urban agenda 2012
urban
Cities for People Lessons from the Moscow Urban Forum 2011
April 2012 Published by IRP Group In Cooperation with Moskovskiye Novosti Publishing House
editors’ note
Making Global Connections
P
lanning the first international Moscow Urban Forum, on the theme of “Global Solutions for Russian Cities,” we hoped this event would produce several dozen practical solutions and recommendations that could form the basis for an urgent agenda in the development of Russian cities. We believe that our cities need an urban agenda worked out in an open dialogue with the best global and Russian experts. Gathered together in this journal are a collection of recommendations from the forum’s participants to improve Russia’s urban environment. Reading these thought-provoking contributions, it is for you now to judge whether we have achieved our aim. Quite often in the past, the issues faced by Russian cities seemed unique. That is not quite so. Such cities as London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Copenhagen successfully overcame them 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. And Istanbul, San Paulo, Shanghai and many other cities of the developing world are doing the same right now, with us. Global cities have a lot to learn from each other, as many experts said at the forum. The Moscow Urban Forum has become the first Russian venue to unite international expertise and Russian reality. The support from the forum’s international partners — the Urban Land Institute and the World Bank — made it possible for experts from 19 countries from around the world to come and take part. The Moscow city government, which offered the forum its full support, has perhaps the greatest need for a new agenda, new ideas and the best practical recommendations. For the first time in many years
Within the next few years Moscow will not only compete as an equal with the leading metropolitan areas of the world, but also share its successful practice with other cities around Russia and the post-Soviet space
we are witnessing the political will to pursue radical changes in the appearance and quality of life of the Russian capital. Within the next few years, Moscow will not only compete as an equal with the leading metropolitan areas of the world, but will also share its successful practice with other cities around Russia and the post-Soviet space. That’s why our journal gives such prominence to the development prospects for Moscow and the views of the city’s leaders, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and deputy mayors Andrei Sharonov and Marat Khusnullin, in their own words. The international nature of urbanism, as a science of urban development, unites a wide range of experts, including not only architects and urban planners, but also managers, financiers, social scientists, engineers and people of many other professions. We are very grateful that such renowned authorities as German Gref, Edward Blakely, Greg Clark, Ruben Vardanyan, Alexei Novikov, Vladimir Paperny, Marina Khrustaleva, Veniamin Golubitsky, Vasily Gatov, Christopher Choa and many others gave us the benefit of their wide experience as columnists and contributors for this inaugural edition of “Urban Agenda.” More than 20 events were held during the two-day forum, and each of them was aimed at working out concrete recommendations for improving the urban environment. In spite of the fact that online broadcasts of all the discussions available at www.urbanforum.ru are popular with website visitors, we deemed it important to publish all the results of the forum in a single document. The structure of this journal follows the titles of the main sections of the forum: Governance, Identity, Construction, Infrastructure and Sustainable Development. Each of these themes merits a large conference by itself. The Moscow Urban Forum’s main purpose was to have a comprehensive, indepth discussion of the various aspects of urban life. The discriminating reader will notice that many themes and narratives intertwine in this journal. There are common terms and common intellectual sources. The city is a living organism with interconnected parts. The solution of urban issues is possible only if we are aware of the depth and comprehensive nature of these interconnections. We hope that “Urban Agenda” will bring us closer to this awareness.
urban agenda 2012 01
Contents
Editor-in-Chief: Anna Trapkova
Sergei Sobyanin on Why Moscow Needs an Urban Forum | 4 Elvira Nabiullina Defines the New Formula for Federal Urban Development Policy | 10
Deputy Editor- in-Chief: Rostislav Vylegzhanin
German Gref Suggests 12 Terms We Should Learn About Modern Urbanism | 12 Edward Blakely Provides Eight Recommendations for Competitive Cities | 15
English-Language Editor: Tim Wall Art Director: Anton Stepanov
Bulat Stolyarov, Svetlana Serebryakova and 300 Experts Assess Russia’s Largest Cities | 16 Jan Gehl Reconquers Cities From Cars | 18 Andrei Sharonov on Attracting Talents and Investors to Moscow | 22
Project Coordinator: Natalya Smelkova
Greg Clark Sees a Special Path Ahead for Moscow | 25 Managers, Scientists, Artists, Visitors and Residents Select the World’s Best Cities | 26
Design: Roman Teryoshin, Ivan Zemlyachenko
Robert D. Yaro Argues That the Global City Has To Be an Open One | 28 Urban Land Institute Experts Study Moscow and Give Their Recommendations | 30
Cover: Sergey Ratnikov Illustrations: Irina Andreyeva
Ruben Vardanyan Calculates the Cost of Love, Beauty and Scale | 32 Marat Khusnullin Explains Moscow’s New Urban Development Policy | 34 Alexei Novikov Speaks Out Against Expanding the Limits of the City | 39 Irina Starodubrovskaya and Irina Busygina Call for Transferring Powers and Responsibilities to the City | 40 Tom Murphy Advises on the Development of Public-Private Partnerships | 42 Andrei Litvinov Tries to Avoid White Elephants | 44 Max Jeleniewski and Shi Nan Debate Whether Russian Cities Should Follow the European or Chinese Model | 46 Vladimir Paperny Knows How to Sell his Motherland | 50
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David Adam and Juan Carlos Belloso Reveal the Secrets of Successful Urban Brands | 52 Nikolai Novichkov on Attracting Tourists to Russia Cities | 54
Photographs: Artyom Zhitenev, Andrei Smirnov, Tatyana Lee, Alain Vobois
Bill Hutchinson Is Helping to Build a “Smart City” in Skolkovo | 56 Sergei Kapkov Extols the Virtues of Public Space | 58 Marina Khrustaleva Brings Russian Avant-Garde Back from Exile | 60
Printing: A-Format, Mnevniki, 5, Moscow, www.a-format.ru
Oleg Ryndin on Modernizing Residential Property | 62 Philippe Chaix Wants to Bring Business Districts to Life | 64 Veniamin Golubitsky on How to Change a Square Meters’ Market into a Buyers’ Market | 66 Vasily Gatov Ponders the Symbolic Value of the Kremlin | 68 Carlo Ratti Researches How Cities Will Change in the Real-Time Era | 70 Mikhail Blinkin Has a Plan to Fight Traffic Jams | 72 Arthur Markaryan Appeals to the State to Pursue Strict Regulation of Energy Consumption | 76
Circulation (copies): 997 © IRP Group, 2012 Urban Agenda magazine www.irpgroup.ru The magazine has been prepared in cooperation with Moskovskiye Novosti Publishing House www.themoscownews.com
Christopher Choa on What Makes a Sustainable City | 79 Artashes Gazaryan Puts Russian Cities to the Survival Test | 80 Moscow Urban Forum Organizers Tell Us About its Participants | 82 What the Media Said About the Forum | 83 A Photo Essay of the Moscow Urban Forum | 84 Bulat Stolyarov Expands Our Urban Vocabulary | 88
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moscow speaks
A Step to the Understanding of Ourselves
Sergei Sobyanin Moscow Mayor
O
ur life is unimaginable without cities and metropolitan agglomerations. It is the cities where more than a half of the global population resides, and where more than two-thirds of modern GDP is produced. Cities are the centers of politics, culture, knowledge and innovation. The rates and quality of the socioeconomic development of the city are crucial factors affecting the competitiveness of individual countries and geographical regions. Moreover, major metropolitan areas compete globally for business and investment, technologies and innovation, tourists and active, educated, creative residents. While cities have tremendous development potential, they also create huge problems. Critics of modern cities
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point to their negative influence on the environment, to the danger of major industrial disasters, and the political and social conflicts that are a part of urban life. Which development factors, positive or negative, will dominate in a particular city in many ways depends on its geographical position, history, ethnic traditions and, of course, of its residents and political leaders, who choose the image of the future they want for themselves. Cities change much quicker than our knowledge of them. Urbanism, the science of the study of cities, their development and their governance — one of the youngest, dynamic components of human knowledge, which is in great demand now — is becoming increasingly important. Skillful use of international experience and expertise can benefit any city or, at least make it possible for it to avoid many mistakes. That is why the government of Moscow initiated the Moscow Urban Forum as a venue for dialogue, research results, and experience sharing between Russian and foreign researchers, politicians and practicing managers in the sphere of urban development and utility services management. I am sincerely grateful to the 1,300 participants of the Moscow Urban Forum, held in December 2011, for their productive work. Many discussions gave us new ideas, promoting profound awareness of contemporary trends in the development of cities and metropolitan areas. We should admit that, due to historical reasons, science and urban development practice has been isolated from important global trends for a long time in Russia. Of course, we should pay homage to the undoubted success of many Russian cities in mass residential construction, and in the development of science, industry, education and culture. But today we face not only the positive legacy of the past, but also the negative consequences of the Soviet planned economy and the period of uncontrolled development that followed it in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. The long neglect of urban planning and pragmatic development, which often ignored the basic needs of residents, resulted in the fact that today the quality of the urban environment in many Russian cities leaves much to be desired. That is especially clear in the largest city of Russia, Moscow, the capital of the country, as its history of development mirrored practically all the achievements and problems of contemporary Russian cities. A number of key economic and social indices point toward Moscow’s successes. Living standards in Moscow are higher than in most big cities of neighboring countries. Moscow generates 20 percent of Russian GDP and 80 percent of all the country’s financial flows, and a
moscow speaks
considerable part of CIS financial operations pass through Moscow. Moscow’s stock exchange in many indices is one of the top 10 exchanges in the world. Moscow is among the world’s top cities in the number of residents who have received a higher education or who are currently studying in higher education. The population growth in Moscow — 1.5 million over the last decade — also testifies to the attractiveness of our city as a place to study, work and, to a lesser extent, to live in. On the other hand, Muscovites increasingly tell the city’s authorities that the urban environment here is not exactly attractive, that it doesn’t match modern ideas of comfortable urban life. Being aware of this, the Moscow government has set the expert community the highly ambitious task to work out a Development Strategy for Moscow and a Development Concept for the Moscow Metropolitan Area, which covers the city of Moscow proper and the surrounding Moscow Region, with a total population of about 20 million people. These documents should provide a blueprint for the resolution of issues that negatively affect our city. Which issues seem to be of crucial importance for us? Moscow should overcome a concentric arrangement of urban space. Today, a comparatively small area inside the Third Transportation Ring houses the overwhelming proportion of businesses and social activities in the city. At the same time, the outlying areas, the dormitory districts of Moscow, and many satellite cities of the neighboring Moscow Region suffer from an acute deficit of jobs, daily services and opportunities for rational recreation and leisure. The creation of new science, education, business activity and government administration clusters in the territories which are to be added to Moscow in 2012 will help to weaken the overconcentration on the center of the city. An improvement in the perception of Moscow architecture is also an important goal. Moscow has many firstrate buildings, but Moscow architecture as a whole is not perceived as something really attractive. We can find a way out of this situation, by stopping the disharmonizing construction in the center of the city and consistently restoring Moscow’s traditional architectural
The competitiveness of Moscow as a global city will mainly depend on our ability to consolidate the traditional advantages of the capital as a major political, educational, scientific, medical and cultural center for the CIS and Eastern Europe
environment through the renovation of old buildings. The restoration of parks, public gardens and other territories that attract people is also important. The recent decision to create a major municipal park on the site of a former hotel, an ugly piece of concrete dismantled a few years ago, is an example of such an approach. Polycentrism will help to alleviate one more acute problem of modern Moscow — traffic jams — in the future. But we surely cannot wait until new clusters have drawn a considerable part of road traffic away, and the situation improves on its own. We have to start the implementation of a program to expand the Moscow Metro, to update public transit, reconstruct roads and create parking spaces, building the foundations for a balanced and efficient urban transit system. The competitiveness of Moscow as a global city will mainly depend on our ability to consolidate the traditional advantages of the capital as a major political, educational, scientific, medical and cultural center for the CIS and Eastern Europe. We are convinced that Moscow has a chance to export innovative produce and intellectual services — in the IT sector, for instance. In this context, the project of creating an International Financial Center here is also a way to diversify the urban economy and stimulate intellectual export. One more priority is to provide equal opportunities for all residents of Moscow. The city can be really successful only when all its citizens have equal guarantees of security and access to quality social services. And there is one more condition — the last in my list, but no means the least important — for the success of Moscow: The self-organization of the municipal community will be a real factor in its success. A city with a claim to the title of a global center can realize this claim only if a considerable part of the municipal functions of goal-setting, planning, implementation and monitoring are performed by its residents — both directly, and through the mediation of the institutions of public and professional self-governance. To make a long story short, the authorities cannot decide for the people how they should make life comfortable in their city. Flexibility, responsiveness to the daily demands of residents, support for creative initiatives, the ability to correct your own mistakes and the desire for improvements are what will guarantee sustainable development for Moscow. In conclusion, I would like to express my gratitude to the participants and guests of the first Moscow Urban Forum for their enthusiastic involvement in the city’s affairs. We are open for cooperation, for your ideas and for new projects.
