Cities for life

We publish the text of the lecture of the famous urbanist, professor of the University of Pennsylvania, the leading expert of the US Department of Transport, Vukan Wucca on the topic "What Kind of Citys Dees Russia Want to Have and How Can the B E Creed?" , read on September 6, 2012 in the framework of the 20th anniversary of the Higher School of Economics and the opening of the season of “Public Lectures“ Polit.ru ”2012-2013.

"Public Lectures" Polit.ru "are held with the support of:

Alexander Vysokovsky, dean of the Higher School of Urbanism, NIU HSE: I will say only a few words about us and why we, in fact, have such a wonderful privilege - to present Mr. Vuchik. The Higher School of Urbanism at our university has been created very recently. This year is the second trick. And we claim that this is the first school in Russia to consider urban planning problems as an independent discipline, and not as an architecture unit, as it was still in marchs and similar universities. Still, a modern city, in all its diversity, with all problems and joys, including far away, far away from construction, from architecture, from things related to physical existence. Today, the city is not only physical, but also social, humanitarian, cultural, moreover, virtual reality. Well, in the framework of our work, we, of course, affect, different parts of city research, disciplines, urban discourse, including, of course, one of the main ones is urban transport, population mobility, population behavior, transport preferences.

With great pleasure, I want to introduce you to Mr. Vuchik. Wukan Wuchik is one of the most famous researchers, scientists and consultants in the field of transportation, transport development of cities. He is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, moreover, as a professor he traveled, as I told me, 95 different universities around the world, and wonderful books were written. In particular, the term “vital, vital city” belongs to Mr. Vuchik. This is one of the difficult and difficult to explain, but very important, intuitively seized terms around which should,

Alexander Vysokovsky

Actually, our practical activity is built. Well, it can also be added that as a consultant, Mr. Vuchik had a serious impact on the development of transport systems in many countries of the world and in cities-Beijing, Belgrade, Mexico City, Naples, Philadelphia, Rome and so on. In particular, now he is - and I was, I apologize, - the adviser to the Minister of Transport Singapore, and, I think, there are many other important areas of activity, and many different works have been done by Mr. Vuchik. But it is interesting that now they will tell us such an exciting story about which cities we would like to live in Russia in terms of transport, and yet - what kind of cities should it be? Cities in which people walk, and they like it, or the cities in which people drive cars, and those cities in which cars dominate? Well, then please.

Vukan Wuchik: Good evening. We will talk about cities and why the cities are important, but since we all live in the city, we are aware of their importance, and half of the population now lives in cities, so this issue simply does not arise.

Now we are dealing with rapid changes that have occurred in cities over the past 120 years. Changes occurred due to technological inventions and changes in infrastructure and economics. The situation in which we are in cities sometimes seems simple: we have streets, and we can move over them, we can move by any transport, we can stop using any transport, and so on. And then it turns out that if we do not regulate this in any way, we do nothing, it turns out chaos , we have very serious problems. I will try to briefly tell you what happened during these 120 years, and show where we managed to achieve great progress, and where, along with progress, we created many problems. And also, how we tried and try to solve these problems.

Until 1890, there were no mechanical vehicles - the horses were a dragging force, or people walked on foot. So the cities were pedestrian, with short distances, and there were many people in these cities. Then a mechanical transport appeared, and the first was an electric tram. He moved five times faster than any other transport. Then the metro is just a larger version of the tram, with separate ways and using a larger train, etc., but in general it was a faster, more spacious and cheap mode of transport. With the emergence of a tram and metro, it also has the opportunity to use transport, because ordinary people are workers, etc. - Could not afford to hire the crew. And thanks to electric trams, transport has become more accessible, it became possible to live 5, 8 or 10 kilometers from the city and go to the city to work. This significantly reduced the terrible stress in cities where people had to live near the factories, in poor, undeveloped houses. If you read Oliver Twista Charles Dickens, then imagine a terrible life in London, New York, and so on, all these slums.

And then with public transport, on which it was possible to ride at a speed of 15-20-25 km/h, the so-called agglomerations , cities with a large area developed.

Life standards have increased, and cities growth became possible. This continued until the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. And then private cars appeared - first in the USA, after, much later, for 20 years - in Europe, and then in some other countries. The fact is that when it became possible to have their own car, people knew the price of mobility. Not only the standard of living became higher, but in emotional and social terms it was a completely different matter - to possess a car, to drive it. So, when there were many cars, and the cities were overloaded, attempts were made to expand the streets, narrow the sidewalks and make more lanes on the roads. Today they told me that trees grew on Tverskaya, and then they were cut down, and now on the Tverskaya six -lane high -speed highway.

