Translated material
Moscow officials
I am very interested in who works in the Moscow government. In general, I have long been interested in who works as officials - because the work is low -paid, nervous, very unfree and complex, it is difficult to imagine who is going to work for the civil service and why.
It is clear that there are trite those who go to steal, there are all sorts of "family" there, there are aunts who are bored and there is nothing to do-but all these people can work as performers, and in high positions there should still be someone else. Or not?
When I elected a deputy, I immediately decided to use all the possibilities to get acquainted with the decisions in the Moscow government by people. Understand how they think, what and why do they do, etc.
At the moment, I met with the head of the Department of Culture Sergei Kapkov, the head of the Department of Transport, Maxim Liksutov, Deputy Head of Depatrans Evgeny Mikhailov and the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Public Utilities and Improvement by Peter Biryukov.
A couple of thoughts before I start:
I will never write in the post some non-public information that I managed to find out at one of these meetings and will never substitute the interlocutor, dumping a fraud in a publicly said phrase-this is not done. But I will tell you about personal impressions.
I am not a fighter with the regime and I do not go to these meetings in order to give out any story about how bad everything is and what horror is happening. I ask you for this not to be offended for this.
I am not part of the system and I am not going to become it and I do not go to these meetings in order to lick ass with important characters and get some bone for it-I do not need anything from the system at all.
I go in order to find out how everything works, and describe to you what I saw as it is.
At the meetings, I tried to understand how the interlocutor thinks, whether he understands the question that he was talking about, or is trying to get rid of in general phrases. I also looked at various universal nuances, a meeting style, etc. I also looked separately if a person understands the concepts of the development of cities that Gail and Vuchik are written and told (and I will retranilize in this journal).
In general, in order.
Sergey Kapkov -I had a cell phone on my phone from somewhere. I generally record all the numbers that come across to me, so I have no one on my phone. When there was a story with a park, I called Sergei Kapkov and said that I want to go to chat, SMS agreed on the evening of the next day.
The cabinet usually looks and does not press at all, Sergey sits there at an ordinary office table, communicates completely without any attempts to show who is the master, who is more important, etc.
They began to talk about parks, quickly moved to the concepts of cities convenient for pedestrians, talked about the attraction zones, about the attitude of the inhabitants to changes-at the end I gave Sergey the book by Jane Jackobs in Russian and gave a return to some GEHL Architects report.
In general, the feeling that Sergei understands very well what needs to be done, is open to talk about many details on the topic that he had not heard of before, and generally good from all sides
After some time, I met him in Gorky Park, he went there and talked with visitors. People gathered in a semicircle and expressed all sorts of “f” like ”on my street Mukhosranskaya near the house 3a Park rot, when will you correct this? And then you are idle here.”
Sergei somehow very patiently talked with such characters and adequately answered questions.
Pyotr Biryukov is a man from another generation. I called to make an appointment on Friday, the secretary told me that the deputies never called, and asked to bring a request for a meeting in writing. I wrote about this on Twitter, and an hour later they called me and said that Biryukov would be able to accept me on Wednesday at 12.00.
The reception took place in the city hall, in a huge office at a huge table with the letter “T”, Biryukov himself sat at the head of the table, his assistant and secretary/stenographer sat next to him. The whole situation showed who is the main one.
The whole conversation went about like this. I asked something like:
-So you spent 120 million rubles in Schukino and 2 billion throughout Moscow for improvement, and did you order any architectural or research work? Why was the asphalt shifted, and not shops, for example, bought? Why is such a configuration of yards? Why is such an appearance and color scheme of fences and borders?
And he received answers like:
- We do everything for the benefit of the inhabitants, as the inhabitants decide, as we do, they want fences - we put fences.
Dialog was tied:
- Let me, but residents do not participate in making any decisions, as well as deputies.
-This is not so, look, the folder, and everywhere it is written "the municipal meeting decided such and such a plan to coordinate."
But we and my readers well know how such things are agreed and what part in their coordination residents and deputies take.
However, he is impenetrable. Residents want fences, want parking on the sidewalks, want to transfer asphalt, they want lawns. Among the meaningless extensive speeches, it was possible to find a complete misunderstanding of the concept of the cities of Jacobs and Gale of cities convenient for life: no attention to pedestrians, a complete misunderstanding of why public spaces are needed.