urban agenda 2012 05
urban
Mega Events
Industrial Zone Redevelopment pages 13, 24, 28, 46
pages 12,44
Public-Private Partnership pages 15, 22, 30, 42, 59
Resilient Cities pages 79, 80
City Indexes
Green Transportation
pages 26, 88
Public Space
vocabulary
pages 18, 31, 72
Global Cities
pages 13, 18, 56, 58
pages 15, 22, 25, 26, 30, 79
City Brand
Jane Jacobs
Aerotropolis
pages 56, 58
Top-down & Bottom-up pages 10, 40, 46
pages 44, 52, 60
pages 14, 80
Urbanization pages 10, 12
Agglomeration pages 04, 10, 22, 28, 30, 35, 39, 80 International Financial Center pages 25, 28, 64
Creative Class
pages 15, 22, 56, 69 Emerging World Cities pages 24, 25, 88
Development Corporation
Skolkovo pages 32, 56
pages 14, 15
Mixed-Use Development pages 22, 30, 64, 66, 79 Shrinking Cities pages 10, 12, 15, 40, 80 For further information on the terms describing urbanism, visit the Urban Vocabulary 2011 at:
www.urbanforum.ru urban agenda 2012 07
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ULI-a Trusted Ideas Place www.uli-europe.org Join ULI's 30,000 members in 95 countries and become part of the world's most effective urban network www.uli-europe.org ULI’s mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide
Part I Russian Cities Dmitry Kozak, Elvira Nabiullina, Sergei Sobyanin, Maurice Leroy, Alexander Kudryavtsev, Ilya Lezhava, Stephen Karam, German Gref, Edward Blakely, Bulat Stolyarov, Svetlana Serebryakova and Jan Gehl on: Federal Policy for Developing Russian Cities; Experts’ Assessment of the Current Situation; Twelve Terms to Describe Contemporary Urbanism; Eight Solutions to Increase the Competitiveness of Russian Cities; and How Cities Can Be Made for People, Not for Cars.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum plenary session: “Global Solutions for Russian Cities”
urban agenda 2012 russian cities 09
federation
A New Urban Agenda HOW CAN WE HELP RUSSIAN CITIES? Russian cities do not currently meet either the demands of citizens or the challenges of economic development. The time is ripe to formulate a national urban development policy that would see the redistribution of some powers from the federal level to regions and municipalities, changes in legislation and priority development projects for major cities. By Anna Trapkova, IRP Group Business Director and Urban Agenda Editor-in-Chief
T
he discussion of urban development is no longer confined to a small circle of experts — it has become an important subject among the wider public. According to American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” theory, having won the battle for survival and satisfied our primary needs, we need to start thinking about the conditions we are living in. This concern is fully shared by the authorities. They admit that Russian cities are generally uncomfortable, unfriendly and not adapted to the development of the new economy. The plenary session of the 2011 Moscow Urban Forum outlined the fundamental antagonisms in the development of Russian cities. These antagonisms include the transition from Soviet principles in the organization of urban life to today’s market reality; two models of urban development planning (top-down and bottom-up); and the transformation of an industrial economy into a post-industrial one, which is reflected in all aspects of urban life. Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’a Economic Development Minister, received a lively response when she stated that the country is now one of growing major cities and shrinking small towns. Should the federal government focus on helping small cities to escape the crisis, or
Which of these modernization scenarios for Russia’s biggest cities would you prefer to see? Top down: the implementation of a federal mega-project to modernize major cities Bottom up: the federal government transfers more tax revenue and powers to the municipal level Parity in cooperation between the federal authorities and the local community Public investors’ involvement in urban development projects Other
Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll, December 8, 2011
10 russian cities urban agenda 2012
promote the accelerated development of individual major cities, forming growth points for the new economy? This question can be answered only if one has a clear vision of the country’s future space, the minister argued. The Soviet system of building residential areas around industrial enterprises immediately proved to be inefficient after the collapse of the USSR. This Soviet legacy is hundreds of monogorods, or single-industry towns and cities, which, to varying degrees, were not able to adapt to the new economic conditions. To economically sustain the most troubled of these monogorods requires federal investment. World Bank experts say the development of a national urban system could be a response to this challenge. Cities cannot develop when they are separated from each other. The economic success of major urban centers has a positive influence on the second-tier cities, as a rule. The main thing here is to provide good interconnections between them, to develop infrastructure and to plan a system of specialization and incentives. The creation of urban clusters, for instance, is a priority for the Chinese government. The urban agglomerations of the Pearl River Valley and the Yangtze River Valley produce 10 percent and 16 percent of China’s GDP, respectively*. The key to success here is an integrated
To what extent do the strategies and general plans of Russian cities meet their development needs?
* “Systems of Cities” World Bank report, 2009
Who are Russia’s biggest cities more attractive for?
Not at all
Residents
A little
Tourists
In many ways
Business
Fully
Officials
Hard to say
No one
federation
system of economic ties, promoting the successful development of large (more than a million people), medium and small cities. Maurice Leroy, France’s Urban Affairs Minister, gave an example of the European approach to territorial planning. The Grand Paris project, initiated by President Nicolas Sarkozy, has gone through a long process* of preliminary public consultations and approvals. The project, which will take 15 years to implement, aims to develop the infrastructure to form new economic activity hubs around Paris. Moscow in many ways had this example in mind when it announced an international competition to draw up its agglomeration development concept. Such projects as Grand Paris or Greater Moscow are, by definition, unique. But the problems they are seek to resolve are not unique to these cities. Many of Russia’s biggest cities are constrained by their existing boundaries, and are unable to plan for their development within a greater agglomeration. The term agglomeration is not recognized in Russia’s Urban Development Code. Currently, it is practically impossible to build a management structure that allows for a dialogue between various administrative areas. Thus, agglomeration projects in Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ufa and other cities still remain on paper only.
The potential formula for national urban development policy is decentralization plus accelerated development projects for major cities
Evidently, it is time for the federal authorities to formulate an urban development policy. The potential formula for such a policy, made public at the Urban Forum, is a combination of decentralization plus accelerated development projects for major cities. It is clear that Russian cities today lack the powers and resources necessary for their development. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that municipal authorities, as a rule, are extremely dependent on higher authorities in their decision-making. Municipalities are not prepared to take responsibility for their decisions, they lack the necessary tools and management competence to attract additional funding and they are not motivated to pursue real improvements. Thus, Urban Forum participants believe that Russian cities should, first and foremost, work on management innovations and on enhancing their human resources. A serious management issue is that strategies and general plans under development usually do not meet the demands of Russian cities. Seventy-five percent of Forum participants either fully or partially agreed with this statement in our interactive poll. As a matter of fact, the Russian system of management traditionally separates the functions of economic and urban development planning, while they are interdependent in many cities around the world. As a result, urban development plans are not tied to economic reality. Moreover, according to the most recent Urban Development Code, cities’ general plans have an exclusively advisory nature, and the legislation does not contain the term of the urban development strategy, as such. Thus, while we build the city in stone and concrete, we neglect to answer the basic question of its long-term goals. Obviously, amending current legislation, which has been discussed for many years by the professional community, should form a part of the federal government’s action to support the country’s cities.
A Formula for Success 1. Formulating a federal urban development policy that defines priority growth points 2. Transfer of powers and resources to the city and regional level 3. Amending the Urban Development Code to introduce an urban development strategy, to form agglomeration planning tools and the modernization of the general plan as an institution 4. Development of transport infrastructure within and between cities 5. The creation of modern education programs for city managers and urban development specialists
what the experts say:
Dmitry Kozak,
Elvira Nabiullina,
Sergei Sobyanin,
Alexander
Ilya Lezhava,
Stephen Karam,
Deputy Prime Minister
Economic Development
Moscow Mayor
Kudryavtsev,
Chairman, Urban
Senior Urban
President, Russian
Development, Moscow
Economist,
Academy of
Architecture Institute
World Bank
“Our immediate urban development task is the salvation of lost cities. Our strategic aim is the creation of a transportation backbone for Russia.”
“The city cannot function separated from the space around us. Here we mean not only the cities and the neighboring rural districts, but also links between cities around the world.”
Minister
“It is major cities which have tremendous growth potential and which are already playing, or potentially can play, the role of the engines of socioeconomic development for whole regions.”
“Even if decentralization is introduced, it would not eliminate the issue of targeted support for the accelerated development of individual major cities. This requires mutual action by the federal, regional and municipal authorities that is well coordinated and well staffed.”
“Cities are where active, clever and ambitious people now congregate. Our task is to make the city convenient and comfortable for the life of such people. This is our guiding principle.”
Architecture and Construction Science
“We have tremendous experience in project making. But today it is the aspect of implementing strategic and tactical plans of territorial development which is especially important.”
urban agenda 2012 russian cities
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German Gref, President, Sberbank
Learning Urban ABCs
I
am not an urbanist or an architect, but all my life has been associated with cities — I lived in St. Petersburg for a long time, and I’ve been living in Moscow for 15 years. I also travel a lot around the world and can compare things. I can’t help feeling concern about the condition of Russian cities. As an urban resident, I’m not satisfied with the quality of the urban environment, and, consequently, with the quality of life. As a business traveler, I’m not satisfied with the level of infrastructure in many cities. As the head of the biggest bank of the country, I don’t see enough investment projects eligible for financing in our cities. Today the unsatisfactory condition of Russian cities is an obstacle on the path of modernizing the Russian economy, but they could also become promising points of growth. That is why the development of cities should become a national priority. We are in the habit of discussing our programs as unique ones. But this is not so. Our belief in our own specific development path is too strong, and too often we don’t want to learn from somebody else’s experience. I suggest that we should break away from this tradition and review the condition of Russian cities, based on 12 important criteria of modern urbanism. What follows is not so much a dictionary as a list of areas where we need to improve the urban environment in Russia.
Urbanization In 2009, the world passed an important threshold: the number of urban residents exceeded the number of people living in rural areas. The rate of urbanization is gradually slowing, but the population of cities is still growing. According to United Nations forecasts, 6.3 billion people will live in cities by 2050. High urbanization rates are mainly driven by countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This is where the new global cities will emerge in the next few decades. Yet, even today we have more than 100 cities of more than 1 million people in China, and many of them have been planned and developed as modern industrial, education, innovative and logistics centers.
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Russia experienced a turbulent urbanization process during the last century. Now it is time to improve our cities. If we don’t do it, our cities will lose out in the competition not only with the major metropolitan areas of Europe and the United States, but also with the emerging cities of Brazil, India and China a few years later. This is even more important because today more than threequarters of Russians reside in cities, and investment in improving the urban environment will be investment in improving the quality of life for the majority of the Russian population.
Metropolitan Agglomeration Growth The 21st century will be an era of large cities, metropolitan areas and agglomerations. While only New York, Tokyo and Mexico were regarded as megacities 30 years ago, we have 21 global metropolitan areas today, and, according to UN forecasts, we’ll have about 30 of them by 2025. Major cities absorb new population inflows, and keep growing, annexing their suburbs. The main issue for such agglomerations is the synchronization in development strategies and territorial planning between the city and its suburbs.
Russia experienced a turbulent urbanization process during the last century. Now it is time to improve our cities. If we don’t do it, our cities will lose out in the competition not only with the major metropolitan areas of Europe and the United States, but also with the emerging cities of Brazil, India and China a few years later
Commentary based on a speech by German Gref at the Moscow Urban Forum
column
What do global cities compete for today?
Investors Residents Tourists Students Other Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll results, December 8, 2011
In this respect, the expansion of Moscow is a perfect solution. There has been no coordination between the city of Moscow and the Moscow Region for many years. We are on the threshold of collapse, as a result — in Moscow’s suburbs and the outlying areas, dozens of millions of square meters of new residential property were constructed in a situation when the radical expansion of the road network was impossible. Car ownership grew at the same time, and the situation was exacerbated by the still-persisting concentration of business functions in the tiny center of Moscow. If you take a helicopter ride over Moscow, you can see the chaotic growth of the metropolitan area: prefabricated panel residential high-rises, suburban-type villages, warehouses and shops. And all this was built with a total lack of infrastructure. The world has diverse experience in dealing with such issues. Most metropolitan areas find a way to meet this challenge without expanding their administrative boundaries, through the coordination of development plans between the city and its neighboring territories. But Russian legislation does not facilitate the coordination of plans this way. So, like always, we had to take an innovative decision to take the pressure off of the center of Moscow, and to move some management and business functions to the new territory.
