In April 2018, the educational program "Territorial Development Management (UTRO)", organized by the MARSH architectural school and IGSU RANEPA, starts. On the eve of the start, we talked with Sergei Semyonov, Ph. D. in Economics, Associate Professor of the Department of Project and Program Management, IGSU RANEPA, about why cities need changes, in which cases force decisions are permissible, as well as about the city and the country as a system, and the role of architecture in it. …
Sergei Aleksandrovich, the MORNING program is going to teach "managers" of territories. What is this profession and why is it needed?
- Speaking about any territory, be it a region, a metropolis or a small city, we can always identify different parts of the overall economic system. If all this is well organized and assembled into a holistic mechanism, then this will be the foundation that will allow the development of both the economy and the social environment, improving the quality of life of people. But the assembly of the system needs someone to do. Traditional business, in my opinion, is not capable of this, because it considers the territory as something from which to profit. But even a traditional official often sees only those details of the mechanism that he uses within the framework of his functionality. Meanwhile, the skill to consider the system as a whole and for the future, taking into account the interests of all parties, is a necessary condition for the development of the territory. This is the skill we are trying to teach our students.
Where did the unconditional value of territory development come from in the rhetoric of urban planning experts and urbanists? When change comes to the city, it begins to resist. This is particularly noticeable in Moscow, the capital of change. Why is it believed that people want change?
- The townspeople want change and are afraid of them at the same time. We all have personal and collective experience that an initiative fool is worse than a hundred conservatives.
Who is the customer of urban changes today?
- A general strategy cannot be built from the sum of the interests of its elements. It can only be built from above. Someone needs to take the initiative, convince that change is possible, take responsibility and take action. All real changes are generated not by teams, but by individuals.
Evaluate Moscow as a management mechanism, in particular in the field of architectural and urban planning policy
- One of Moscow's problems is that decisions were made and are often still made based on considerations of benefits for its planning horizon. It may sound rude, but temporary workers are in charge of the city's development. After all, if you calculate the results of decisions for 5 years, then you take one action, if for 20-30 years - others. And if you are even trying to imagine what will happen in 100 years, then this is a completely different way of action and strategic planning. It seems to me that Moscow is a metropolis, which, on the one hand, definitely needs long-term forecasting, as well as development scenarios that cover the horizon at least 20-30 years ahead. Now decisions are made based on the effectiveness of a particular investment site for a relatively close horizon.
Short money - short solutions?
- Yes. This is typical modern logic. Let's take an example, which is relevant for Moscow, when this logic fails: if crowds of cars move around the city and create traffic jams, and attempts to expand streets and other actions do not lead to a decrease in these traffic jams, it means that the city is, in principle, incorrectly organized for residents who are forced to go somewhere. to move daily with streams of personal transport. This means that something is fundamentally wrong here.
Often in this context, they cite the example of Paris, in which measures were taken by force (the so-called "Ottomanization" of Paris at the end of the 19th century), and many streets, as they say, were "cut through the living", demolishing houses, remaking everything around, turning thus, the city into a more convenient and friendly living environment for the townspeople with the possibility of further development. For changes, in some cases, forceful solutions are really needed, which many may not like. But they will work for the future. And attempts to profit from the sale of, say, several territories or land plots in order to replenish the city budget today, tomorrow may result in the city being forced to subsidize or remodel this territory, because it is not effective.
In Moscow, as part of the renovation program, it has become customary to ask (or imitate a survey) for the opinion of residents, hold hearings, and organize voting. What do you think about that?
- In the theory of systems, there is one principle that sounds like this: without a goal-oriented influence, any system strives to maximize its entropy, that is, to death. Simplifying this formula, we get the following: if you do not push people in one direction by force or a general idea, then they will drag in different directions. In fact, for the process to move, the interests of people, of course, need to be known. The city's development strategy should be in line with the interests of the people. But you cannot get a strategy from a collective discussion, from the sum of people's opinions. How exactly to design a building or a block, taking into account the fact that you know the interests of people, is not a question of advice with people, it is a matter of the professional activity of trained experts. Therefore, I believe that as the architect drew - so it is correct. Or you simply put the wrong architect in the position he occupies.
