Render in favor of the poor

How Russian urbanism forgot about inequality

Do you know what is the most taboo topic in Russian urbanism? Here's one that it is indecent to talk about. As you mention, everyone is bombing. No, this is not a winter bicycle transport. It is much more serious - inequality.

It turned out that in Russia most citizens live very well. In the country, a salary of 20,000 is considered good. The state employees in small cities consider wages the size of the minimum wage (about 12,000) high.

Of course, there is a national project to combat poverty, but with it everything is a little complicated. Within the framework of this national project, it is still not entirely clear what is considered poverty and that it is this national project is designed to reduce. So the devil is with him, with the national project.

There is an undeniable fact that the vast majority of the country's population lives catastrophically modestly. At the same time, people devote a significant part of their time to ensure this modest standard of living. These are part -time jobs for everyone, including pensioners and police officers, this is a shift for six months a year for men. If you saw on the streets announcements about the work of drug couriers, you could have noticed that these ads in the regions offer a monthly income of 40,000–45,000 rubles. That is how much the daily risk of imprisonment costs.

Obviously, at such income levels, leisure possibilities are seriously suffering. Moreover, in the category of leisure practices, the practice of food in coffee houses or drinking in bars, which seems to be apparent from the middle class height. That is why Food Halls will fall the last.

For many, once a month to eat land (or any other food that is not like a doshirak or buckwheat) is the last bastion of human dignity and illusion of life success.

What does urbanism have to do with it? And you look at the renders. The visualization that urbanists and architects draw in order for customers, journalists and citizens can imagine the future of urban space. Young beautifully dressed representatives of the city middle class with coffee coffee glasses, go into small bakeries, and rent bicycles and scooters should go through all the new streets and squares.

Everyone of God is a forgotten park in the most remote corner of our Motherland should become a point of attraction for people with high income and a large amount of free time. Good old people and happy children, proud athletes and playful lovers to take a selfie.

The discussion of any project of any public space begins with the fact that architects and designers giggle: "they say now, of course, all sorts of alcoholics and marginals are hanging out here." Which will definitely quit drinking and get rich, the improvement will barely be completed. And all men will urgently come from the watch to work on a new giant shop for laptops.

Any discussion of poverty issues and inequality instantly slows down into the arrogant sheiming of low -income, alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless people.

The collective Maria Antoinette of Russian Neoliberal urbanism refuses to understand that inequality is a structural problem,

With which you need to work at all levels, including the design process. And not with the stubbornness of the rhino not to notice its total.

Someone will say that the renders themselves have nothing to do with it, like urbanists. However, the reality of the profession is such that at the moment, visualization is the only tool for public reflection on the future of urban spaces. And in this reality, project reflection acquires the properties of annoying fantasy. Not at all, the Urbanists came up with property inequality. However, the conversation about him, which is almost the central for the American, Australian and European city design, has not yet really begun in Russia.

In general, I would announce a competition among architects and urbanists - “Honest Render”. Let the public space that you design will be inhabited by lonely old women, hurrying lonely women, dragging children, alcoholics, not yet bums, but on the verge, communal services shifting the tiles. Of course, somewhere there should be a couple of schoolchildren similar to hipsters who make a selfie. But something in them should give out what they love black Latte, and drink “3 in 1”.