Thus, it turned out that in the cities, if the streets were narrow, they had to be expanded, the new streets became wider, and besides, they had to take a new place to parking lots. The massive construction of parking lots began, the allocation of a place for parking from the parking lot, and it turned out that in the United States the city hall, it was a lot of attention to the adaptation of the city to the car. Recently, the book "High cost of free parking lots" was published in Los Angeles. Parking, which are offered in cities that each store offers, trying to get as many buyers as possible - these parking, in the end, are not free. People who want to walk, ride bicycles or public transport pay for them. The streets constantly expanded and expanded, in Western Europe it is often due to the historical parts of the city, until the question arose: how much we can continue, in which cities we want to live. And behind each individual project, behind each individual street, the main, basic question should arise: is this really what we want, do we really want to get the city as it becomes?

Wukan Wuchik

A study was conducted that initiated the British government, it was entrusted with the architect Buchenen, and he compared, analyzed several cities: a small city, a middle, large and historical city. The study was devoted to issues of how transport and the city are correlated. So, he analyzed the cities of different sizes and came to the conclusion that if in a small city every family receives a car, then, in general, not such a big problem gets up, you can find some kind of parking place, you can somehow solve it. In medium-sized cities, this has already become a little more complicated: we need some kind of public transport for children, for the general public, but, in general, this is also solved, although it is already somewhat more complicated. But in large cities, this architect calculated the number of buildings, and that all people will come to these buildings on cars, respectively, in large cities the problem has already accepted the other scale. Also, during this study, he proceeded from the fact that it is important for historical cities to maintain the historical appearance of the city, it is important to maintain its atmosphere. Thus, the machines should not be allowed inside the historical center, but it is necessary to build roads that will go around the main historical zones. But for large cities, he calculated that if everyone drives by cars, there will be one continuous cork, respectively, for large cities you need some other decision. He came to the conclusion that in large cities, public transport must be introduced to adjust the transport issue. But he was an architect, still not a specialist in urban planning, so he did not find an adequate solution. He decided that a larger number of buses needed to be introduced. But buses are just the same in traffic jams. And he simply did not reach such a decision that public transport should move along the allocated lines, somehow separately from city traffic jams. Thus, he clarified the relationship between transport, the type of the city in which people live, and the quality of life in these cities, the convenience of cities for life.

In Germany, about the same time, another study was conducted, it was conducted by a group of experts - some of the city planning experts, some of them were experts in road construction. And they conducted the study much more systematic and deduced a set of rules that can relate to any city. In particular, such a rule is that each person, regardless of his position, should have access to a sufficient level of transport service, anyone should be able to move around the city quite freely.

What happens, how does mobility decrease? The fact is that this is the phenomenon that appeared in the USA. People began to depend on their cars. If a person does not have a car, if the car has broken, then everything, he can no longer go anywhere. Accordingly, if a person simply does not have a car - and these are youth, people without a car who have not yet received rights, these are elderly people, these are people who cannot afford to buy a car (30-40% of families) - they become automatically second -grade people. We looked down on bicycles, and it turned out to be such a situation that if you walk somewhere in Los Angeles on the suburbs, the police can stop you, ask what you are doing here, ask the documents and generally find out what you have on your mind, why you walk.

Mikhail Blininkin, Director of the Institute of Economics of Transport and Transport Policy of the Higher School of Economics, professor of the Higher School of Urbanistry NIU HSE, supervisor of the Research Institute of Transport and Road Facilities : I can’t help the replica: Car Dependecy and Drug Dependens , as the countrymen of Vukan, is pure tracing paper. Here Car Dependecy is us, transporters, taken from people who fought with drugs.