Shrinking Cities In developed countries, as major cities grow, smalland medium-sized cities shrink demographically and economically, especially when they are built around industrial enterprises. Due to the size of the country, this tendency became an urgent issue for Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the former economic model. Even such a major regional center as Murmansk has lost 30 percent of its population recently. We should find an answer to the question of which institutions, ideas and resources can drive the transition to a new stage in development.
Deindustrialization Worn-out or outdated production facilities are an important issue for major cities. In an era of innovation and services, the physical area used by industrial enterprises has been rapidly shrinking. Production is being transferred outside city boundaries, while the deserted legacy of the industrial era often remains within the city. Deindustrialization is practically over in developed countries, while the process is still beginning in Russia
today. About 20 percent of Moscow’s territory is made up of the sites of former Soviet factories. Some of them will be dismantled, while others of historical value can and should be redeveloped as creative clusters. The renovation process depends on the city in question and the specifics of its territory. Barcelona, for instance, transformed an old rusty seaport into the best municipal beach in Europe while preparing for the Olympics. And London has built one of the most successful financial centers on the land of a former industrial zone. We should take the same road.
From City 1.0 to City 3.0 Our cities, in their quality and ideology, lag behind the best global practice for almost two generations already. We have not yet moved from industrial cities to cities for people that offer high quality of life to their residents. The world’s leading cities are already developing according to the “City 3.0” ideology, the ideology of network cities that orient their strategic marketing at certain target audiences, such as bankers, designers or innovators. To reduce this gap, we should invest in accelerated development.
Reasonable Growth No matter how the size and population of cities grow, it is important to consistently work on retaining and enhancing the comfort and quality of the urban environment. A balance of residential and commercial development, of infrastructure and public space, should be found for each block, so that every person can satisfy the maximum number of his or her needs within walking distance. Unfortunately, few Russian developers follow the principle of reasonable growth. We rather tend to extract the maximum profit on every square meter of buildings constructed, forgetting about the quality of the urban environment.
Public Spaces The crucial element of modern urban infrastructure is public space: parks, public gardens and squares. They provide an opportunity to form communities, for creative exchange and communication — all of which are important for innovators, for the creative class. During the Soviet period, our cities’ public space was used for political rallies and parades. Today, when the Communist ideology is dead, there’s no new concept for the use of public space. Parks and palaces were dotted with commercial objects, as a result. We are only now starting to think about the importance of public space for the appearance of the city and for its quality of life.
City Branding Composite Comfort Index of Russian Cities (score out of 100 points) Residents Tourists
51.2 52.3
Investors Urban Index Russia 2011 (a poll of more than 300 experts)
67.9
As global competition between metropolitan areas grew cities, just like companies, felt the need for marketing and branding. Russia does not have a single urban brand today, unfortunately. Before creating a brand, one should formulate what product or service, and for what audience you are selling. There are no clear answers to these questions in most Russian cities. Marketing and branding are important tasks for municipal and regional authorities. They should create an individual image for the city to find its unique traits in history, in its past, present and future.
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The main investors in any metropolitan area are its residents
The Events Industry Local and international events, ranging from athletic competitions to exhibitions and festivals, stimulate the urban economy, attracting tourists, and help to form a brand. The potential of the events and conference industry has not been evaluated and realized in Russia yet. Even organizing such events as the 2014 Winter Olympics, we tend to forget many things. Instead of perceiving the event as an opportunity to arrange work with investors and to improve the investment climate, we cover all the expenses from the state budget. Instead of thinking about a legacy of the Olympics that will stay with Sochi residents, we ask them to be patient for five to six years until the construction of special guest zones is over. As a result, the city gets practically nothing from this event. Russia has yet to learn how to work out a business model for the event that can benefit the economy as a whole, and to perceive events as a real tool for urban development.
Aerotropolis An airport is crucial for the modern city. Concentrating an ever growing number of processes, it grows, becoming a city within a city, the so-called aerotropolis. The first impression of such a place is always the most important one. Lee Kuan Yew, the author of the “Singapore economic miracle,” wrote that the main highway for each mayor or governor is the road from the airport to the city. This is true, but the Russian reality does not match this. Some foreigners told me that, having arrived at
Sheremetyevo Airport and passed through passport and customs control, they bought a return ticket and flew away because they had no desire to stay in the country. Russia has appalling procedures for border and customs control, an unfriendly system of airport structure management and poor connections between airports and the urban centers. We still have an underdeveloped regional air communication network, and modern airports are built in the regions often to mark big celebrations. It is impossible to speak of the development of our cities as global units with “air gateways” of appropriate quality.
Strategy A well-designed system of strategic planning is necessary to change the situation in Russian cities. The quality of urban strategies and master plans has crucial importance for any city of the world. For this reason, developed countries are not in the habit of relying on the competence of national urban planners — instead, they attract the best international talents to develop their cities on the basis of competitions. Until recently, Russian cities preferred to follow their own, specific path. But we should face the truth: today we lack a sufficient number of highly skilled urbanists, and we must educate a new generation integrated in the international community.
Urban Development Corporations The issues faced by Russian cities cannot be resolved only by the efforts of their senior officials or the state budget. Urban development corporations now manage the transformations of urban environments around the world. These corporations bring together the interests of public and private investors, provide administrative and infrastructure support for successful projects and organize their funding. The most important thing is that their activity is absolutely transparent and accountable to the residents of the city, for the main investors of any metropolitan area are its residents.
From the City of the Past to the City of the Future
Direction 1
1.0
THE CAR CITY Russian cities Cities for work Product – infrastructure
Accelerated development
Direction 2 Catching-up development
3.0
NETWORK CITIES Cities of the future Post-information cities Products – cultural codes, communication
2.0
CITIES FOR PEOPLE European cities Cities for life Product – habitat
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column
Edward Blakely Sydney University, Honorary Professor of Urban Policy at the United States Studies Center
8 solutions for Russian cities
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o one improves unless they listen. Only the city that learns and listens is able to adapt and improve. Today people are not just concerned with the kind of place they live, but with the quality of the life they live and how that relates to what they want to be and what they want their communities to be. This concern dramatically changes the role of urbanists, architects and city managers — all those who are responsible for the development of a city. Cities were generally planned for economic activity, Russian cities included, and people there were but parts of the machine. The situation is different now, people are no longer part machinery and factories. And our notions of what the city is like, of what is important for the competitiveness of the modern city also changed. So here are the factors of the new urban competitiveness and what planners have to be most interested in. Livability and attractiveness. The most attractive cities in the world even in an economic downturn are still drawing people toward them. San Francisco is still growing in an economic downturn. Vancouver is still growing in an economic downturn. Governance, not government. All the big cities that are making progress in the world have a group outside of government called a civic interest group. These people are there when the government changes. They have the larger urban agenda. They are forecasting the future. Creativity and diversity. The city should be international and cosmopolitan, where people of all races, all people are working together in all disciplines, all areas, making, creating, innovating, making new things. Smarter buildings, not bigger building. We don’t need more factories, we need more space for people to develop ideas and create wealth from universities and laboratories that will find cures to diseases and find better ways to communicate electronically and socially. That is what makes a city competitive today. So what awaits Russian cities in future? Globalization is the only way, I believe. Three Russian cities are global cities already: St. Petersburg, Moscow. The third one is Vladivostok, so now it is part of the Far East. You have to look at how cities can globalize: what cities will be national cities, what cities will be regional cities, and what
are the distinctive features in these cities that make them important? Here are eight things that will be useful for Moscow and other Russian cities, that will make them more competitive and livable and globally attractive. The first is to start with international help to build your cities. Don’t build your city by yourself. All the great cities, New York and so forth, have used international experience. They organized international competitions to their develop master plans, and they also had international people, like Jan Gehl who worked in Sydney, working with them all the time. The second is governance through development corporations, not just governors. The development corporation can bring global capacity to the development of the city. The third is to develop poly-central clusters of development, not to stay mono-centered. Here you can use the examples of San Francisco and Shanghai, which do not force things to the center, they are creating new peripheries. The fourth is the quality of architecture for the city. This is more important that the quality of architecture for the buildings. Seoul is the best example. They tore down the freeways allowing the growth of green things; Shanghai is doing the same thing. Fifth, the master plan is very important. But the plan is a plan for 30–40–50 years and again it is run by a civic organization, not the government. The government is a participant, but not the mover. The sixth is equity. If little people are not important in your city, big people will fail. So it is very important to work on the problems of the poor, the way Chicago and many other cities have done. Seventh, public-private partnerships and government funding should rule the day. Why should the transport system be run by the government? In Melbourne we have it run by a private firm. Many other places are running major infrastructure as public-private partnership. And the last, you have to learn how to manage economic ups and downs. Not all cities will succeed. Detroit, the American capital of automotive industry, is a depressed city now. Cleveland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh have learned to be successful at a different, smaller, size. Resilience, the ability to adapt and to learn guarantee sustainable development for cities.
Commentary based on a speech by Edward Blakely at the Moscow Urban Forum
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urban index
Can Do Better BUT WHICH IMPROVEMENTS SHOULD RUSSIAN CITIES MAKE? When preparing for the 2011 Moscow Urban Forum, IRP Group conducted the first in-depth survey of how the 12 Russian cities of 1 million people or more are perceived by their elites. The overall index of the urban environment in 2011 was 53.6 points out of 100. That translates to a somewhat disappointing D+ mark on the academic A-E scale. By Bulat Stolyarov, IRP Group General Director and Moscow Urban Forum Producer, and Svetlana Serebryakova, IRP Group Business Director
T
he IRP Group survey involved architects, urban development experts, entrepreneurs, cultural figures and public officials from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Samara and Volgograd. More than 300 experts from these cities filled an integrated questionnaire that helped us assess the condition of these cities according to basic developmental factors; the priorities of the users of municipal services; and realistic ways of improving the urban environment, according to a 100-point scale.
What Is Bad Here are the worst factors in the Russian urban environment, according to the experts we surveyed: Road network, traffic jams: 22.3 points. The assessment was equally low in all cities, except Chelyabinsk. Environmental situation in the city: 33.2 points. Equally low assessment everywhere, except Novosibirsk. Access to kindergartens and schools: 36.2 points. The situation was perceived as a bit better in Yekaterinburg and Kazan (more than 40 points), while people from Samara and Volgograd viewed the situation as quite negative (less than 25 points). Small business environment: 40.3 points. The lowest score was in Moscow (31.6 points) and the highest was in Yekaterinburg (almost twice as much). Access to healthcare services: 41.1 points. The biggest problems are in Moscow and St. Petersburg (below 35 points). In Novosi-
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Russian cities cannot yet satisfy quite a lot of basic human needs, but we’re starting to perceive the state of culture, education and architecture as acceptable in general birsk and Chelyabinsk the assessment of the situation is better (above 50 points). Urban noise: 41.3 points. Moscow residents are among those who suffer most. Security, protection from crime: 41.6 points. People in Yekaterinburg and Omsk feel the most secure (above 50 points), while Muscovites feel the least secure (31.6 points). Favorable employment opportunities: 43.6 points. The range in experts’ assessment is huge here: in Yekaterinburg people have “great opportunities” (62.5 points), while in Volgograd experts see a deep recession in the job market (22.9 points).
What Looks Fine Commerce levels — shops, malls, supermarket chains: 76.9 points. Experts gave equally high assessment for all cities, except Volgograd. Communication infrastructure — telephones, Internet, mobile communications:
75.2 points. The scores were equally satisfactory in almost every city. Public catering — restaurants, cafés, fast food chains: 70.9 points. In Yekaterinburg the assessment was the highest (83.3 points), while the lowest was in Volgograd (58.3 points). Regular provision and access to utility services: 66.8 points. Most cities gave an equally high assessment, with more satisfaction among the experts from Moscow (76.7 points), and less satisfaction in Rostov-on-Don (51.2 points). Convenient transport connections to other cities in Russia and the rest of the world: 66.5 points. One interesting finding is that experts from Yekaterinburg (82.1 points) feel that they are better integrated into the world outside Russia, than those from Moscow (72.3 points). Experts from Volgograd experts see their city as an out-of-the-way place (41.7 points). Quality of higher and vocational education: 66 points. The maximum satisfaction is observed in Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Novosibirsk, while the minimum level is in Ufa. Visual attractiveness of cities: 65.7 points. The satisfaction level, according to this index, is paradoxically quite high. St. Petersburg residents are very satisfied with the appearance of their city (83.3 points), while Volgograd residents have a lot of questions about the appearance of their city (52.1 points). The assessment of Moscow is in the middle. Quality of cultural life, including theaters, museums and concerts: 62.4 points. Assessments were uniformly high, with a spike in
urban index
St. Petersburg (77.8 points). But in Volgograd, experts view the quality of their city’s cultural life as disastrous (29.2 points). The obvious metaphor summing up this assessment is the idea expressed in American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” Russian cities cannot yet satisfy quite a lot of basic human needs (transport, environment, security, healthcare, schools, with assessments ranging from D to E), but the state of culture, education and architecture seems to be acceptable as a whole. Cities with higher assessments of the quality of basic products (Yekaterinburg, Rostov-onDon and Kazan) manifest greater demand for the values of the next tier.
