M O S C O W Life Beyond the Centre
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Moscow has expanded ten times in the last five decades. These new territories are not organically developed urban regions, but the result of a four-pronged project: political, social, economic and architectural. In a sociopolitical sense, this is an implemented project of the new Soviet man. Two issues are crucially important here. Firstly, it is the idea of financial equality, which sees any sort of differentiation in the lifestyle of people as a defect, which needs to be corrected. Secondly, it is reasoning over social mind, which only anticipates those social unions that are approved by the government or by work place. Ideally speaking, a peripheral citizen is a person not burdened by traditions, the one who exercises his or her social activity within the bounds of professional or political unions at the work place. Therefore, there is no mechanism of forming local communities. These territories are constructed in such a way that they don’t stimulate their own development agenda — it is to come from outwards to solve inward problems. From the economic point of view, we see an implemented project of industrial modernization. Residential districts wouldn’t operate beyond the concept of industrial city. Fordist industrialization required a great standard workforce (Moscow's workforce reached 5 million). Residential districts were intended to localize and generate workforce which, in their turn need to be transported to work and back home, need to be housed, need to be fed, taught, cured and so on. On the scale of these challenges, each was met by creating a corresponding type of industry: housing, catering, education, which likewise required a workforce. The workforce was to be standardized in the same way
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as released products. That is the reason why there was a necessity to create similar conditions of living, provision, food, social and cultural resources on the metropolitan scale. Cities growing naturally develop differentially — they are recognized by their variability. The urban city is visa-versa recognized by its oneness. The very picture of such thinking would be a matrix with even cells, no center nor a periphery. In an urban sense, it is an implemented project of avant-garde modernization. Houses are seen as machines for sleeping. Machines are put out on an industrial level. Industrialization demands the highest possible standardization in order to cut down expenses. A project solution is reached either due to its functional bonuses and/or its cost effectiveness; and the only right way is the cheapest and the most functional one. This is the common trait of what has promoted Moscow peripheries, populated in four modernistic flows (late-1950s to the 1960s — Khrushchev flow, early Socmodernizm; 1970s — Brezhnev flow, developed Socmodernizm; 1980s to the early-1990s — late-Soviet flow; 2000s — demolition of five-storey buildings and peripheral reconstruction). Each of these flows is denoted by its own technologies development, and economic levels. Three trajectories of the project—political, economic and urban—were tightly interconnected and brought forward the phenomenon of sustainable artificial settlements. The Moscow outskirts stand out with their rather high living standards. According to social censuses, peripheral citizens positively evaluate their location and apartments and, except for a few isolated regions (Kapotnya and Golyanovo), do not feel secluded and do not yearn to move to the center. But some essential aspects of the
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Socmodernizm project turned to be unnecessary in modern-day life and still exist in an almost archeological condition, what they were designed for — industrial zones. Industrial zones thus far occupy 16% of the territory of Moscow, and to speak about their effectiveness is a thorny subject. 91% of industrial zones are privately owned, so they are valued as territorial assets. They are operated by 5% of the capital's population with the proportion of one-third working profitably, one third unprofitably and one-third redundant. Then, there is a system of peripheral centers. Socmodernistic projects saw it necessary to create sociopolitical centers in residential districts. Our research distinguished a lot of such centers at the stage of initial urban drafts, although these are “sleeping” centers; neither functioning well nor tieing districts together. When healthcare, welfare and education networks are codified and thus continue to exist, when commerce and services sector drastically change in a new competitive environment, arts venues (libraries, clubs, exhibition halls, theatres and cinemas) are in minimal demand in the outskirts. Despite the steps which the Moscow government is taking, these forced measures to keep those commercial structures afloat reasonably have no bright future. There is also a differentiation of the Socmodernistic periphery within the framework of several projects. Each of the four modernization flows was fixated on the new level of technical and social progress the country reached at that time. However, we are not determining any discrepancies between different types of urban solutions, neither by market-value appraisal (correlation between property prices and the “age” of buildings is very low), nor by cultural reflection (after