Vukan Vuchik: A German study showed that if we try to make the city more adapted for cars, then we must make the same efforts, if not large, to adapt the city to public transport, to create an adequate public transport system. And then the researchers suggested that it is necessary to introduce a certain tax on gasoline, half of the income from this tax will come to the development of the road network, half will act for the development of public transport. This happened in 1967, and since then this policy has continued to act. Therefore, in Germany now there are cities that are almost the best in the world to meet the term "cities comfortable for life." These ideas developed, and the city outside the city gradually introduced such methods of regulating traffic that even the researchers themselves did not expect the cities that would go so far. For example, in Munich there was one such street that competes with our Tverskaya, constantly filled with cars, completely standing in traffic all the time, and it was really difficult to do anything with this narrow, small street. Then public transport was launched underground. It was a line of electric trains, it was a metro. And upstairs, the street was simply made by a pedestrian area, moreover, not only one street, but a whole complex, a whole network of streets. And today it is a street that is filled with people constantly, including Sunday morning and the first half of the day of Sunday. And many considered Munich a city most convenient for life.

Mikhail Blinkin

This excursion into history shows how the methods of regulating traffic have changed, changing the direction of movement of cars on the street, and today many, many cities have gone not just to improvement, for example, trams, but to the use of a light metro, which is already more like their characteristics on the subway than for light -rate transport. In many cities, a light metro, light -assed vehicles with pedestrian zones began to be combined, and this not only improved the state of life, the quality of life in cities, but also completely changed their appearance for the better. Thus, you can see how the evolution of cities took place - from cities where people walked to cities with public transport, then dependent on cars, and today these are cities that use the intermodal approach - using several types of urban transport.

Now let's just pay attention to what, in fact, the problem caused by a car is - because this is a great way of transport, an excellent means of transportation. The fact is that the option that is optimal for each particular person is not always optimal for the system . And if we make a choice that is optimal for us - we buy a car to quickly move from one place to another - then in the end we find ourselves in traffic jams. The system simply cannot withstand this. And when everyone stands in traffic jams, no one benefits from this, this is a loss of benefit for each person.

And this is a problem not only with transport. The same problem of the ratio of individual choice and the best situation for the individual with the ratio of the best state of the system - it exists both in the ecology and in maintaining the purity of cities. Therefore, each time we need to learn how to look at these problems not only from an individual point of view, but also from the point of view of the system, from a global point of view.

But how can this problem be solved? After all, we cannot completely ban people to use the car. This is a very important part of our society, a very important way of movement. On the other hand, how do we attract people to public transport? Some people will always use only cars. This is caused by the nature of the trips that they need to make. Some people will always use public transport, because they do not drive a car, they do not have a car and so on. But how can we attract to public transport those who are in the middle, those who have a choice? Many of these people are simply lazy, or they see a certain social status in using the car and simply do not want to refuse it, prefer to stand in traffic jams, but show that they have a car, that we are so adults, cool, with a car, rather than go down and three times faster to get to the place they need.

So, we have identified the problem. How to attract now, remove a certain number of trips on cars from the streets and attract these people to public transport? Because in small cities, in medium -sized cities, this is not such a big problem, but in large cities, such as Moscow, this really becomes a problem of serious scale. Thus, more and more large cities begin to look at the problem of public transport. Indeed, if many people have cars, there is a certain wealth from the population, and it allows them to buy a car, then should the city agree that huge traffic jams are being created on its streets? Some cities said the firm “no”, “We do not agree with this, we need to do something.” And therefore they work in two directions. The first direction is to dump, so to speak, to convince people not to use the car. But not just convince. Of course, they go to economic measures, people are simply forced to pay for using the car as a small fine for creating traffic jams. That is, these are paid parking, paid use of roads and other similar measures.

Accordingly, if we convince people not to use the car or forcing them not to do this, they begin to resent: “How does this government forbids me to be free, limits my freedom of movement?” Accordingly, you need to improve public transport in cities. А это подразумевает более низкие тарифы на проезд, создание большей пропускной способности в метро, чтобы там не было так тесно, создание более эффективных линий городского транспорта. И по этим темам (как конкретно можно улучшить в городе ситуацию с общественным транспортом) я мог бы прочесть еще целую лекцию и даже серию лекций. Но главное - нужно отметить, что именно два этих набора мер, когда они идут вместе, показывают на практике, что города, удообные для жизни, действительно можно создать.

Многие города мира, такие как Мюнхен, Сингапур, Ванкувер – очень разные города – уже внедрили эту схему, когда на общественный транспорт делается больший упор, чем на частный транспорт. В их опыте можно найти прекрасные примеры, и этому опыту действительно нужно следовать. Потому что если мы посмотрим на Москву, здесь сейчас такая же ситуация, какая была лет 40 назад во многих городах США и в других странах, когда все больше и больше делается для автомобилей, а не для людей. Но у правительства Москвы – а я встречался с представителями правительства Москвы – сейчас есть хороший, прекрасный план для улучшения ситуации в городе, улучшения ситуации на дорогах, улучшения ситуации с парковками, и это действительно необходимо сделать, иначе мы просто будем повторять ошибки, которые уже случились в городах США много лет назад.