Utility services: 77.1 points. Experts as a whole assess the state of utility services in large Russian cities as acceptable, but this does not make these services less significant for the life of their cities. Security: 75.2 points. This is given the highest priority by the experts from Russia’s two capitals (St. Petersburg — 84.7 points, Moscow — 81.1 points), which is fully explained by their low assessment of security in both cities. Environment: 74.2 points. This is also an urgent challenge for urban policy: the condition of the environment in Russia’s largest cities is characterized as a sphere of great priority, and of the biggest problems.
What Is Important
Who Finds Russia’s Cities Convenient?
What services are among the most important today for the experts in Russia’s leading cities? Road network, intersections, parking: 83.5 points. This is the subject where experts from all cities are in absolute consensus. We should not forget that this is not just the first priority, but also the factor where the condition is perceived as the most negative. So, transport problems are the main challenge for all of Russia’s biggest cities. Healthcare and education are next: 81.3 points. Experts share the greatest consensus about their importance, with the highest score (93.1 points) given by the experts from St. Petersburg.
Experts assessed the convenience of the cities for their residents, business and tourists. As a whole, respondents believe that the conditions for investors in our cities are much more attractive today than for residents and tourists. The overall convenience index of Russia’s largest cities for entrepreneurs is 67.9 points. The highest score is in Yekaterinburg (77.4 points), while the lowest is in Volgograd (39.6 points). Positive factors affecting the business climate in Russian cities are the availability of commercial real estate and the access to a skilled workforce. Negative factors affecting the urban busi-
The Best and the Worst Aspects of Russian Urban Environment (100 points) Development of commerce Communication infrastructure Public catering Regularity and availability of utility services Convenient transit links to the other cities in Russia and around the world Higher and vocational education quality Appearance of the city, visual attractiveness Good employment opportunities Environment, safety of life, protection from crime Access to healthcare services Small business environment Access to kindergartens and schools Environment situation in the city Road network, traffic jams
Urban Index Russia 2011 (a poll of more than 300 experts)
ness environment include a shortage of land available for construction, and the lack of support from municipal authorities for private investment. The overall convenience index for tourists is 52.3 points. Respondents from St. Petersburg and Kazan view their cities as most comfortable for tourists, while those from Volgograd and Omsk see them as the least comfortable. The services most appreciated by tourists are quite diverse, but mostly include cafés and restaurants. An insufficient supply of suitable hotel and hostel accommodation are cited as the biggest drawback for tourists. It is remarkable that, while the experts rank Russian cities poorly in their convenience for tourists, they do not see the development of the travel industry as a particularly high priority (62.8 points). Only St. Petersburg, Kazan and Yekaterinburg (with priority assessments above 70 points) see a pressing need to become more attractive to tourists. The overall convenience index of Russia’s biggest cities for residents is 51.2 points. The difference between the assessments here is almost double, with 63.1 points in Yekaterinburg and 35.4 points in Volgograd.
What Needs to Be Done It was suggested that experts assess alternative trajectories for the improvement of the urban environment. These trajectories were divided into three vectors of development: managerial (improving the management system for the city), civic (reliance on civic activity for the improvement of the urban environment), and technology (reliance on better technology used in the urban economy). Experts see the greatest hope for cities in improving management systems (73.4 points). They saw the top priorities as the need for a well-developed strategy and general plan for the city (80.4 points), fighting corruption (78 points) and improving management teams (74.2 points). Experts saw less need for reliance on civic activism. The need to rely on the support of public initiatives and grassroots activism received 62.4 points. Public initiatives were seen as more valuable for the progress of the city in Novosibirsk (72.6 points), and less valuable in Samara (50 points). Prospects for the technological development of the cities were assessed at the level of 64.6 points by participants in the survey. Experts assessed the need for technological improvements in the municipal economy approximately equally, regardless of their city’s status.
urban agenda 2012 russian cities
17
guru
Jan Gehl Gehl Architects
Cities for People, Not Machines
F
ifty years ago, graduating from the architecture institute, I planned to build high-rises and regulate traffic flows. But then I married a psychologist, and her tough questions made me study how architecture and people interact. This was the beginning of a 40-year period when I studied the relations of architecture, psychology and social science. The explosive growth in car usage produced a shift in the urban planning paradigm. Traditionally, distances were small in the cities and people walked a lot. Cities grew slowly, house by house, street by street, and people cared for their cities. Walking around your city, you look at people and buildings on your way. But traveling at a speed of 60 kilometers an hour, you notice nothing but big buildings and forget what a nice city is like. The most urgent task was to provide space and capacity for cars. Every city has a transportation department. But do you know a city with a department for pedestrian and public life? The mass invasion of cars made urban planners forget about people’s quality of life. They stopped developing public space and tried to make cars happy instead. A new principle of planning emerged in the 1960s: separated high-rises were popular. People thought that you saw a lot of greenery from them, but now you can see nothing but parking from their windows. The growth of cities made people take a bird’s eye view of them. Brasilia, for instance, the capital of Brazil, is fantastic when viewed from above, but its streets and buildings are ugly. Nobody thought what the city would look like at residents’ eye level. People were forgotten in the development of modern cities. Architects built bigger and bigger buildings, but people were still little creatures who walked at the speed of 5 kilometers an hour. There are old districts in Copenhagen, more than a century old, where a bird’s eye view is boring and dull. No contemporary architecture school would accept such a project, accusing its author of poor imagination and a lack of creative potential. Yet, at human eye level, such streets are wonderful: there’s greenery and parks there, people walk around the streets and there are few cars.
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You have to orient yourself on a human scale when planning. For quite a long time nobody in architecture universities required us to care for people; nobody taught that. But approaches to urban planning are changing again. People have been gradually re-conquering cities since 1980s, and now whole programs are being launched to recover the traditional role of public spaces. There is no room for cars there; people are exhausted by monolithic cities and transportation. We want to create a living, attractive, safe, healthy and environmentally friendly city. And if you orient urban planning toward human beings, caring for pedestrians and cyclists, you’ll succeed in every direction. A city of that kind will have less noise and dust, but more people. It will be safer both during the day, and during the night. When more people walk and cycle around, it has less of an impact on the climate. Public transit is part of this chain; you have to create the conditions for transit in parallel with the development of pedestrian and bicycle zones. Our health problems are increasing. Many people don’t work physically, don’t move around, instead sitting in their offices. But you can plan cities to create the conditions for daily walks and cycle rides. Half an hour’s walk
Commentary based on a speech by Jan Gehl at the Moscow Urban Forum
EVEN IN WINTER, COPENHAGEN RESIDENTS PREFER CYCLING TO OTHER KINDS OF TRANSPORT
guru
People in Moscow are too kind to transportation. You should remove superfluous roads. If you do it slowly, as we did in Copenhagen, people will hardly notice it BROADWAY, NEW YORK, PACKED WITH CARS…
in the morning or in the afternoon, or a short cycle ride, can increase life expectancy by seven years. And this will have positive effect on the municipal budget, saving money that would otherwise be spent on expanding the hospital network and purchasing medicines. Attempts to prioritize cars in urban policy lead nowhere. The more road surface you have, the higher the traffic. With less road surface, you have less traffic, too. One of San Francisco’s main highways was destroyed during an earthquake. People thought that the city would be paralyzed. Yet, three months later it was clear that people could do without this highway. A boulevard with streetcars and beautiful parks replaced it. In Seoul, the city’s mayor brought the river back from the underground pipe and let it flow where a highway was, as it was beautiful. And transportation found new routes easily. London established an £8 congestion charge for vehicles to enter the center of the city. The number of cars dropped 18 percent the next day. People in Moscow are too kind to transportation. You should remove superfluous roads. If you do it slowly, as we did in Copenhagen, people will hardly notice it. A truly safe transit system, an alternative to cars, could develop in a bicycle-friendly environment. Make your city comfortable and convenient for bicycles – and the number of cyclists, aged from five to 95, will skyrocket. The bicycle is simultaneously a cheap form of transport, physical exercise and a pleasure. There are few cars in Copenhagen. Even in winter, 37 percent of traffic is cyclists. People start cleaning snow from the bicycle lanes, first and foremost. But there are problems, of course. We have traffic jams on bicycle lanes. But imagine what would happen if every cyclist drove a car. The jam would be five times longer. The more room bicycles have, the less remains for cars. Copenhagen engineers gradually reduced the areas available for parking every year. They followed the principle that, if you don’t have parking space, nobody would
…AND PEOPLE
use cars. So, Copenhagen was the first city on the planet that cared for the life of its people. Over the last 40 years the time people spend in the street grew from two months to 10. There is almost no winter in Copenhagen today, because people like it in the street all year round. Trees are growing where there was asphalt in the past. There are many examples of places that have changed dramatically in recent decades. Amazing work was done in Melbourne, a typical New World city, boring and dull. Municipal authorities expanded pavements, installed benches, planted flowers and trees, and created artistic elements in public spaces. Now Melbourne residents walk a lot and admire their city. In the last decade, the city won the award as the most livable city in the world four times. And that’s a city far away from the world’s other main urban centers! Vancouver in Canada is now recognized as a very livable city. Cyclists and pedestrians are a priority for local authorities, not cars. Even Washington has a bicycle lane in the main street of the city, which runs right up to the Senate building. Some time ago, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided to transform his city into the greenest metropolitan area in the world. A plan to lay 6,000 kilometers of bicycle lanes and increase the number of public spaces which would make the city more open and friendly, is already under way. And the city administration thought of leaving the best places of the city for people, not for cars. As an experiment, a part of Broadway near the city’s famous Times Square, was closed to traffic and turned into a pedestrian zone. This idea was a tremendous success, and the mayor announced that this temporary measure would become permanent. Thanks to this “experiment,” New York has become a greener, more people-oriented city in the space of a few months. In conclusion, I’d like to cite Frank Sinatra’s song:
“If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. It’s up to you, Moscow, Moscow!”
urban agenda 2012 russian cities 19
A KEY TO CREATION
Detailed information:
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Part II Global Moscow Andrei Sharonov, Marat Khusnullin, Greg Clark, Robert D. Yaro, Alexander Voloshin, Grigory Revzin, Ruben Vardanyan, Jim Heid, David Adam, Christopher Choa, Erwin Daalhuisen, Michael Denkel, Rosemary Feenan, Paul Jeffrey, Tom Murphy and Robert Ravelli on: What Moscow Is Competing For; How Global Cities Are Developing, and Which Are Judged the Best by Managers, Researchers, Artists, Tourists and Residents; How Russia’s Capital Could Become Not Only a Global, But Also an Open City; What the Urban Land Institute’s Advisory Panel Recommends for Moscow; What the Cost of Love, Beauty and Scale Is; and What Will Be Built in Moscow in the Near Future, and How.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum plenary session: “Moscow — Russia’s World City,” the ULI Advisory Panel Report “Expertise for Moscow,” and the discussion “Development in Moscow: What and How to Build?”
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moscow speaks
Andrei Sharonov: Moscow Competes for People, First and Foremost
Andrei Sharonov Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Economic Policy
Competing With Other Global Cities Recently we have been increasingly discussing the global competition of cities and regions. Although this notion is relative and the competition between territories differs from the competition between companies, we cannot ignore the fact that it exists. Moscow actually competes with various cities. And first and foremost, it competes for people — for those who live in Russia and other cities of the world who could live in Moscow. Here we mean the top cities of the world, such as London, Paris, Berlin and Singapore, and the cities which are closer to our level, such as Warsaw, Prague, Helsinki, Istanbul, Kiev, Beijing and Shanghai. This list of cities is not accidental — it is a practical choice for someone aiming at self-actualization, a career, who is a finance or business professional, and who wants to work for a major international company. Business opportunities in the city, accessible and convenient flights to other global areas, and the all-round quality of life are important for such people. But we also compete with Russian cities. People from other cities that have more than 1 million residents, and from out-of-the-way regions, assess their prospects and
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think where they should live — in Chelyabinsk, Moscow or Geneva. If a person can afford this choice on principle, it means that this person has quite a significant value in the market where he or she creates added value. We are interested in people of this kind. The number of professions that are not tied to a particular place of residence or workplace has been growing recently. So some people prefer smaller cities, with their better climate or more comfortable life, rather than moving to Moscow with its mad rhythms. But it is very important to help these people live in your city, because it is these people who create the environment, offering effective demand for expensive services and products, and for the culture industry. And this demand, in its turn, creates a niche for other people who produce exclusive commodities and services. And vice versa, if you have a lot of people, but they are satisfied with low-cost and low-quality supply that does not create rich supply chains, quantity will not be transformed into quality. Fortunately, this is not the case with Moscow. Metropolitan areas are fascinating in their fantastic demand for huge numbers of commodities and services, driving up the inflow of producers and consumers. And the city grows and becomes wealthy as a result.