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the first “Cheremushki” micro district, which turned into a common name for all the residential districts, no Moscow modernist region or project had a name given it by the cultural tradition). Society just didn’t pay attention to efforts to improve life in such districts. The basic valuable facilities we see in a Socmodernistic project happened to be of high demanded (amid urban structure facilities there are, first of all, green belt, parks — most of the respondents consider parks to be the main advantage of their living zone, when actually parks are all around the city). Special facilities introduced into each of the districts or existing there originally—typical architectural and planning solutions, presence of architectural monuments, cultural institutions, specific factories—were either leveled out or went unnoticed. As a result of this, we have a huge homogeneous platform where districts differ in no way and have no personal architecture, culture, social face, or even a name. Social networks data analysis, conducted in the course of this research traces connotations applied to Moscow toponyms — demonstrates shocking results — the gigantic Moscow territory is practically not mentioned in social networks, either positively or negatively. In other words, it is missing from the conscious image of place they inhibit. Trying to picture a mental map of Moscow periphery we find a blank sheet — people don’t think about where they are located. As sociological data shows, this is a rather stable society, although not very tightly laced. Our research showed surprisingly the low mobility of Moscow citizens — two-thirds of them, in fact, don’t get out of the boundaries of their district, don’t use the city as a whole and don’t use its center. (This is reliable information, also backed by
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independent study of Big Data and Society). Women, children, the retired and many young people don’t live in Moscow — they live in their own small districts. Those who circulate around the city are men of working age (and migrants). Despite the fact that Moscow is considered to be a Europelike city, its lifestyle is more pro-Western — the absolute majority of women only leave their flats to go within walking distance. The sole explanation of why they are living in Moscow could be the fact that their husbands are working there: this has nothing in common with how European or American cities are set out. Surprisingly, the Moscow of the 21st century, one of the largest metropolises of the world, is still reproducing traits of a “big village.” The main irritation factor, according to our census, is the appearance of “foes”, or people of non-Russian origin in the territory. And due to the fact that the large majority of citizens are not aboriginal inhabitants, this “friend/foe” recognizing system works in a rather xenophobic way. At the suggestion of Alexei Levinson, shared by all the research curators, here we deal with the Soviet way of life without the Soviet mobilization of the economy, which could reproduce itself in its way. This kind of a city has greater stability — in general, people are satisfied with their conditions and don’t feel any need for drastic change. But despite that, it is still a city of lower development possibilities. Provisions for such a society are possible only with oil and gas revenues, which Moscow receives in the form of taxes and redistributes as welfare payments. The main product which Moscow sells on the external market, is a square meter (this defines Moscow
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economy as an economy of plantation type) — and financial resources to buy this product are also generated from the oil and gas market. Moscow is the 30th world’s economy and this economy is seriously suffering from the Dutch disease. Moscow housing square meters still represent the main value for citizens — the same meters are sold out on the external market. Our research also shows that a mechanism of quality retrogression operates cyclically, and there is no easy way out of it. The city needs a different economic model of development, but there is no money for an alternative policy. The urban population prefers not to take part in city matters. Only 0.09% of the budget income totals the land tax, 0.004% personal property tax and 5.7% corporate property tax. However, according to the research, attempts to change this situation by introducing land-surveying might be fraught with harsh social consequences. Furthermore, the problem is that the newly formed periphery is not really willing to interact with externally impacting factors. Research on city policies show that, generally speaking, citizens don’t respond to what local governments are doing; they don’t comprehend their structure and fields of competence; and only recognize the number one person in the city (but with no clear understanding of his or her agenda). In addition to that, civil society initiatives—quite frequent, as the research shows, also don’t find any broad response in solving municipal matters, except for the most general ones, such as combating corruption and migrant inflows. Any economic initiatives, especially in the field of development, only spark negative reactions from the citizens. Mostly, from their point of view, they are living a
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good life and don’t want to be bothered. In fact, this is not possible. The modernistic periphery is a perishable urban fabric, in this way different from previous urban formations; which also wore off, but were not intended to be demolished. It was thought necessary to reconstruct and refurbish them over and over again. In our case we have a different situation — the question of a total renewal of standard housing will certainly arise after the demolition of five-storey buildings that began in the 2000s, and all the examined territory could become an arena of fundamental urban transformations for the next thirty years. World practice shows that there are three possible scenarios for Moscow’s peripheral development, which differ from each other depending on who is an active subject; governance and large development business, citizens and bank capital or citizens and municipal budgets. We find examples of the first scenario in Asian countries — this is when a skyscraper springs up to house the whole prior district. It is typical of China, Hong Kong, Singapore. But this type of development is only rolled out under conditions of strong authoritarian governance and large-scale business interacting with it. Moscow tried to follow this path in the 2000s (“City,” “Donstroy” residential compounds), but this scenario would only have worked under conditions of total reconstruction of all the prior city networks — the existing transport, engineering and social infrastructure cannot deal with growing pressure of these compounds. Yury Luzhkov made attempts to use the existing infrastructure with such new-builds, but it only caused a deterioration of quality of life in
