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Moscow architects cannot keep up with the promises of Yuri Luzhkov
The draft Urban Planning Code, which has not yet been approved by the Moscow authorities, is already hopelessly outdated. Yesterday, at a meeting of the capital's government, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov sent the document presented by the head of the Moscow Architecture Committee Alexander Kuzmin for revision. The mayor did not particularly hide the fact that this was being done only because the architects did not have time to adjust the project taking into account the last loud promises he made before taking office as mayor of the capital for the fifth time. In particular, the promise to declare a moratorium on infill development within already established residential neighborhoods.“I recently made a statement that must be implemented,” Mr. Luzhkov recalled. -- There should be no place for spot construction in the future of Moscow. There is no point in stopping projects that have already started, but those for which a decision has been made but construction has not yet started need to be analyzed.” According to the mayor, the Urban Planning Code, which has been in preparation for many years, needs to more clearly spell out the specifics of regulating infill construction, as well as take into account the experience of conflicts with Muscovites and prescribe a mechanism for involving the metropolitan public in certain decisions to change the appearance of Moscow districts.
The idea of involving the general public in developing construction decisions was immediately supported by other members of the city government. “The mechanisms for taking into account the opinions of Muscovites are not spelled out,” Lyudmila Shvetsova, first deputy mayor and head of the social sphere complex, echoed the mayor. “But it’s important not just to inform, but to attract public opinion in a timely and competent manner.” In the current version of the code, the possibility of citizens’ participation in resolving issues of development of the territories where they live is exclusively “declarative”. In general, Ms. Shvetsova believes that the urban planning document lacks “maintaining a balance of interests of investors, city management and residents.” Without this balance, she recalled, the city's development will constantly face "biases both towards financially interested investors and towards the selfish interests of resident groups." However, apparently, officials do not particularly hope to avoid the emergence of new conflicts with citizens due to “inconvenient” construction, since they believe that, in parallel with public hearings, it is necessary to actively develop the practice of negotiating through “conciliation commissions” and concluding settlement agreements with interested parties .
In turn, the developers of the Urban Planning Code tried to prove that the document they wrote was already “an effective legal mechanism for protecting the rights of Muscovites.” Thus, according to Mr. Kuzmin, the code takes into account guarantees for housing for citizens, the interests of the disabled, and also provides for the development of the social and transport infrastructure of Moscow. The chief architect also hinted that, despite constant changes in federal legislation, the city project retains a significant part of urban planning powers with the Moscow government, which will independently determine territorial and sectoral construction schemes - “the basis of 3 and 5-year plans for the development of the territory.” . But this did not change Yuri Luzhkov’s mood. It’s that the capital’s legislators have not yet been allowed to see the draft of the Moscow City Committee for Architecture, who, judging by the speech of the chairman of the commission on long-term development and urban planning of the Moscow City Duma, Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov, are ready to seriously rework the code - so that “by the second reading it will already be a new text.” The mayor nevertheless gave the architects the opportunity to independently amend the text of the Urban Planning Code and allocated 1.5 months for this while the Moscow City Duma was on vacation.