Creating a Favorable Investment Climate An unfavorable business and investment climate is an issue for the whole of Russia. The justice and law enforcement systems, the quality of regulation and corruption — all these factors weaken the competitive advantages of Moscow in every sphere. This is made worse by a purely Moscow phenomenon: the Russian capital significantly lags behind other Russian cities in ease of doing business. For many years procedural issues, especially those associated with development activities, became more complicated and confusing in Moscow as officials created the conditions for unfair competition and rent-seeking behavior. All this drove up the cost of doing business in Moscow. In part, the city’s former authorities had a haughty attitude to investors: They said, “We don’t see any need for investors — we can use Moscow’s key resource, its land, for ourselves, and gain unlimited rent.” Under this system, maximum profits were a priority. Have a look at the
moscow speaks
latest reports of Moscow’s Department for Cultural Heritage. It turns out that during the last 20 years as many buildings were constructed in the center of the city as during the whole Soviet period. Could that be called caring for the welfare of the city? The situation is changing, but the change is slow in coming. The fact that Moscow’s new city government suspended activity on investment contracts involving about 8 million square meters is not making investors and developers happy — even more so, because they are not to blame for this. This painful step is the cost of mistakes made by the city’s former authorities, which sometimes issued building permits for obscure reasons, even when this clashed with the city’s normal life. We admit that it is not possible to bully the city, to drive it hard without caring a damn how it will go on living, breathing and so on. Yet today, when we are trying to change this practice here, they tell us: you are making the investment climate worse. We should realize that improving Moscow’s heritage is a difficult and complicated process. It took more than a year for the Urban Development and Use Commission, created for this purpose, to conduct a preliminary review of 1,175 suspended investment contracts. I devote six hours every week to this work, and you can imagine how much time my colleagues need for the preliminary preparation and analysis of these projects. And sometimes we reach an impasse, where you cannot find any way forward, as some documents have been destroyed and the investor blames the municipal authorities for everything. Some cases of this kind have been going on for 10 or 20 years. But there is good news too: the city is pushing forward with the work to develop land use and construction rules on individual lots now. The Urban Development and Land Use Commission will be the main body to work with developers to provide the utmost transparency in the process of resolving all the applications, including the issue of Land Lot Development Plans (GPZU). An office for the protection of business interests under the auspices of the core department has been created, and entrepreneurs can appeal to it as an emergency agency to help resolve their problems, including those involving municipal governance bodies, and to review proposals concerning systemic improvements in the business environment. But major changes still lie ahead. Moscow is on the threshold of reviewing a general plan and trying to conceptualize its future within the boundaries of the agglomeration. The expansion of Moscow creates both opportunities and problems. You can’t exclude competition for investments between the historical center and the new territories which will strongly attract investments, including budget investments. So, this is what the city is busy with. It is clear that these processes require a lot of time, although everybody would like to have everything go better, with more clarity, and quicker. But you shouldn’t forget that investment is not just construction. The city should create investment opportunities on the basis of existing real estate. There is a tradition to solve all problems through construction not only in Moscow, but also in Russia as a whole. But a closer examination reveals that the city often does not need
Moscow is on the threshold of reviewing a general plan and trying to conceptualize its future within the boundaries of the agglomeration. The expansion of Moscow creates both opportunities and problems the construction of a new building; it needs a service, and it is not necessary to construct new buildings for that. We are not in the habit of looking at the value of the assets provided by the huge heritage of the city, and we are not very good in managing what we have. Many investors keep saying: “Don’t make us build things. We are not here for that, we want to create and sell new products and services.”
Public-Private Partnership There has been no law on public-private partnership in Moscow yet. Today we are at the initial stage of preparing the legal basis, working in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, but we intend to complete this work in the second half of 2012. It is obvious that it is useless to write this plan only for Moscow — one should analyze and amend federal regulations. We shall review the best practice in Russia and abroad when developing the law for Moscow. In my view, we have some of the most successful experiments in public-private partnership projects in St. Petersburg now. These are the West High-Speed Diameter, the city’s waste recycling plant and the reconstruction of Pulkovo Airport. We are striving to formulate the same comprehensive approach here.
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moscow speaks
We can’t say that there was no public-private partnership in Moscow before. We had water and waste recycling projects following the BOT model*. But that experience was negative, as its reputation was bad: people came to believe that private-public partnership is when all the money goes to a private investor, and the city spends huge funds to buy something that took a lot of time to build. We want to avoid the discrediting of this type of activity. A more professional attitude could help to structure the project in such a way that it will be less expensive and more profitable for the city, while at the same time still remaining attractive and safe for private investors. At present, Moscow authorities are looking for private partners in transit projects, first and foremost — to construct toll highways, complex structures and underground parking. We have plans to use private-public partnership mechanisms in utility services, and we shall review the potential for the use of these instruments in the social sphere. But we should remember that public-private partnership is a heavy commitment all over the world. It costs a lot, it needs a lot of time and it is risky. You shouldn’t try public-private partnership models in a project which could be implemented at the cost to the budget, or on a commercial basis. Public-private partnership may help when the city does not have funds at present, or when the authorities have no experience in the construction or management of certain types of assets. And if a private entrepreneur has built something, let him maintain it, offer the services to the city and its consumers and make a profit. This “Let’s take it into municipal ownership” approach is rather based on a lack of confidence or insufficient legal guarantees that a service that is important for the city’s economy can be provided by a privately-owned body. One should not compete with budget investment or private-public partnerships. Each of these models should be applied in its own sphere.
Industrial Zones About 15 percent of Moscow’s territory is defined as industrial zones. But it doesn’t mean that something useful is produced on every square meter of this territory. On the contrary, it often contains outdated and inefficient production facilities, employing huge numbers of unskilled workers. In recent decades traditional industries have been leaving cities all over the world, being replaced with more compact and environmentally friendly, high-tech production. These processes will inevitably come to Moscow. The transition to more productive activities will free land and create redevelopment opportunities that could bring additional revenue both to the present owners, and to the city. And the city is interested in retaining and updating jobs. Industrial zones have significant development potential for Moscow. Their redevelopment may help satisfy some of the urban demand for trade, entertainment and even recreation. An individual approach to these territories provides an opportunity to balance the development of various parts of the city. Residential housing, for instance, may be constructed in the center to replace its industrial areas, and areas of mixed development, new points of
24 global moscow urban agenda 2012
In future, The Moscow Urban Forum will deal with the urban development challenges faced by growing economies and emerging world cities, such as Moscow attraction, the alternative to the congested center of the city, may be created in the outlying areas. When various functions, such as jobs, housing, entertainment, recreation and shopping facilities, are located within walking distance, it relieves the transit infrastructure: you don’t need to travel to the other side of Moscow for work or shopping if everything is close at hand.
The Moscow Urban Forum The Forum has provided much food for thought on the development of Moscow. Such discussions are very useful and they should be organized on the basis of core research involving highly-skilled experts. Concrete recommendations and projects should be produced as the result of such events. It was very important to see the positive reaction and great interest of foreign experts in Moscow and other Russian cities. Some seemed to be joking, saying, “We thought that Moscow was closed to us; that it had solved all its problems and didn’t need anybody’s advice. But it proved to be quite the other way round.” It is very important that the Forum has debunked this cliche and shown that there is a demand for new ideas in Moscow — and that we are ready to listen. This signal has been well received. An international competition for the concept of the metropolitan agglomeration development was held right after the forum, and it involved 67 teams from 21 countries around the world. Ten teams, combining the talents of Russian and foreign experts, have been selected as a result. It is an important outcome of the open politics pursued by the Moscow city government. Next year, the Moscow Urban Forum will find its place in the international business calendar as one of the key international events devoted to urban issues. It will deal with the urban development challenges faced by growing economies and new leading global cities such as Moscow. Forming partnerships with such international organizations of high repute as the Urban Land Institute, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, we plan to discuss not only purely Russian issues but all the key issues facing the world’s leading cities. It is necessary to continue the research work on the Urban Index. Next year, we plan to go beyond the borders of Russia and annually compare the urban environment in world’s growing cities. Besides that, we plan to hold an exhibition within the framework of the Forum. It will help expand the number of participants and attract various audiences to the Forum, helping them learn not only about the new ideas and technologies of urban development, but also to see them with their own eyes.
* BOT (Build-OperateTransfer). The concession holder performs the construction and maintenance (as the owner, as a rule) during a fixed term, and after period elapses the asset is transferred to state ownership
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Greg Clark Senior Fellow, Urban Land Institute
Moscow’s Special Way
W
orld cities are the junction boxes of the global economy. In the 1990s, London, New York and Tokyo were the exemplary global cities, and there were perhaps 10 other cities in the world economy providing similar services to global capital at a less concentrated level. Today a much wider group of cities have accumulated economic powers and political responsibilities. Moscow is already one of the “emerging world cities.” Such cities, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul, among others, are the new centers in the global economy. They must plan for a different, “competitive” future. There are different ways to be a world city. London, New York and Hong Kong are cosmopolitan inter-continental cities with major roles in global finance. Paris, Tokyo and Seoul are international hubs within their continents, providing a powerful national identity within a global system. Sao Paulo and Shanghai are emerging to be more like London and New York. Beijing and Delhi are more like Paris and Tokyo. For Moscow, Istanbul and Mumbai the choice is still to be made. The Moscow сity government is now preparing a new kind of plan for the future. And this is the moment to start a new cycle of investment that will lead to Moscow becoming Russia’s successful world city. Long-term strategic plans are a feature of world city governance and have been developed in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and many other established and emerging world cities. A similar plan is now being developed in Sao Paulo. Emerging world cities have much to learn from each other, and for this reason international experience is behind their strategic plans. Many of these strategic solutions could be useful for Moscow. Each of them aims to solve the most acute issue in the life of a city: New York’s plan focuses substantially on improving the “quality of life” within the city, to balance the deeply embedded business spirit.
London’s plan is about accommodating population and economic growth within a densifying city and boosting business performance in a reorganized city centre. Paris’s regional plan (Grand Paris) focuses on growing and integrating a very large capital city region through infrastructure and new development nodes. Hong Kong’s regional plan re-allocates new land uses to support economic development within a new regional economic development framework. Sao Paulo’s new plan is about re-engineering the core city and the social fabric for the 21st century world city roles that it wants to play.
Emerging world cities have much to learn from each other, and for this reason international experience is behind their strategic plans Moscow should not follow any one of these plans alone; it needs to determine its own long-term goals and skillfully combine the planning experience of other global cities. In such an important aspect as the financial basis of the strategy, Hong Kong’s and Paris’s plans bring the government to the table to lead and finance the region’s future, while London’s and New York’s plans bring the private sector more into the development framework, working out legislative incentives and investment proposals for it. The new development plan for Moscow should set new standards for other cities in Russia, providing guidance on how to deal with challenges in infrastructure, land use and the business and investment climate. Russian will benefit from the globalization of Moscow, as it will play an important role among other world centers of business, finance, transport, culture, education and science. This will open radically new opportunities for other Russian cities, drawing the world’s attention to their assets.
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 25
planet
The World’s Best Cities WHICH ARE MOST ATTRACTIVE FOR MANAGERS, ARTISTS, RESEARCHERS, visitorS AND RESIDENTS? The annual rating of the Mori Memorial Foundation (Japan) Global Power City Index assessed 35 cities of the planet according to 69 indices divided into six groups: economy, science and research, cultural interaction, quality of life, ecology and environment, accessibility. This is the only rating where the world’s cities are analyzed from the point of view of five groups of actors that have the greatest influence on the development of the city: managers, scientists, artists, tourists and residents. Moscow placed 33rd in 2011.
The world’s The world’s best cities bestfrom citiesmanagers’ from managers’ point ofpoint viewof view
1. L1. ONDON L ONDON
33. MOSCOW 33. MOSCOW
9. ZURICH 9. ZURICH
4.
NEW 4.- YORK NEW - YORK
6. PARIS 6. PARIS
5. BEIJING 5. BEIJING
10. GENEVE10. GENEVE
7. SHANGHAI 7. SHANGHAI 8. ТOKYO 8. ТOKYO
3. HONG 3. HONG KONG KONG
2. SINGAPORE 2. SINGAPORE
The world’s The world’s best cities bestfrom citiesscientists’ from scientists’ point ofpoint viewof view
3. -
-
9. SAN FRANCISCO 9. SAN FRANCISCO
8. LOS ANGELES 8. LOS ANGELES
5.
BOSTON 5. BOSTON
LONDON 3. LONDON
4.
