Translated material
Dump plan
80% of Moscow fell into the “reorganization zone”
The capital authorities intend to take into account the experience of St. Petersburg and, in order to prevent the expansion of the existing protest movement at the expense of fighters for preserving the historical appearance of Moscow, they are going to submit an updated draft of the city’s general plan until 2025 to public hearings. Officials claim that by the beginning of March, 120 sites will be prepared for public discussion of the city hall’s urban planning plans for the next 16 years, including a serious reconstruction of existing neighborhoods with the demolition of nine- and twelve-story buildings. The Moscow Architecture Committee promises to present the general plan to the townspeople in the form of a kind of atlas and accompany it with detailed explanations of the advantages of the planned restructuring. According to the chief architect of Moscow, Alexander Kuzmin, special commissions will be created at the prefecture level for the public hearing procedure to consider comments from residents. However, in a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, Mr. Kuzmin immediately made it clear that “the decision is made by the authorities.”The mayor's office has already made its first decision. The general plan itself was reviewed yesterday at a meeting of the capital's government and, apparently, after a month of adjustments it will be automatically approved. However, its discussion outside Tverskaya, 13 seems to be tougher. Chairman of the Union of Architects of Russia Andrei Bokov warned yesterday that the document developed by Moskomarkhitektura specialists “is unlikely to avoid conflicts.” According to him, in the professional community “the set of documents that will follow the general plan is causing concern.” Independent architects, in particular, complain that their colleagues in the capital’s mayor’s office, when developing planning projects, use not only terminology from 40 years ago, but also an outdated “ideology for the development of urban areas.” For example, according to the chairman of the Union of Architects of Russia, the sectional houses with which officials are building up the metropolitan metropolis, according to experts, have long not met the demographic and social structure of society and the needs of the metropolis residents. In addition, according to the head of the Union of Architects of Russia, it is necessary to “once again reconsider the correctness of the strategy,” in which the solution to the problem of social and infrastructural development of the capital still mainly falls on the existing buildings. In his opinion, painless development of the city for residents is only possible “outside the administrative boundaries” of Moscow.
The know-how from the chief architect of the capital, Alexander Kuzmin, is that the master plan will divide the city into zones of so-called stabilization and reorganization. In the first, construction will be limited, in the second, developers will have wide scope for developing spaces. “The more civilized a city is, the more of its territories belong to stabilization zones,” Mr. Kuzmin explained to Vremya Novostey. And then he indirectly admitted that he does not consider the Russian capital civilized - in Moscow, according to his own calculations, no more than 20% of the territories are relatively stable from the point of view of development, “along with greenery.”
Officials propose to include the center as stabilization zones, as well as residential areas built in the late 70s and early 80s of the last century, such as Strogino, Orekhovo-Borisovo, Yasenevo, Chertanovo. But in the latter, according to the general plan, social and cultural facilities will be permanently completed until 2025. “You see the orange spots - these are where the problems with infrastructure are,” Mr. Kuzmin showed a color map of Moscow buildings. And without having yet managed to secure the support of the residents, he told reporters that construction in the stabilization zones is by no means “densification, but what the population needs.”
The actual residential buildings in the stabilization areas, according to Mr. Kuzmin, face a maximum of major renovations. In particular, until 2025, according to the document, 1.6 million square meters are subject to renovation. m. of five- and nine-story residential buildings. Buildings erected before the first period of industrial housing construction, with a total volume of about 7 million square meters, will undergo reconstruction. m. 60% of them are located in the Central Administrative District.
Most of the city's areas, including industrial zones and existing buildings, will fall into the reorganization zone. The draft general plan provides for the advanced demolition of 9-story and, in some cases, 12-story panel and block buildings that are not subject to reconstruction. By 2025, 20 million square meters should also be demolished. m of panel housing stock of the first period of industrial housing construction - “Khrushchev buildings” of the so-called demolished series. At the same time, the developers of the master plan are sure in advance that Muscovites want “to be demolished.”
However, apparently, Alexander Kuzmin overestimated his talents as a propagandist, since the explanations with which he intends to achieve support for urban plans from Muscovites did not seem very convincing even to city hall officials. In particular, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Control Committee Rais Akhmadeev complained about the lack of clear parameters for the development of territories in terms of their functional purpose. This, he said, leads to a “loss of transparency and publicity” in the use of these territories. The head of the department of natural resources management and environmental protection, Leonid Bochin, advised the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Urban Development to “transform the document for the understanding of residents.”
However, citing the fact that Muscovites in conflict with city authorities often “know construction calculations better than their subordinates,” Mr. Kuzmin assured that “our resident can understand the general plan.” In addition, according to him, the detailed future development of the city will in any case be spelled out in the accompanying document - the so-called “plan for the implementation of the general plan,” which is “supervised by the executive branch.” To Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, this explanation, apparently, seemed sufficient - he was generally satisfied with the “directive document defining urban planning proportions” and gave the Moskomarkhitektura a month to make “adjustments.”