The MORNING program is organized by the MARSH school, which is focused on the architectural community, and the IGSU RANEPA, which trains civil servants. How do architects and officials interact outside classrooms in a real environment?
- I believe that the activities of state and municipal employees should be subordinated to the interests of the development of the territory. A civil servant, in my opinion, should not, contrary to popular belief, manage, for example, the same city. It must organize the conditions for its development, uniting all interests: residents, business, government.
That is, an official is still a servant of the people?
- Let's put it this way: we are talking not so much about a management function as a service function.
What is the role of the architect in your version of the urban system?
- As for the role of the architect and architecture in general, the issue of the priority of this function in the city is especially acute. I would simply not settle in a house if someone tried to build it, only managing the construction, but without having the design and construction skills. The designer, from the point of view of technology, and the architect, from the point of view of construction and urban planning, are the first persons. Huge enterprises do what the designers came up with. Huge cities are built and developed the way architects intended.
In an effective system, there must be someone who thinks up. On a city scale, the architect should be one of the main actors. His activities should be given more freedom and more confidence. In the modern urban structure, the responsibility of architects is extremely high, but at the same time, their activities are extremely underestimated by society. An architect must not serve the interests of the business community or the state. Quite the opposite: the business community should be involved by the state and municipal government in the implementation of the ideas of those who are able to design, design, create. A ship cannot have ten captains. A development strategy cannot be the arithmetic sum of the interests of ten or even hundreds of interests of some managers or individual functionaries. Someone should take responsibility, and society should trust those who are able to take on this responsibility and have the courage to come up with something new.
How do errors occur in the management of territories and how to minimize them?
- Errors grow, on the one hand, from the logic and those regulations in which state, municipal employees of different levels function, and, on the other hand, from the educational environment in which they learn to manage. After all, a civil servant is traditionally taught an extremely wide range of knowledge: from the use of the regulatory framework and financial management to property and land relations, the organization of procurement, issues of assessing the effectiveness of projects, solving social problems, developing infrastructure, etc. It is believed that it is necessary to provide an official with as much outlook as possible, so that, having come to work, he will learn there in practice how to apply the knowledge gained.
But what actually happens with this approach? - Suppose a person, upon leaving the university, has a “suitcase” with a set of tools that he has never used, he just knows what they are about. And so our hero finds himself, figuratively speaking, the construction of a building or a city block. They begin to urgently teach him on the spot, "sharpening" the young specialist for the specific tasks of the project. So little by little, he is gaining someone else's experience. He has no other options - after all, he does not own his “tools”, so he watches how his more experienced colleagues do and repeats their actions, it does not matter whether he agrees with their decisions, or disagrees, whether their actions are effective or absurd.
Does he just reproduce the reality into which he came?
- Yes. He lives and works in a very highly regulated environment, so he is forced to learn from experience, perhaps not the best one. So, programs like MORNING are precisely aimed at ensuring that the specialist is not “doomed” to reproduce the decisions and rules of the environment in which he finds himself. The principle of working on real cases for the development of territories allows you to take an expert position and analyze on the ground what exactly is required for the construction, for example, of a particular building, or the reorganization of an industrial zone, or the creation of a concept for the development of a park. In parallel with real activities, our students study what tools are in general. With this educational approach, theory does not break with practice. Such a specialist will be more willing to take initiative in the environment where he comes to work, because he has the idea that, in general, it is possible to build in a different way.
Why is this possible only in additional education programs? Why is it impossible to teach in this way within the framework of the main educational process?
- The educational sphere is very conservative. Many teachers, quite sincerely and not without reason, believe that they are very well versed in this or that issue. The problem is that they always tell students about the past, the rules and practices of which most likely will no longer work when students graduate. There is no mechanism for integrating teachers into current practice, so that they adopt the way it is done now. In particular, because there is simply no time for learning and mastering the new reality. Hundreds of hours of classroom load on a teacher is a schedule "to university - home - and back" - without excursions to the real world. And such "excursions" are not provided for in the official normative workload of a teacher.