24. MOSCOW 24. MOSCOW
PARIS 4. PARIS
1. NEW 1. NEW - YORK - YORK
6. SEOUL 6. SEOUL
2. TOKYO 2. TOKYO 10. HONG KONG 10. HONG KONG
7. SINGAPORE 7. SINGAPORE
26 global moscow urban agenda 2012
planet
2. LONDON 2. LONDON The world’s The world’s best cities bestfrom citiesartists’ from artists’ point ofpoint viewof view
8. AMSTERDAM 8. AMSTERDAM
5.
1. PARIS 1. PARIS 3.
NEW 3. -NEW YORK - YORK
BERLIN 5. BERLIN
6. WIEN 9. MADRID9. MADRID
24.
MOSCOW 24. MOSCOW
6. WIEN
4.
10. MILANO 10. MILANO
7. LOS ANGELES 7. LOS ANGELES
TOKYO 4. TOKYO
The world’s The world’s best cities bestfrom citiesvisitors’ from visitors’ point ofpoint viewof view
1. LONDON 1. LONDON
9. BERLIN 9. BERLIN 32. MOSCOW 32. MOSCOW
2. NEW 2. NEW - YORK - YORK
3.
6. BEIJING 6. BEIJING 10. SEOUL 10. SEOUL
PARIS 3. PARIS
7. SHANGHAI 7. SHANGHAI
5.
4.
TOKYO 5. TOKYO
HONG 4. HONG KONG KONG
8. SINGAPORE 8. SINGAPORE
2. LONDON 2. LONDON The world’s The world’s best cities bestfrom citiescitizens’ from citizens’ point ofpoint viewof view
7. FRANKFURT 7. FRANKFURT
1. PARIS 1. PARIS
6. BERLIN 6. BERLIN
9. VACOUVER 9. VACOUVER
4.
NEY 4.- YORK NEY - YORK
30. MOSCOW 30. MOSCOW
8. WIEN 10. GENEVE10. GENEVE
5.
ZURICH 5. ZURICH
8. WIEN
3.
TOKYO 3. TOKYO
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 27
megapolis
The Future Moscow HOW CAN RUSSIA’S CAPITAL BECOME AN OPEN GLOBAL CITY? Moscow is one of the emerging global cities that lays claim to be a leading international business, finance and cultural center. But to develop successfully, the city needs not only to improve the quality of its urban environment, but also to make Moscow an open multicultural city. By Nadezhda Nilina, urban planner
M
oscow is on the threshold of change. The city’s strategy and options for the development of the Moscow urban agglomeration will be completed and presented before the end of 2012. Today, we have already defined the priorities for the city’s development on the basis of 16 municipal programs. Andrei Sharonov, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Economic Policy, reported on these programs on the second day of the Moscow Urban Forum. The biggest news of the forum for those experts and entrepreneurs who had not been to the city for a long time was the different language used by the new Moscow city government. For the first time in many years, the strategic vision of the city’s development, free of the camouflage of unrealistic dreams for a great future and pre-election optimism, was presented to the public. City representatives were open to dialogue; they made an honest appraisal of the situation and accurately defined solutions that should meet the city’s needs. Moscow’s problems have deep roots, and Sharonov spoke about the most acute of these problems. He said that centuries of developing inside a centralized ring structure had resulted in an extremely dense development in the city center, so that Moscow literally cannot breathe within its boundaries. The tradition of top-down management became fossilized over 70 years of Soviet centralized planning, and decades of chaotic development and the domination of business interests over public welfare has had a disastrous effect on the quality of the urban environment. The city government’s subsidies for many outdated and inefficient enterprises has led to far more industrial zones within the city limits than in leading European cities. Even so, Moscow authorities view these industrial zones as a resource to be utilized, not a hindrance to the city’s development. Moscow has a number of undoubted advantages, however: Its unique geographical location; great scientific and innovative potential; concentrated financial
28 global moscow urban agenda 2012
resources; urban planning traditions; and cultural and historical heritage. To realize Moscow’s full potential, the city government has defined five urban policy priorities within the framework of the “City for Life” concept: Security and well-being; Overhauling the transportation system; Developing public space; Improving the business climate; Decentralizing municipal management. The municipal authorities’ efforts to expand civic participation in the life of the city were rather unexpected. For quite a long time, the very idea of implementing European and American models of powerful local self-governance and the development of local initiatives have been questioned. But Sharonov was quite outspoken in his speech about this, claiming that it is impossible to manage a city with a population of 12 million people without the involvement of a strong, economically sustainable civil society. The participants in the discussion that followed unanimously added the development of higher education, healthcare and financial services to the priorities Sharonov listed. The discussion also revealed the preferences of the audience: 63 percent of respondents in an interactive poll spoke out in favor of culture and the quality of life as the key elements of a global city.
Russian society must learn to be tolerant and resilient in respect to the manifestations of other cultures. Major global cities base their strategies on the need to accept and educate dozens of thousands of migrants annually
A Formula for Success 1. Consistent implementation of the Moscow city government’s agenda 2. Attracting students and experts from every corner of the world to Moscow 3. Improving the openness of the city for foreigners 4. Integration of Moscow’s development strategy with the competition for the Moscow agglomeration development concept 5. Developing a brand for the city
megapolis
It is a traditional point of view that everything is fine with culture in Moscow. But Grigory Revzin, an architecture critic and journalist, sounded quite a different note, proving that the belief in the superiority of Russian culture in the world is a myth. Despite a crowded calendar of cultural events in Moscow, there are no international level events to attract tourists here. We have a lot to offer to the global consumer, but we either cannot package it attractively or don’t have a product to sell. The quality of the urban environment is hindering Moscow’s development as an international financial center, too. The headquarters of major Russian and international companies are located in Moscow today, most of the financial flows of the country go through it, but Moscow is placed 61 out of 68 cities in the influential Z/Yen international rating of financial centers. The reason for this is not only the complexity of the business environment and the underdeveloped state of financial institutions, but also in the problems with openness, hospitality and attractiveness of Moscow as a city to live in. Barcelona, for instance, was a candidate for the location of the European Central Bank in 1980s, when it was still the relatively little known capital of Catalonia. That would have turned a city with a declining industrial base into a European financial center, providing the impulse to attract investment. But the attempt failed. Instead, Barcelona used its chance to become a global city when it hosted the 1992 Olympics, relying on the service economy. Now it is a global city that is successfully developing as a tourism capital, a business education center, a transportation and logistics hub and, of course, a city that favors business activities, with a congress and exhibition center. An important lesson to be learnt from Barcelona is that the city never lost its identity on the way to globalization. Due to its unique geographical position and economic potential, the Russian capital is also a part of the emerging global cities network. But Moscow, just as other cities in Russia, cannot be called an open city. Russian society must learn to be tolerant and resilient in respect to the manifestations of other cultures after many decades of isolation. London, New York and other major cities of the world base their strategies on the need to accept, integrate and educate dozens of thousands of migrants annually. About half a million students reside in New York today. It is very important for Moscow to follow the path of attracting and retaining the best human resources of Russia and from around the world. The network of Moscow universities could provide the basis for this. The US East coast, connected by the high-speed transportation corridor, stretching from Washington to Boston, has seven educational institutions of global repute. We have to hope that Moscow’s future development strategy will provide answers to such questions as how Moscow can become not only a global, but also an open city. The puzzling issue is that it is not clear how the results of the international competition to determine a concept for Moscow’s agglomeration development can be linked to the city’s development strategy. The Moscow Urban Forum’s participants were offered a rosy picture of a future Moscow:
A city without traffic jams, with an extensive integrated public transit system; A city where leading global education and research institutions will function; A city that will be safe to live in, and will have green and attractive public space; A city with a favorable business climate; A city with world-class cultural events that is attractive to tourists; A city with a recognizable brand; A city that can vie to be among the leading global financial centers; A city headed by a strong municipal government that supports local community initiatives. The implementation of these plans is not an easy task. But enthusiasm, progressive thinking and readiness to learn from other global cities will help Moscow eliminate its current drawbacks and to form a new vision of the city in its expanded boundaries by December 2012.
Is it necessary to be a global city in order to be a finance center?
Yes
No
Undetermined
Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll, December 9, 2011
what the experts say:
Andrei Sharonov,
Grigory Revzin,
Alexander Voloshin,
Deputy Mayor
Architecture Critic,
the Head of the Group
of Moscow
Journalist
for the Creation of an
for Economic Policy
“Even if the city has a well-developed structure, it cannot be attractive if there are risks in the life and activities of the experts and their families. These risks can be associated with crime, traffic management, environment quality and healthcare services.”
Roberd D. Yaro, President of the Regional Planning Association, New York
International Financial
“Moscow has the mythology of a Sin City, of the city of sin which has no culture at all. In the eyes of Europe and America, Moscow is the city of big power, big money, big dangers and big opportunities.”
Center in the Russian
“The openness of New York is in its DNA since the time when it was founded by people from Holland. It always was a magnet for people from all over the world. Yet, even New York, with its three
centuries long tradition of attracting people from every corner of the world, has this problem: how can it assimilate immigrants who differ strongly from those who live in the city?”
Federation
“Moscow should become a very open and resilient city for those who come here. It should be tolerant to change, to the permanent presence of international events in the city which alter the accustomed way of life.”
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 29
recommendations
Expertise for Moscow WHAT ADVICE WOULD INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS OFFER MOSCOW? On the eve of the Moscow Urban Forum, a strategic session of the Urban Land Institute, “Expertise for Moscow,” was held in the city. ULI has held more than 600 such sessions around the world since 1947, but this was the first in Russia. Every strategic session involves the non-profit participation of a unique team of independent experts and practicing managers. An interdisciplinary composition of the teams helps ULI to approach the issues comprehensively and strategically, from the point of view of urban development, the organization of funding and the market potential of recommended solutions. By Natalya Smelkova, IRP Group
What Questions Did the Experts Ask? After a series of consultations with representatives of the Moscow city government, the group articulated the following questions: How can Moscow become a leading global city? What international experience could usefully be applied to ensure the effective integration of the proposed expansion area of the Moscow Region into the city of Moscow? How can Moscow develop a sustainable business model for the further redevelopment of the city’s former industrial zones? How can the Moscow metro be developed in line with international experience and best practices? The experts’ weeklong stay in Moscow included visits to the most interesting development sites and industrial zones, as well as numerous meetings and interviews. Answering these questions, experts saw the same issues behind them. So they divided their report into five interconnected strategic topics.
1. Big City, Great City or Global City? At present, Moscow’s standing is far from the top in the international ratings of cities. This affects the city’s perception around the world. Experts recommended focusing on four areas to improve this position. Livability. This is what attracts talented people, entrepreneurs and tourists to the city. One of the crucial aspects of the urban environment is the connectivity between different districts of the city. Transport access to them is among the most difficult issues for Moscow. Besides that, culture is also important for livability. Moscow has a unique combination of historical heritage and modernity, and this should be capitalized on. Influence. Global cities have influence on the rest of the world. Moscow should choose its way of influencing global trends in culture, technology and the economy.
30 global moscow urban agenda 2012
Management. Updating management systems is an absolute priority for transitional market economies and growing global cities such as Moscow. Only improved management efficiency and transparency can raise the city to the top of the rankings. Find a way. Moscow should determine what kind of global city it wants to be. Does it want, like Shanghai, to be an international financial center by 2020? Then it should attract foreign experts, like New York, where the share of foreigners makes up 37 percent of the working population, or London (where the share is 31 percent). Would Moscow like to be a global tourist destination, such as Barcelona, London or Istanbul? Or Moscow would like to develop as an international hub, connecting the leading and growing global economies?
Moscow has enough development potential inside the Moscow Ring Road 2. Global Moscow = Livable Density During meetings with the representatives of municipal authorities, experts and Moscow residents, the ULI team often heard that they feel concern over the high density of built-up areas and transportation flows in the city. But the analysis of the ULI experts showed that the average population density in Moscow (10,300 people per square kilometer) is almost the same as in Inner London districts (10,900 people per square kilometer), and 2.5 times less that of Manhattan (26,800 people per square kilometer). Moscow’s problem is not its population density, but in the extreme congestion of its city center. Experts classified the population density of 10,000 people per square kilometer as a critical threshold that a global city must retain to keep its advantage. The cor-
The Tashir Group – Strategic Partner of the Advisory Services Panel “Expertise for Moscow” session
recommendations
rect arrangement of space according to the principle of mixed-use development would help reduce the load on the city, creating new centers of gravitation, and achieve a more regular density of built-up areas. This would reduce the need to use private vehicles, since all the places and buildings residents need would be relatively close to each other.
