5 thousand people. The cluster includes 10 innovative companies, which employ more than 2 thousand researchers.
The industrial zone today includes six different industries: from microelectronics and the radio-electronic industry to nanotechnology and innovative housing construction. It produces 2% of the consumer electronics mass market. Products manufactured at the city's enterprises are supplied to dozens of countries.
The cluster project, according to Konstantin Aksenov, vice president for strategic development at GS Group, was formed in accordance with innovative concepts: the theory of the creative class and the creative city of Richard Florida, the theory of a global city, the idea of a “city for people” by Ian Gale. The central part of the city is occupied by a residential area, the districts of which are separated by squares and boulevards, with the inclusion of recreations for a variety of leisure activities and events. And on the periphery, production, social and administrative structures are compactly located. Green areas occupy an area equal to the building area.
The concept of creating a creative environment at Technopolis GS is based on the “Principle of three Ks: creative people create creative events in creative places”. The process of project implementation is supervised by the chief architect of the innovation cluster - Sergey Shusterman, head of the creative workshop "Astragal Design".
In the near future, it is planned to create the first and only university campus in Russia in the field of engineering and technical sciences. The creators of the cluster believe that on its basis “a model of innovative development of a small town in Russia is being tested, which can be further applied to revive the economy of other small towns in the country”, based on the idea of building and developing cities with private funds, the introduction and development of competitive innovative technologies, “education of scientific personnel who will be in demand in their own advanced production, creating conditions for creative implementation.
*** Skolkovo / Moscow / Russia
AREP
The project was launched in 2010 on an area of 400 hectares in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. In 2012, with the emergence of New Moscow, the Skolkovo territory was included in the city boundaries. Specialization: education, IT, biomedicine, nuclear technology, space, telecommunications and energy efficient technologies.
It is planned that by 2020 the population of the city will be 20 thousand people and another 30 thousand will work here. In total, 1400 resident companies will be located in Skolkovo. For those who work in the priority sectors of the Russian economy and science, special economic conditions are provided. Among the partners of the IC are world leaders: Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Samsung, Panasonic, Boeing and many others. The Technopark, with an area of over 95,000 square meters, will serve as a platform for the development of more than a thousand innovative start-ups.
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology Skoltech is designed for 1200 students. It was created and operates with the support of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There is also an International Gymnasium, which operates according to leading international educational technologies.
By 2020, it is planned to build more than 2 million m2 of industrial, office and residential premises, social and cultural infrastructure in Skolkovo. The buildings will be connected by a landscaped recreation area, including parks and sports complexes.
The project cost is estimated at $ 7 billion. More than half of this money for the construction of infrastructure and main city-forming facilities was allocated by the state - 65 billion rubles. The rest will be funded by investors.
The project of the French bureau AREP, which was based on the idea of a garden city, was chosen as a model for the new city. Development projects for individual districts were developed by world-class stars, including three Pritzker Prize winners: Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, Pierre de Meuron, Jean Pistre, David Chipperfield, Stefano Boeri, Mohsen Mostafavi; as well as the Moscow bureaus SPEECH and Project Meganom.
The proximity to the metropolis is considered by the founders of Skolkovo as a big plus, since nothing can compare with its developed infrastructure. So, Vnukovo airport is only 10 minutes away. At the same time, the natural landscape of the Meshchersky Park has been preserved nearby, and a golf course is adjacent to the territory of Innopolis. The existing forest areas are preserved and incorporated into the artificial landscape.
The development of the Skolkovo innovation center will be linked by theme parks: Alley of Festivals and Fairs, Technopark (3.5 hectares), Children's (1.7 hectares), Central (11 hectares), Sports (6.2 hectares), Tennis (2, 2 hectares) and Family (almost 20 hectares) parks. The network of parks will combine a five-kilometer promenade with bike and segway rentals. The area of attraction of the Central Park will be a pond with a landscaped embankment and a stage. The family park is designed for recreation and picnics. The Tennis Park will host a tennis school with indoor and outdoor courts, which will also host tennis tournaments. The multifunctional Sports Center provides equipment for the most popular sports. There will be a velodrome, skateboard jumps, volleyball and basketball courts, football and hockey fields. ***
While the experts gathered for the conference tour "City as an Innovation" were arguing about what special qualities an environment conducive to the creation of innovations should have, real examples of the construction of innovation centers confirmed: in order for the city to live and people come and stay in it to work, no fancy or artificial methods are needed. The city should be comfortable for life and there should be a balance between scientific and technological resources and social and cultural services that are inherent in an ordinary city. We need a well-thought-out planning structure, high-quality residential and business development projects, effective engineering solutions, developed public and recreational spaces. Everything else, the further success or failure of the project - these are already questions of the built-up programs of economic assistance, international cooperation, provision of production and educational resources.