However, you should not immediately think about Biryukov so badly - he is engaged in housing and communal services and improvement. The housing and communal services are so important, complex and dangerous that most likely he, managing it, leaves the improvement on the periphery of his consciousness, does not know anything about it, and this is normal. We regularly have water in taps, light and warm, roofs flow much less often than 15 years ago, the snow is cleaned well. Therefore, the color of the fence and the need for a particular public zone or even parking on sidewalks compared to these issues is the tenth business.
I don’t know anything about the housing and communal services, but it seems that Biryukov does not know anything about the improvement of a city that is convenient for life, so we spoke a little in different languages. Nevertheless, it is the fact that at the head of the system that controls our social zones, squares, sidewalks and squares, is a person who knows nothing about why they are needed at all, and leads to what we see on the streets what we see.
The problem here, as far as it seems to me, is not in a person, but in the structure of the city hall - the issue of improvement located in the same boiler with housing and communal services will always be peripheral.
Biryukov actively declared the intention to delve into the fact that I would bring in normal form - I immediately handed over detailed proposals to get rid of advertising garbage and pedestrians on the sidewalks, I plan to try several times in human language and deputy letters (with reinforcement of my arguments with calculations), several important concepts and look at the reaction.
A good character there is an assistant to Biryukov, who is an active reader of my blog, Twitter, and in general, it seems, in the subject.
Maxim Liksutov -I watched the air on the Rain TV channel and wrote on Twitter that I would be very happy to ask Maxim some questions. The next day, his assistants contacted me, and a day later we met in a chocolate. The assistants recorded the interview and sent the decryption (recalling this now - I never posted it).
We spoke under the record and communication was quite official, so it was not possible to understand a lot of things. When I asked questions, Maxim in some situations tried before the answer to find out that I myself think to build an answer in a certain way. In the only case, when we were very dispersed, - on the issue of trolleybuses, Maxim logically explained his position in detail and logically. 
In general, liksutov is something from another world. Absolutely incredible - a person from business, I can’t appreciate the level of understanding of transport issues, since he is a million times higher than mine, everything looks very adequate and logical. But the main thing is the complete confidence that he does, the willingness to enter into any discussion with any people at any moment and defend his position - hellish hell is simple.
In the Moscow Duma, when Liksutov came to defend the project of paid parking lots and prices for tow trucks, Andrei Klychkov, a deputy from the Communist Party, said that this is the only Minister of the Moscow Government, who in detail and carefully explained to the deputies what he was going to do and why, and this despite the fact that the MGD now exists exclusively for the species.
At the Lecture of Vuchika, when answering questions, he jumped from a chair and poured out a pile of numbers, data and all information, when the question concerned the transport policy of Moscow, and not just poured to powder his brains, but everything was very in the case. Vuchik, by the way, spoke very well.
Evgeny Mikhailov - Zapom Liksutov. I don’t remember how I ended up in his office, once one more time crossed with him on the air of Finam. In general, the same Liksutov only differs in that it gives out a 20-minute superprofessional lecture on any question that affects all aspects of the problem.
I brought Anton Buslov to the second meeting, who knows a lot about transport, he tried to enter professional discussions several times and was torn to shreds. Mikhailov proposed once every two weeks to go to his office and talk about the situation with transport in Moscow, told a huge bunch of everything, showed many plans that you can’t describe in a nutshell - in general, everything was megakrukot. 
In general, these two from the Department of Transport is something. The more noticeable and tangible the problem, the higher the demand for its competent solution, the problem of traffic jams is so noticeable and tangible that it teleported us here of such characters to solve it. How much it is possible to hear plums from the city hall, everyone hate them and really want to eliminate - this is the usual self -defense of any system, it wants to throw out people who are much more competent than the average in the system. Their system will necessarily devour, they can resist for a long time only if the forces of good intensify in the near future (which does not smell), but damn it, so I would like to be devoured later. We will not have such a department of transport for 100 years.
If I can be something useful in this story to extend the existence of this phenomenon, I will be very happy.
In general, so far 3 people created a very positive impression and one neutral-alternative. Good result :).
I hope that after this post they will not cease to meet with me.
Another interesting thing-I have in LiveJournal, as I understand it, an audience, mainly from young people who, when they gather working in the city hall, then everything will change with us. Therefore, we will conduct a survey. There is a city hall, really important tasks are solved there and decisions are made, but there are low salaries - suppose 5 times less than your current one. You have the opportunity to take a position and a position that you are in the scale of the one that you occupy now at your current work, but with a salary 5 times lower. There will be no third -party income.