Alexey Muravyov

В процессе рассмотрения проектов развития Москвы в целом почти в каждом проекте можно увидеть, что разработчики действительно поддерживают идею создания сбалансированной транспортной системы, частный и общественный транспорт имеют сбалансированное соотношение. И, тем не менее, для того, чтобы внедрить эти идеи по-настоящему, особенно вам, особенно молодым людям необходимо сделать большую работу, необходимо просто принять эти идеи и, может быть, даже просвещать в этом отношении других. Потому что то же самое случилось с вопросами экологии. Мы не принимали эту проблему во внимание, но когда мы узнали о ней, мы начали об этом думать. Сейчас мы уже умеем смотреть на экологические проблемы с более глобальной точки зрения и более эффективно их решать.

Это был просто краткий обзор истории, краткая картинка ситуации в городах. И, просто чтобы проверить, насколько эти идеи отложились, насколько это находит отклик у вас, хотелось бы услышать вопросы от аудитории.

Вопрос из зала: Добрый вечер, добрый вечер всем, большое спасибо за лекции. Вопрос такой, обобщающий, как надежда. Вот Собянин сказал первого сентября, применил ваш термин livable city – «город, удобный для жизни» - сказал, что собирается этот город создать. Вы уже несколько дней в Москве, после первой лекции вы уже сколько-то дней провели, и, наверное, кроме программы департамента, вы понимаете в принципе картину ситуации, какие-то подводные камни, политическую ситуацию, финансовую ситуацию. Вопрос: как вы оцениваете в целом нашу перспективу создать, ну, скажем, на ближайшие десять лет, то, что вы понимаете под понятием livable city , учитывая весь комплекс проблем?

Вукан Вучик: Нельзя этот термин применить к чему-то строго ограниченному во временных рамках и сказать: «К первому октября у нас будет город, удобный для жизни». Но за десять лет могут произойти огромные изменения, и, в частности, изменения к лучшему, а не к худшему, как это происходит сейчас.

Вопрос из зала: Считается ли «городом, удобным для жизни» город с меньшим количеством населения?

Вукан Вучик: Это вовсе не обязательно, потому что есть примеры городов таких, как Париж, Нью-Йорк, в которых население очень плотное, и, тем не менее, эти города очень комфортны для жизни, очень оживленные. Город считается неудобным для жизни, если мы видим, что люди стремятся уехать из него. И к тому же само понятие «город, удобный для жизни» различается в зависимости от региона. Например, в Средиземноморье это должен быть густонаселенный город, в Швеции это совсем не так; в Британии самое главное – это твое частное пространство. Сейчас уже изменяется атмосфера, и молодежь, наоборот, стремится в центральные города.

Борис Долгин: Если судить по миграции, в таком случае Москва – самый удобный город.

Вопрос из зала: Вопрос об одной из стратегий правительства Москвы. Сейчас в рамках решения транспортного вопроса строят высокоскоростные магистрали без светофоров – в городе, через город, хордовые магистрали. Подходящий ли это способ для создания города, удобного для жизни?

Вукан Вучик: Они нужны частично , некоторое их количество, но нужно не переборщить, не перестараться. Так же, если мы построим 2 миллиона парковочных мест в центре города, это не решит проблему, а только, наоборот, привлечет больше людей в центр и усугубит проблему.

Михаил Блинкин: Я буду совсем короток. Я просто в восторге, сколько народу, молодежи собралось. Я также обращаю внимание, что впервые в московской практике на такой летней лужайке у нас есть официальный представитель Международного союза общественного транспорта, господин Степанов, вот он стоит; представители молодого депутатского корпуса вообще на траве сидят - к общественному пониманию того, что проблема, которую мы обсуждаем с иностранным членом Российской академии архитектуры и строительных наук, они очень важны. Вот на лужайке все это видно. Thank you.

Смотрите также: Михаил Блинкин Вукан Вучик и его книга Транспорт в городе, удобном для жизни Андрей Маргулев Дороги, которые нам выбирают Вукан Вучик Дорожное движение и городской транспорт в Москве и других российских городах Этиология и патогенез московских пробок