3. Renewal of Industrial Zones Working with Moscow’s industrial heritage would help the city become not only a more comfortable place to live in, but also stimulate the transition to a post-industrial economy. Today, industrial zones provide tremendous potential as new areas of mixed-use development. Many of them are close to the Moscow River and connected to the Moscow Railway Inner Ring. The development of water and railway transportation would connect the former industrial zones to other districts of the city. The renewal of industrial zones is a long process, requiring a lot of investment. So municipal authorities should make a comprehensive analysis of this resource and determine which territories should be a priority development. The city should take upon itself the initiative to prepare land plots and to clean polluted territories, and then transfer land to private companies. There will be no immediate return on investment, but land prices will grow in a few years, and money will flow back to the budget as taxes. Also, municipal authorities could set an example, moving their offices to a former industrial zone. Financial and business services, residential developments and hotels, trade and entertainment will follow them. The Moscow city government plans to use former industrial zones to develop high-tech and innovative industry. A highly skilled workforce is necessary for this. The problem is that none of Moscow’s universities have yet made it into The Times’ top 300 universities from around the world. To achieve the goals of your development plans, you should have a clear purpose in mind: by 2021 two Moscow universities should reach the top quarter of The Times’ ratings.
4. Connectivity — Underground and Above Ground Moscow’s metro is the most popular and, perhaps, the only convenient public transportation network in the city. Therefore, ULI experts assessed the potential for the development of alternative kinds of transportation that could reduce the load on the Moscow metro, rather than analyzing the problems of the metro itself. In late 2011, the Moscow city government adopted an extensive program to update the city’s transportation system, incorporating most of the recommendations of ULI experts. Let’s go back to the most important of them, for they provide the basis for the functioning of transportation systems in the world’s leading cities: develop an integrated multimodal transport system which can redistribute passenger flows from the metro to above-ground transportation (as it is done in London); update the rolling stock, reduce headway (i.e. increase the frequency of metro trains), use connected coaches (with greater standing room), install video cameras in coaches;
launch passenger transportation over the Moscow Railway Inner Ring connected to metro lines through hubs; update the commuter train system, connected to metro lines through hubs; duplicate some metro lines with express buses using designated bus lanes; develop a secondary street network in micro-districts; develop off-street parking, introduce compulsory paid parking within the Garden Ring; manage urban mobility: introduce telematic (global navigation) systems, logistics management; optimize the use of different kinds of transport: car sharing, special lanes for buses and bicycles, bicycle lease and special parking, pedestrian zones, river taxis; introduce eco-friendly standards for urban transportation and develop green transportation (bicycles, pedestrian zones).
The development of Moscow as a global city will require strong leadership on the part of the city government. All the activities of the city authorities should be aimed at maximizing the value and livability of the urban environment 5. Everything Works When Government Works The development of Moscow as a global city will require strong leadership on the part of the city government. All the activities of the city authorities should be aimed at maximizing the value and livability of the urban environment. The expansion of Moscow’s borders may have a positive effect if it results in the coordinated development of the capital and the region around it. The absence of such coordination has interfered with the development of the capital for decades. International experience shows the need to develop a 20-year strategic plan for the sustainable development of Moscow and the Moscow Region, which should involve all stakeholder groups and the authorities at all levels. ULI experts are sure that Moscow has enough development potential inside the Moscow Ring Road. Many cities have directed efforts and investment to develop “green fields” like the one proposed for Moscow, but we have practically no examples where livable and economically successful territories emerged after decades of efforts. Taking into account the fact that the decision has already been taken, the strategic new territories may be used to build a government center; university campuses and innovation hubs may move there; this zone can be used as a center of industry and logistics, or, on the contrary it can be retained as a green territory, making it attractive not only to Muscovites, but also to visitors to the city.
ULI Experts Chairman:
Jim Heid Founder, UrbanGreen Experts:
David Adam Managing Director, Global Cities
Christopher Choa Vice President/Principal, AECOM Design + Planning
Erwin Daalhuisen Senior Consultant Area Development, Fakton
Michael Denkel Partner, Albert Speer & Partner GbmH
Rosemary Feenan International Director for Global Research, Jones Lang LaSalle, London
Paul Jeffrey Business Development Director, Ecorys
Tom Murphy City Leadership, ULI Senior Resident Fellow, Former Mayor of Pittsburgh (1994–2006)
Robert Ravelli Associate Director, Contemporary Transport
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 31
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Ruben Vardanyan President, Troika Dialog
What is the Cost of Love, Beauty and Scale?
I
n 2005, the founders of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management and McKinsey & Company were calculating the school’s financial model, including the construction of a campus building. A modern campus would have cost us $140 million, we estimated at that time. We faced a choice: Should we build a solid, mediocre but efficient commercial building, or try to convey our message to the outside world through architecture? The message was in the idea to create a business school unique to our country for leaders of a new type — an idea that nobody except us shared. The founders decided to take the more difficult road and relied not on the commercial efficiency of the project, but on the idea of creating a unique environment where intellectual content would be matched by an appropriate space. Mikhail Kusnirovich, one of the school’s founding partners, suggested that we should make our building reflect the traditions of the Russian Avant-Garde, and build the campus in the style of Russian Constructivism. Such architecture would have reflected the innovative and progressive orientation of our school, and the ideas that were born in Russia and won global recognition. This way we would have used an “export,” and not an “import” model. David Adjaye, a gifted architect, was invited to build the campus. Our decision certainly drove up the costs of the project. From the financial point of view, love and beauty cost us an additional $105 million. But we were right: Skolkovo unconditionally stands out among numerous other projects implemented in this country over the last decade. For it was based on this idea, and without it we would never go beyond dreaming, even having money and a gifted architect. Few people are ready to pay extra for an idea in construction today, unfortunately. The last two decades prove that. The time of all-out commercialization started in the 1990s. And this period is not over yet. Yes, Moscow gained a lot during the last two decades, as the city felt a tremendous deficit in commercial real estate of every category — for retail trade, offices and hotels.
32 global moscow urban agenda 2012
The quality suffered while the space was quickly filled with the great number of buildings constructed. To reduce costs developers neglected infrastructure, such as parking, access roads and pedestrian zones. The number of floors increased and additional structures appeared in this race for square meters. This approach is understandable if you treat the city only as a place to make money — just like an oil deposit, for instance. But oil is depleted with time, and you can’t keep building in the city forever. The current transportation collapse has revealed that this resource has been exhausted. I believe that the Skolkovo project was brilliant because we planned for the long term, for the next 30 to 40 years. When you think only of the short term, questions of ideology, philosophy, architectural aesthetics and ethics, of course, are overlooked. You can’t rely only on the profit-making principle when building a city. One of the main goals of the mayor’s office is to form the identity of the city; to create the urban environment. The city authorities should meet the pressure of business interests with a system of limitations that do not allow businesspeople to make money in any possible way they can think of. Today, the Moscow city government faces the choice of how strictly to organize this system, and what standards will dominate the relations between the city and business. I’d like to point out that the most unique cities were created by quite powerful, authoritarian people, but it is a huge challenge in the contemporary situ-
Commentary based on a speech by Ruben Vardanyan at the Moscow Urban Forum
The lack of love for the city we live in is a huge issue for us. The main challenge for Moscow is not only to become a metropolitan area with huge cash flows, but to become a city where everybody would love to live, and everybody would be proud to say that he or she is a Muscovite
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ation to win a mandate to build a new city. If you look at global practice, the chief architect performs the key function of forming urban space. But the architect is only an “authorization agency” for us, and not the person who is responsible for the appearance of this city, unfortunately. As a son of an architect, I believe that the role of the city’s chief architect should be revised, both from the point of view of reputation and powers. We should recognize that many cities have evolved in the wrong way over the 20th century, as they were pressured by money and population growth. But cities should keep developing because competition is fierce between them. Moscow is not just the capital of Russia — it’s one of the global centers. You can hardly find a dozen cities of Moscow’s scale in the world. You should love your city, and it is not enough to simply build more hotels and office centers there. The lack of love for the city we live in, and where our children and grandchildren will live, is a huge issue for us. Most Moscow residents don’t feel that they are part of this city. So the main challenge for Moscow is not only to become a metropolitan area with huge cash flows, but to become a city where everybody would love to live, and everybody would be proud to say that he or she is a Muscovite. But it is not enough to love your city. You should create an atmosphere that helps foreigners to feel at home there. It is remarkable that today Moscow has no fewer foreign residents than London, New York or Amsterdam. And while everybody who comes from Western Europe and the United States finds the city quite safe, they often point out that the city is not adapted to the lives of those who cannot speak Russian. They feel like strangers here. To take London, for example: the city has a large French community, and in some districts French culture is felt even in trifles, ranging from small cafes to the shops in the neighborhood. Thus, people don’t feel separated from a familiar environment, and feel at home. Well, there is a downside to this phenomenon. In Paris, for instance, there are Arab quarters where Frenchmen are afraid to go. So, every metropolitan area has its own peculiarity which can be both an incentive for development, and a threat to it. Our city is a metropolitan area that does not yet meet the elementary requirements for comfortable living. In short, it is not convenient. Moscow is arranged in such a way that it is easier to move in a car around the city, rather than by walking or cycling. The city has just started to create comfortable pedestrian zones — Gorky Park is one example. So we can only support the idea to create such a zone in the neighborhood of the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum. Why is it important to integrate foreigners into the city’s life — to create comfortable conditions for them and for Moscow residents as a whole? It’s important to form a multicultural milieu. People arriving in the city have tremendous influence on it, helping us feel the spirit of the age. Moscow is the gateway to Russia. Yes, great numbers of people from CIS countries and Africa come here
to study and work. But if we want our city to be competitive, we should take some steps resembling those of the 19th century, when huge numbers of young experts came to Russia from Europe, bringing their culture and experience with them. Such a recruitment system was an integral part of state policy. We have the same opportunity today. Europe is in crisis: many young, gifted and educated people have been sidelined. So it is important to create an opportunity to use this potential, both in small business and in big projects. This would help us build the basis for a successful future. Moscow should be a real international center, and that is what it is striving for. “Remolding” Muscovites is a tremendous cultural task. A powerful will, a centralized cultural policy, resources and taste, of course, are necessary to deal with these challenges and to resolve current pressing issues. To reiterate, it is not enough to have a lot of money and great ambitions. We should love our city and be proud of it.
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 33
moscow speaks
Thinking and Building in a New Way
Marat Khusnullin, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Urban Development Policy and Construction
T
he life of a metropolitan area like Moscow is in constant change and evolution. This implies particular responsibilities on the part of municipal authorities. Everyday care for the needs of the city provides the basis for its sustainable development. And, vice versa, when you ignore the issues faced by the city, it results in grave urban development blunders.
Disproportions have accumulated in the development of Moscow for many years, and, when a new team came to the Moscow city government almost two years ago, it was clear that it is useless to develop the Russian capital and solve its urban issues within the existing administrative boundaries. The territory of Moscow and of the Moscow Region form the largest metropolitan area in Europe, covering 48,000 square kilometers with a total population of 20 million. This implies an agglomeration with an integrated transit system, labor and residential estate markets. The towns around the Moscow suburbs have practically formed a part of Moscow, and the zone of its agglomeration reaches a territory with a radius of more than 100 kilometers from Moscow’s city limits. Every day more than 1 million people arrive in Moscow from the Moscow Region, and about 500,000 take a return trip. This adds to the daily flow of Muscovites from the bedroom communities to the city center and back. It is not a normal situation when two-thirds of Moscow’s population resides in the outskirts of the city, while 40 percent of the jobs are concentrated in its central districts. And this situation has only been growing worse recently: office buildings were constructed in the center, and new micro-districts of prefabricated panel apartment blocks rose on the outskirts of the city. The city is functioning at the limit of its capacity as a result: traffic jams stretch for many kilometers, there is exceedingly dense development, an overcrowded metro and dull and ugly outlying areas. Municipal authorities should have worked out systemic solutions to overcome the crisis in urban development. The idea to ex-
What Will be Built in Moscow by the End of 2014* *Without the additional territories, according to the project of Targeted Investment Program of the city of Moscow for 2012–2014
Residential property
Residential property per person
Metro
47.1 km 2,368 sq km 34 global moscow urban agenda 2012
24 sq m
21 stations
moscow speaks
pand the boundaries of the Russian capital is a way to solve this problem. By increasing the size of Moscow to nearly 2.5 times its current area, it will be possible to move some of the functions concentrated in its historical center to the new area, creating new centers of attraction. An international competition for the concept of the Moscow agglomeration development was launched in early 2012 to generate the maximum number of different ideas for the development of Moscow in its new boundaries. The competition aroused unprecedented interest among the world’s architects and urban developers. Ten applications were shortlisted from 67 initial applications, and in the next six months they have to decide how the development of new and existing territories of Moscow can be linked together.
It is meaningless to try resolving Moscow’s urban development issues within the existing administrative borders The competing teams will define which functions should be developed on the new territory: a complex of government buildings, innovative clusters, educational institutions, healthcare centers, the size of wildlife parks and recreation zones and many others. The main goal of the project groups is to make Moscow a global city, providing for high socioeconomic living standards. In the autumn, we plan to hold an exhibition of the projects. The final version of the concept for the Moscow agglomeration, taking into account the proposals of all the competitors, will be formulated in early 2013. Besides that, we will define the final parameters of the general plan upon the completion of the competition. This process will take about two years.
