According to a study conducted in the fall by the Superjob.ru portal, the average Muscovite gets from work to home in no less than 45 minutes by private transport, and 64 minutes by public transport. This is inconvenient for city residents: they would like to spend on average no more than half an hour on the road, said respondents to Superjob.ru. According to estimates by the general director of the Institute of Urban Economics Foundation, Alexander Puzanov, the daily commuting from the region to the capital adds another 1.3 million residents of the Moscow Region and nearby regions to the flow of Muscovites rushing to work. Their time spent on the road to the office and back is even higher. If a person spends more than 2 hours daily on the way to the office, university or to a place of rest and entertainment, he inevitably faces the so-called transport fatigue, which results in a decrease in labor productivity and a deterioration in the quality of life. This “diagnosis” has become an integral part of the lives of city dwellers, and Moscow is no exception in this regard.

The city authorities, developers, and scientists have taken on the task of reducing time and distance, turning Moscow into a city within walking distance: in the new paradigm of urban planning and urbanistic thinking, it is the individual and his needs that should become key in the struggle of megacities for the influx of the best minds, businesses, and investments.

Work closer to home

"The city must constantly ensure that people can get to the places they need as quickly and comfortably as possible," says categorically partner and chief architect of Blank Architects Lukasz Kaczmarczyk. The city authorities agree: new jobs should be closer to the homes of Muscovites, 90% of whom live outside the Garden Ring.

In his blog in the summer of 2019, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the scale of commuting in Moscow "off the charts." According to him, in order to reduce the flow of people traveling to work in the city center in the morning and to the outskirts and the region in the evening, the city "essentially manually directed developers' resources outside the Third Transport Ring." The mayor cited data: in 2011-2018, 15 million square meters of commercial real estate were built in the outskirts of Moscow, which made it possible to reduce the concentration of jobs in the center from 43% of the total supply in 2010 to the current 35%. In 2019-2022, 5.4 million square meters of commercial real estate will appear outside the Central Administrative District (CAD), which will further relieve the center, the mayor promised.

Office real estate is the main aggregator of jobs for residents of the capital. According to Colliers International , the market of high-quality office buildings in Moscow should be replenished with another 400,000 new square meters this year. At the same time, only 2% of the total supply of new offices is currently being built in the center of Moscow, analysts from the consulting company Knight Frank note. “The deficit of offices in the city center continues to worsen. Currently, 4.9% of class A sites are vacant within the Boulevard Ring, 5.6% inside the Garden Ring, and the share of vacant space in class B in these locations is even lower. In the city’s business districts, rental rates have increased by 30% since the beginning of the year,” says Konstantin Losyukov, Director of the Office Real Estate Department at Knight Frank. It is the deficit and high rates in the center that are now motivating many companies to move outside the Third Transport Ring.

Experts interviewed by Vedomosti believe that old Moscow still has great potential to bring employment closer to Muscovites’ homes through construction. Places for new business centers can be found in industrial zones. There are already similar examples in the city’s practice – the Paveletsky business district, which transformed former factories around the railway station of the same name into office space in demand by businesses and stimulated new construction. “There are many empty spaces left in the central part of the city, the so-called rusty belt of the capital. Their comprehensive development in the future will help to even out the disproportion in the housing market and offer the city new jobs,” Puzanov reminds. According to Vasily Fetisov, Commercial Director of the Moscow Territorial Administration of the Etalon Group, such industrial zones currently occupy 18,000 hectares, or 15% of Moscow’s territory. They can accommodate a large number of the most diverse development projects. Independent large clusters can be created here, attracting residents of surrounding areas, continues Petr Isaev, Commercial Director of Capital Group.

Residents of the new Moscow will also be able to spend less time on the road from home to work in the future. By 2019, 12.75 million square meters of housing were built on the territory of the Troitsky and Novomoskovsky administrative districts (TiNAO), which became part of the capital more than seven years ago, according to the materials of the capital's construction complex. Another 4.23 million square meters of commercial real estate were built as an "addition" to it. These include such large projects as the Comcity office park, the Rumyantsevo business park, the Neopolis business quarter, the Salaris multifunctional center, the K2 business park, etc.