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neighborhoods and activated social unrest — it led to a growing need for larger investments into engineering infrastructure at the expense of the municipal budget for the benefit of private developers. This is only possible if governance is powerful enough to suppress tensions amongst the population, and if the economy is strong to the extent of giving out large budget investments. The second scenario is implemented in Anglo-Saxon countries — these are peripheral districts developed in the “garden city” typology, with cottage and townhouse building sites. This is a classical American or English suburban area that reflects the idea of a free civilian who has significant rights, high levels of welfare and statuterestricted ruling rights. This scenario requires the decentralization of water supply, sewerage and electricity networks due to the fact that centralized management of such long mileage networks is economically absurd. This development is possible with the presence of a strong middle class. Attempts to artificially create it, in order to solve mass housing problem, only lead to economic disasters on the level of the USA mortgage crisis of 2008, which triggered the world's economic recession. And the third possible way is the reconstruction of modernistic industrial housing by replacing its engineering systems and by warming and refurbishing facades. Berlin tried out this scheme in the 1990s and 2000s, having met the challenge of periphery reconstruction, the challenge being analogous to what we’re seeing today in Moscow (socialist building projects in East Berlin). This is the most “sparing” variant regarding the city population — it doesn’t require large investments in property and doesn’t deteriorate living
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conditions. The only drawback of this scenario is the fact that the municipal budget is forced to undertake practically all the expenses, which is only possible as long as the state allocates huge investment into urban development, as taxes would surely not be enough. This happened in Germany after reunification, but no European country has since tried this again due to economic factors. However, all the strategies have significant weaknesses, which is why we haven’t yet made our own decision. But decisions have to be taken, choices have to be made — the problem is real and needs to be solved. We need a cohesive strategy of urban periphery development. Our research paper simply suggests one possible way, adapted from a Berlin scenario where the general structure of the urban region would remain as it is — with slight modifications. In this regard, we need to pay attention to spontaneously emerging peripheral centers, places of enhanced vitality, not foreseen by an urban structure (research call such places “megacities”) — Sokol, Cheremushki, Cherkizovo and Marino. These are the places where any kind of involvement—urban, economic or political—resonates most of all. On the other hand, the majority of peripheral regions may be advanced by improving those parts of modernistic project which are “inactive” — in this way, numerous parks would let us raise the question of creating the system of the urban super-park; industrial zones could become new places of work applications — in the same way as modernistic centers. For a new architectural policy it is essential to emphasize strengths of Soviet urban landscapes, like accessibility and connectedness that prevent these landscapes from being fragmented and turned into a “ghetto”, and to overcome the weaknesses — variability
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and centrality deficit, which is now balanced by spontaneous selforganization processes. In our view, these ideas could enhance the environmental quality of urban life. But the main challenges for urban peripheries deal not only with the issue of enhanced urban quality, but with the necessity to make a choice between different models of economic and social development. In order to cope with economic taints that fall back on housing rent we need to enlarge social and cultural productivity of the urban environment — which in turn encourages the growth of human capital. None of Moscow's development challenges can be solved within the bounds of narrow-branch approaches — they require a mix of interconnected programs taking into account both the potentials (social, political and others) and the expenses of economic and technological solutions. New city management and monitoring technologies, Big Data processing and analysis systems — all this will help to make governance processes more precise and more focused on correcting existing imbalances. The door to a renewed policy is still open and we still have time and resources to make all the necessary modifications. An emphasis on the potential of the periphery is bound to lead to a balanced and sustainable development of Moscow and its agglomeration.
SPACED Research Group