Two Russian coasts of hope

Novosibirsk is glorified by democratic traditions that allow us to hope that the will of the people will find a legal constructive way out to overcome urban depression.

Victor Chistyakov

The publisher of Taiga.info Viktor Chistyakov decided to compare Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. The impressions were not in favor of the capital of Siberia. But the author is confident that the strong traditions of the democracy of Novosibirsk will help the city overcome the "barrenness" of the authorities and find a way out of the prolonged city depression.

By the will of fate, I recently ended up in Yekaterinburg, deciding to make a company to my own person. The wife in one famous clinic organized meetings with patients, and I thought that there was a good opportunity to meet with partners and look at the large regional center with which many compare our city. And I rode with internal criteria for evaluating the two largest Russian municipalities. Two conditional regional capitals of the territorial outposts of the Urals and Siberia, nodal administrative centers, in which the main power structures, institutions of plenipotentiary, scientific and educational centers with outstanding academic stories, noticeable theatrical life are concentrated.

The cities are comparable in terms of population, the difference is insignificant: officially about 100 thousand people live more in Novosibirsk. The levels of city budgets differ in favor of our city by only 10%. All this allows the provincial consciousness and small -town patriotism to fall into temptation and compare the two cities among themselves, determining whose city is cooler.

So, I am still in “sadness and sadness” that Novosibirsk does not withstand any criticism regarding the main human assessment - the urban environment. I am not a specialist in urbanism, I share my impressions as a simple resident and average consumer of city services. What is immediately striking: the thoughtful architecture of new buildings, their more or less adequate embedding into quarters, the presence of full-fledged intracity green parks available to all residents of the city. There it is not necessary to spend a large amount of time specially to breathe fresh air, there is a meaningful organization of road, clean and entire roads, well -groomed sidewalks and curves from which dust does not rise.

These are basic household observations, they are still intensifying from the height of the last floor of the skyscraper, which is not alone there. From the observation deck, all the advantages of the layout laid down by the first urban planners are noticeable. Once again, I repeat, from a height, the abundance of greenery pleases the eye, including in the yards, an architecture of buildings varied in shape and color, and this is evenly around the entire perimeter of the review.

Novosibirsk can only be covered with an airplane porthole, when many of us adhere to glass and looked out for our houses. The night city can still impress the imagination, but the daytime heavenly prospect disperses the eye, showing chaotic and chaotic development, the predominance of the red-yellow-brick gamut of colors. Yes, the bends of our still mighty river are always worried, bridges that connect two mentally different city spaces stand out. Ob cannot be compared with Iset, but such a natural advantage shares us even more, because the Novosibirsk did not learn how to integrate the beauty and strength of the river into our city life.

I talked with several of our compatriots who have experience living in both cities. All of them note different dynamics of the development of cities over the past five years. One of them is transformed and changing, the other becomes one of the leaders in the number of references in the information space with negative stories. Either with the new ghetto-lords, then with uncleaned heaps of snow, then with broken central roads and a “bombed” legendary bridge, then with the notorious road dust and a strangling stink, the reason for which all city specialists cannot be understood. You can continue and continue to set qualitative and quantitative assessments of comparative characteristics.

It turns out that you can drive the whole city into depression in one electoral cycle. It is obvious that this is a consequence of managerial barren and helplessness of urban management, because of which the patience of the inhabitants continues to experience, all this is covered by most city deputies demonstrating the “Union of Sword and Breed” with the city authorities.

So far, only scandals have been remembered with the sale and distribution of forest zones and parks for new buildings, primitive and theatrical productions with the adoption of the mayor’s report for the failure of the failure, the wretchedness of the personal agenda in the form of voicing ridiculous statements and calls about the “nationalization of NATO assets” or the “Leninist doctrine of a new type of party”. And all this is pronounced seriously for a large and adult audience. Is such a dialectic will help the development of the city when the goal -setting and movement of the void is indicated?

So we have in fact inhibition that even this year has shown a negative population growth. But only you do not need to write off everything on covid torment, the same Yekaterinburg grew compared to last year. At the current level of management “from Novosibirsk, can there be something good,” let me forgive me. John for paraphrasing, but this is an expression from the Gospel, which has become winged with allegorical meaning. It is about people, organizations from which nothing sensible, good one cannot expect. When I thought about this note and decided to arrange my thoughts, it was with such a city as Yekaterinburg that I connected hopes for positive changes in the country, since Moscow and St. Petersburg cannot accommodate everyone with dignity, and the Ural city has their own beautiful story, a developed modern urban infrastructure. It forms a common attractive atmospheric space and exists in the mentality of the urban population.

But the last event in my hometown originated in me the hope that not everything was lost and a request for changes in the conditions in the life of our city could break through from the “kitchen” level of discussion and discontent and materialize in the general folk impulse. I am talking about the initiative to review the mayor, when the first thousand people spoke out against him and called for resignation. We can say that there can be a group of interests of specific people behind this, but changes always begin, someone should take the first step and unite people.

As at one time, the people's delegates of the Zemstvo Cathedral determined the fate of Russia for 300 years, putting an end to the vague time, when they chose a new king from the Romanov clan, who became a great monarch dynasty, which tragically broke off in Yekaterinburg. I also remind you that already in modern Russia, the Ural delegate Boris Yeltsin once showed determination with the support of a small group of brave people who did not allow a new vague time and chaos, which determined the fate of Russia's development in recent history when it all began with democratic changes.

Despite other current federal trends, Novosibirsk is famous for democratic traditions that allow us to hope that the will of the people will find a legal constructive exit to overcome urban depression.

Victor Chistyakov