The construction complex reported: the construction of commercial real estate led to the creation of 200,000 jobs for almost 400,000 residents of the annexed territories. The city plans to build even more commercial space in TiNAO. For example, in Kommunarka alone, by 2030, as part of the construction of the administrative and business center, 5 million square meters of real estate and 76,000 jobs should appear, and in the Rumyantsevo office cluster, it is planned to build 3 million square meters of real estate for 150,000 jobs.

"For many years, Russia has been implementing plans to build residential areas, from which residents leave en masse for work in the center, paralyzing city highways and public transport lines," complains Maria Litinetskaya, managing partner of the Metrium company. In her opinion, this trend can be broken in the new Moscow. The business clusters of TiNAO "will become powerful points of attraction for the population of old Moscow, which will relieve the center and destroy the monocentric model of the city's structure," Litinetskaya is sure.

For now, office space in New Moscow is not being used to its full potential. According to Knight Frank, 41.5% of quality office space in TiNAO is currently empty. The outgoing flow from Old Moscow to the region and New Moscow is also still small: according to the Institute of Urban Economics, it is only 400,000 people. And plans to move Moscow officials to Kommunarka were never destined to come true.

Live differently

In matters of comprehensive development of new territories and high-quality transformation of existing ones, the capital's government, developers and architects face the same task - to provide the capital's "sleeping districts" with new, attractive functions that will keep city residents striving for the center in their districts. Speaking at the XIII MREF-2019 Real Estate Leaders Forum, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Urban Development Policy and Construction Marat Khusnullin said: 30-40 social infrastructure facilities are commissioned in the capital every year, which allows districts to be transformed from sleeping districts into mixed ones, i.e. endowed with different functions.

Residential areas with courtyards not overloaded with cars, pedestrian boulevards that become the public spine of the district – these elements of urban architecture can be introduced into the fabric of old Moscow, says Andrey Asadov, CEO of the Asadov architectural bureau. The architectural bureau has developed such a project for the renovation of the Golovinsky district of Moscow. It involves the construction of multi-level houses with terraces for recreation on habitable roofs, leisure pavilions and large walking areas, as well as the integration of commercial, educational and public spaces into the ground floors of buildings. “We calculated that if about a fifth of the area is given over to public spaces, then 100% of able-bodied residents, without leaving the district, will be able to relax, work or rent premises for business here,” he concluded.

In its development projects in New Moscow , A101 Group of Companies allocates approximately 35% of commercial space, admits Marina Gordeeva, head of the group's department for commercial and social development of territories. About half of this is detached shopping and office centers and technology parks, the rest is social infrastructure facilities and street retail on the ground floors of residential buildings and in attached premises, she adds. "This is a fairly high percentage, but in this way we provide the projects with the necessary balance and infrastructural diversity," says Gordeeva.

The high cost of housing (the average weighted price of 1 sq. m. on the primary market of old Moscow in the fall, according to estimates from Miel-Novostroiki, exceeded 210,000 rubles, and in TiNAO - 122,000 rubles) coupled with changing ideas about the optimal footage of housing leads to a reduction in the acquired areas: apartments are becoming smaller. According to Fetisov, over the past six years, the average areas of designed and sold apartments have decreased from 84 to 58 sq. m., including due to the growing popularity of functional European layouts.

At the same time, buyers have developed a demand for cozy and functional indoor spaces, Vedomosti's sources note. "Today, we are seeing developers' desire to reconsider the structure and functional content of common spaces. The goal is to make not only "personal" but also common square meters comfortable to use," says Kaczmarczyk. According to him, recreational, sports, and children's areas or libraries can be created inside the building in common corridors and halls. This will not only save residents' time, but will also allow them to form a good-neighborly community. Layout solutions for residential buildings of the future will maximize public areas and further reduce personal spaces, Isaev confirms. "The number of rooms in a house will be determined by the number of bedrooms a family needs, and all other functions can be transferred to the public areas of the projects. For example, there will be no need to create a room for games or watching movies, since all this will already be provided on the territory of the residential complex," he believes.