On the other hand, the educational environment has always been and probably always will be. Its conservatism is the essence of the system. This is especially evident now, when the speed of change is such that it is almost impossible to adjust the academic educational process for them. I'm not even sure if this is required.
Is it senseless to run after the market and its requirements?
- Not worth it. The more often you change the vector of movement, jerk, figuratively speaking, with the steering wheel, the more chances you will fly off the road into a ditch.
How do your students settle down afterwards?
- Students of our MPA programs - Master of Public Administration (analogue of MBA in the field of state and municipal administration), which include the MORNING program, move up the career ladder rather quickly after graduation. Some say that we, they say, saw the picture of the world in a more voluminous way, others - that they have managed to systematize previously obtained knowledge. This creates conditions for higher activity and initiative. Moreover, such studies form a new circle of communication and connections.
And the fruits of their management activities are as voluminous?
- Training really allows you to analyze any system from different angles, teaches you to see and calculate options. Our graduates are ready to create something new, because they see opportunities not only for themselves, but also for the territories in which they work. It is very important that they are willing to pool resources. This is not typical for a typical official, whose "land" is a separate planet, and the territory nearby is a separate one.
How does territorial management work today on a national scale?
- I'll start my answer with a brief historical background. During the Soviet era, our country was governed by a functional principle through ministries and departments. And it is quite logical that the general resource flows were directed in the right direction to solve a certain functional task, a new large-scale construction project, for example. What happened after the collapse of the Union? The country tried to manage all the components of the system not through a function, but on a territorial basis. None of this worked, since the territories did not have the necessary resources, and the ministries and departments were deprived of managerial powers and resources.
Another important point. In the USSR, the development of cities, territories, industrial complexes was carried out according to the principle of economic zoning. At the same time, the economic region might not coincide with the territorial division of the country, but it was singled out as a separate system unit, because it possessed territorial and economic unity, the originality of natural and economic conditions, because it contained a combination of resources that made it possible to create something. But the fragmentation of the country into federal subjects cut the integral mechanism into slices, which are practically impossible to combine into a single whole within the framework of the logic of territorial administration.
So, these mistakes are currently being corrected by means of Federal Law 172 "On Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation". In fact, this law restores the centralized management of the entire socio-economic system in our country. The way it, in my opinion, should be. It is impossible to build an integral system based on the interests of individual mechanisms. It is also pointless, as if the performance of the car would depend on the interests of the gearbox or engine. It even sounds stupid, doesn't it? And trying to build the sum of the country's interests from the sum of the interests of the regions is somehow not stupid. And for a long time they allowed themselves to do this. Now this senseless and narrow-minded principle is gone. 172 Federal law implies that the country will plan its development, in fact, in six years, grouped in cycles of several such six-year periods and, most importantly, from top to bottom, from national interests to private ones.
It turns out that in the "digital" era we are returning to a planned economy?
- We are not talking about restoring the planned economy model completely, such as it was in Soviet times. The semantic logic is being restored, because the system can only be built on the basis of common systemic interests.
When we have the first "six-year" planned?
- The law officially appeared in 2014, but some regulations that should make the law workable have not yet been completed. By the end of 2018, all parts of this complex strategic planning system for the country should be assembled, and the law should be operational.
That is, after the presidential elections?
- Apparently, yes.
By the way about the president. At the end of last year, at a meeting of the Council for Culture and Arts, he supported the initiative to create a ministry or agency of architecture, urban planning and territorial development, which would solve all problems “in one window”. What do you think about that? Will this not be another departmental "double"?
- I doubt the possibility of solving architectural, urban planning and territorial problems in a "one window" in Moscow. On the other hand, a competent and respected expert body, judging at least by the problems with licensing activities, is needed in this area. Maybe they would take seriously the so-called regulatory impact assessment (RIA) and the actual impact assessment (OFE) of the relevant regulatory framework. Or, perhaps, such an organization could propose new principles for the development of territories, including those limiting the “myopia” of decisions made, for example, by offering an effective toolkit for substantiating and supporting strategic decisions.