Transport at home

Residents of megacities cannot do without public transport at all, but not all residents of even old Moscow can walk to the fastest one – the metro. For example, residents of Lianozovo (population about 86,000 people), Vostochnoye Degunino (98,000 people) do not have metro stations in their districts, and residents of Golyanovo (more than 160,000 people) are forced to share the only station with Severnoye Izmailovo (more than 87,000 people).

Moscow authorities promise to increase the length of the capital's metro lines to 450 km by 2022, so that 90% of Muscovites have a metro station within walking distance from their home. By this time, the Big Circle Line under construction will be closed, the Sokolnicheskaya Line will be extended to Potapovo station to the southwest, the Solntsevskaya Line will reach Vnukovo, the Lyublinskaya Line will reach the settlement of Severny, and the Nekrasovskaya line will no longer be the shortest in Moscow.

In addition to developing the subway, the city is developing rail service. After the completion of the reconstruction of the Moscow Central Circle (MCC), travel time around the city has decreased by 20 minutes; it passes through 26 districts of the city, where 2 million people live, the construction complex reports. The MCC stations were created to serve the capital's industrial zones; given the plans to transform them into new residential areas and business clusters, they will be in even greater demand.

The new Moscow Central Diameters project will add another 300–350 km and 200 stations on five reconstructed suburban through railway lines to the city’s railway framework. Earlier, in an interview with Vedomosti, Khusnullin promised: “When we finish building everything [the metro and MCD], Moscow will be comparable to New York in terms of rail transport. A city with the most integrated public transport in the world. We will have hundreds of new routes, and people will have a choice of what to travel on.” These lines will also reach the near Moscow region, connecting Nakhabino with Podolsk, Zelenograd with Ramenskoye, Lobnya with Odintsovo, Pushkino with Domodedovo, and Zheleznodorozhny with Aprelevka, reducing the travel time to work for residents of satellite cities.

Transport hubs (THU) are supposed to save time on the way from a bus stop to a metro or commuter train station. By 2020, more than 250 THUs will appear in Moscow, six of which will include bus stations to which intercity bus routes will be connected. Some THUs will be flat, i.e., they will actually be intercepting parking lots that will allow car owners to transfer to the metro. The city authorities promise to equip permanent THUs with offices, shops, medical centers, police posts, food courts, children's areas and even housing. The commercial and transport parts of the THU will be separated so that the flows of visitors and passengers do not mix, according to the construction complex materials.

Rent, don't buy

The construction of metro lines, the development of rail transport, the opening of transport hubs, the creation of points of attraction on the outskirts of the city, new approaches to renovation and development can only make Moscow more accessible for a while. "These are good, correct measures, but they only provide a short-term positive effect," Puzanov points out.

Muscovites themselves can turn the capital into a city within walking distance, Vedomosti's sources believe. To do this, they must become more mobile and not be afraid to change their place of residence following changes in their career or family. The rental housing market could facilitate this. "In Berlin, 90% of the housing stock is rental housing, in Moscow - less than a third. This housing belongs to private individuals, the state and large commercial players are not represented in this market," Puzanov complains.

In order to meet the needs of Muscovites and visitors to the capital for rental housing in such a scenario, many apartment buildings should be built, and the cost of renting housing in such projects should correspond to the capabilities of tenants, believes Oksana Vrazhnova, Chairman of the Board of the Miel Group of Companies.

However, the state and big business are not in a hurry to enter this market, much less dump prices on it. The cost of building and servicing such a house is high, and the payback period will be at least 15-20 years, explains Vrazhnova.

A metropolis within walking distance