Healthcare
Out-patient clinics
But we have to start dealing with the urban issues of the metropolitan area now. The resolution of transportation problems will be a priority in the next few years. One of the key reasons for the transportation collapse is that Moscow’s road network covers a little more than 8 percent of the urban area, while the same percentage in other global capitals is two or three times higher. Understandably, we can’t expand the transportation network to achieve global standards within the existing boundaries of the city (without taking into account the added territories). So, the main priority of municipal policy is to develop public transportation. First and foremost, we plan to expand the Moscow metro, which now carries more than half the passenger flow in the capital. It still serves only one-quarter of Moscow’s districts. Before the end of 2015, 75 kilometers of new metro lines will be put into operation — this rate of construction is unprecedented, even if we compare it with the Soviet period. We also plan to develop high-speed rail transportation within the city limits, including the use of the Moscow Railway Inner Ring and all radial routes. But the main thing is that all kinds of transit — cars, metro and railways — should be integrated into a single network through the use of multimodal interchange hubs. Another key issue for the city is the lack of parking spaces. While Seoul has a comparable density of built-up areas and number of residents, it has 5.2 million parking spaces for 3 million cars, while Moscow has about 1.6 million spaces for more than 4 million cars. Serious effort and large investments are needed to close this gap. Today, in some locations, parking lots cover their cost only over a long-term period, while in other places their cost is never covered at all. So, the city is ready to make arrangements with investors to construct parking spaces with the extended functions demanded by the market — with additional space for trade and service provided. An important part of our effort is associated with the development and conservation of the city’s historical center. At present, the urban land commission of the
Culture
Hospital buildings
Ambulance stations
Theaters
Museums
Monuments
Culture and leisure centers
Concert agencies
+
12
buildings
15
buildings
7
buildings
3
buildings
8
units
9
units
4
units
1
unit
5,380
visits per shift
urban agenda 2012 global moscow 35
moscow speaks
Moscow city government is approving projects for planning and construction regulation block by block. There are grounds to believe that all the construction will be completed within the boundary of the Garden Ring in three or four years, with the exception of individual renovation and comprehensive capital repair in individual blocks. As for the outlying districts of Moscow, buildings that have exceeded their normal lifetime will be dismantled or reconstructed when necessary. We should take into consideration that 15 percent of urban real estate is in an unsatisfactory state at present. In a number of districts great efforts to replace rundown residential property were taken at some point. But earlier these plans increased the average density of built-up areas from 3 to 5 square meters of additional real estate property for every dismantled meter. This creates an intolerable additional pressure on transit infrastructure. So we have to review these plans in every micro-district, assess the economics behind these projects, calculating the acceptable density and profitability levels for each project, and then hold tender procedures. The paradox of the situation in Moscow is that, despite excessive density of built-up areas, the city needs quite a lot of real estate property: educational, healthcare and sports institutions, kindergartens all over the city, parking lots and office buildings between the Third Transportation Ring and the Moscow Ring Road. The main priority of the new urban policy is to create a comfortable urban environment, so the city plans to eliminate the shortage of buildings for social usage and transit infrastructure. The city government is Moscow’s biggest developer. This year, its Targeted Investment Program plans to spend 356 billion rubles on the construction of buildings
Education
Schools
35
buildings
18,965 students
that the capital needs. But to solve all the tasks faced by Moscow, one should not only formulate what and how is to be constructed, but also to work out clear rules for working with investors. Municipal authorities are preparing several formats for interaction with the private sector at present. One of these formats is a contract for territorial development. It is already present in our legislation, but it needs several amendments at the federal level. We are preparing proposals for the State Duma to have the format of work with investors approved during 2012.
The Urban Development Policy program budget funding will be 63.6 billion rubles The main model we shall follow in our future work is land auctions. Here the municipal policy is in the best preparation of lots on the part of the city, including ultimately accurate urban development plans of land plots and easy permit issue procedures. It’s no secret that, according to existing regulations, issuing all the necessary permits and approvals for construction can take up to five years. To simplify these procedures is a strategic aim for us. Ideally the investor buying a land plot should only apply to the government for the permit and the commissioning certificate. The tasks we have to deal with are not simple. But the basis for systematic work that we have built will provide a solid foundation for the city’s development for many decades to come.
Sport
Kindergartens
203
buildings
27,025 students
36 global moscow urban agenda 2012
Colleges
2
buildings
700
students
Football fields
10
units
BMX cycling grounds
5
units
Skiing facilities
2
buildings
Part III Governance Alexei Novikov, Irina Busygina, Irina Starodubrovskaya, Bulat Stolyarov, Anatoly Valetov, Albert Eganyan, Tom Murphy, Max Jeleniewski, Shi Nan, Artashes Gazaryan and Bertrand Lemoine on: How Not to Manage Agglomerations; Which Ways We Can Move to Real Federalism; Finding the Money for Urban Development; How to Avoid the ‘White Elephant’ Syndrome; and Which Management Model (European or Chinese) Is Better for Russian Cities.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum discussions “Federation, Regions and Cities: Division of Powers and Determination of Responsibilities,” “City Financing: Public Funding and Private Investment,” “How to Prepare the City for a Mega Event,” and “European and Chinese Models of Urban Development and Management.”
urban agenda 2012 governance 37
column
Alexei Novikov Russia and CIS Director, Standard & Poor’s
A new look at ‘Greater Moscow’
M
oscow needs profound structural reform, but as a living urban community, not as a subject of the Russian Federation. The plan to more than double Moscow’s territory in the southwestern part of the Moscow region doesn’t seem to match the reality of the urban agglomeration. The quaint delimitation of “Greater Moscow” is the same type of decision as the hastily redrafted route of the oil pipeline to avoid Lake Baikal, the hurried choice of Skolkovo for the role of Russia’s Silicon Valley, or an item in the agenda of a senior official: “12:00 — Meeting with Civil Society.” Instead of real life, we have its substitutes: lines on the map, artificial teams and appointed supervisors. The proposed change in Moscow’s boundaries not only adds to the collection of frustrations concerning the low quality of Russia’s institutions, but also creates greater uncertainty risks for municipal budget expenditures and a growth in non-core assets, as well as drawing attention away from the real challenges of urban life. Last but not least, one suspects that state officials may be colluding with land speculators in this process. The formal reason for the change in Moscow’s boundaries — to move government institutions outside the city’s limits — looks ridiculous. Officials, like businessmen, need continuous communication with each other. If ministries leave the city center and move to outlying areas, it would only increase the time spent by public servants on traveling, and result in an additional burden on the transit network. Yet, if this is a solution, why cannot the federal government purchase land and build a government complex in any constituent entity of the Russian Federation, such as the Moscow Region, for instance? Who needs changes in Moscow’s administrative borders? One of the justifications for the city’s expansion is the myth of its excessive congestion. But as far as urban density and commercial activities and the Moscow population’s car ownership are concerned, the city lags way behind some other major metropolitan areas. Is it well known that the denser the urban environment, the more key destinations come within walking distance, the shorter car trips become and public transport functions more efficiently. Making Moscow
denser by rational land use, and not the expansion of its limits, would help the city avoid a transportation collapse. The administrative division of land around the world is treated with special respect, as it has to do with political roots, core business areas, local self-governance institutions and civic pride. The principle of “don’t change anything if possible” is preferable in contemporary society to the provincial practice of permanent changes in administrative limits. Intracity cooperation in its numerous forms (unified planning and transportation committees, urban development corporations and specialized management companies) provides the means to resolve antagonism between conservative administrative and dynamic economic borders. The initial idea of forming “Greater Moscow” implied coordination at the federal district level. But after it emerged from the bureaucratic grindstone, it was transformed into a project adding new territory to Moscow. The notorious offer to unite Moscow with the Moscow Region was rejected, but, as the experience of other countries shows, such projects as a rule tend to fail. Thus, an attempt in 1996 to unite the German capital, Berlin, and the surrounding federal state of Brandenburg, could not garner sufficient support. Voters in Brandenburg rejected the merger in a referendum, with only 37.2 percent of the electorate voting for it. A positive experiment in resolving issues of planning major urban agglomerations is under way in France, in the “Grand Paris” project. It’s based on national consultations first, perhaps even for decades. What’s interesting is is that it’s the French Culture Ministry that is coordinating this discussion, because Paris (just like Moscow) is a center for national heritage and global culture. Moscow authorities are fond of referring to the Paris project. Yet, unlike the plans for the French capital, the decision to change Moscow’s boundaries was adopted without any public or professional consultation, flouting the sensible principle of acting through interpretation, discussion and agreements. Instead, the decision fits better with the mentality of Karl Haushofer, a German scholar of geopolitics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who argued that Germany was “hemmed in” and “overpopulated.”
Commentary based on a speech by Alexei Novikov at the Moscow Urban Forum
urban agenda 2012 governance 39
decentralization
Power to the Cities! HOW CAN WE GO FROM CENTRALIZATION TO REAL FEDERALISM? Countries with developing federal systems are often characterized by periodic changes in the concentration of power. In crisis periods, local authorities are sometimes given greater powers, and expected to become more accountable. When the country enters a more favorable period, it becomes more tempting to concentrate resources in the center and to distribute them more rationally. By Andrei Susarov, Moskovskiye Novosti
T
he federal center can function as a regulator or an investor in the regions and cities. In the first model, all the basic powers involved in running the region or city are transferred to the local level, and the funding is provided for these functions to be carried out. Cities gain the opportunity to provide long-term guarantees for their debt obligations. The federal authorities only determine the general rules of the game, establishing single target norms and monitoring their observation. The second model implies the centralization of finance and management resources at the top of the power pyramid, and investment in individual major development projects. The first model puts higher requirements on the activity and professional skills of the municipal management team. The success of the second model depends on observation by federal authorities as an investor, to ensure transparent rules of the game and the implementation of government functions, and on the ability to create efficient approval mechanisms for strategic projects with civil society and business. Currently, subjects of the Russian Federation have 32 powers, ranging from extremely important ones to decorative ones. For instance, they set local taxes and rates, adopt socioeconomic development programs and manage a lot of property and land. The regions are responsible for a large proportion of social spending, such as healthcare, education and social security. They are also responsible for the symbols of government power, for the protection of rights and freedoms of citizens in the cultural sphere. All these powers do not form an integral picture of local accountability, as a considerable proportion of these responsibilities are not currently supported by sufficient financial resources. The situation with the status of cities is even worse. They have actually none. There are two kinds of municipalities: settlements and municipal districts, which have different powers. This results in a clash of interests between neighboring municipal districts, or between the dis-
40 governance urban agenda 2012
trict and the township within the district. They compete for land, which is more expensive near the cities, and for the tax revenues: cities try to prevent enterprises from operating beyond their borders, lest they lose tax revenues. The expansion of municipal borders and the annexation of neighboring territories do not work, as a rule, due to the high transaction cost. It is necessary to apply the mechanisms of cooperative federalism, which offer various ways to interact legally between federal, regional and municipal authorities.
Federal Accountability — A Formula for Success 1. The definition of common rules of the game for regions and cities; single target norms and monitoring their observation 2. The reform of distribution of powers and inter-budget reform, and the transfer of significant resources to municipal authorities 3. To enable cities to give long-term guarantees for their debt obligations 4. To improve the activity of development institutions and their potential regionalization
decentralization Razdel3_Fed_reg_goroda лист 2 Paradoxically, Russian regions exist in two different realities. On the one hand, the Constitution envisages a federative arrangement, in which powers are distributed between federal, regional and municipal authorities. On the other hand, in reality regions are locked into the power vertical, which is based on selective and voluntary support for cities and districts, and on the center turning a blind eye to the way localities are run in return for local authorities delivering the election results the federal government wants. The federative arrangement is essentially replaced with centralization. Experience internationally and in Russia shows that the presence of an efficient management team and active involvement of the population in a city’s development are crucial for its success. But it can be extremely difficult to form a team of educated and responsible officials. It is not only due to non-competitive salaries in the public sector, it is also due to the fact that the current system does not need professional managers so much as needs obedient and loyal servants. Civil society’s attempts to influence the city’s management often clash with local officials’ indifference, or even outright resistance. So, the region (as happens in Perm, Yekaterinburg or Krasnoyarsk) or the federal government (as happens in Sochi, Vladivostok, Kazan or Yaroslavl) plays a key role in a city’s development. When the city budget is limited, large-scale events and anniversaries are often used to provide access to federal funding. But Russian cities are very different – they range from small settlements to large, successfully developing metropolitan areas. Each kind of city requires specific support measures. Experts expressed diverse opinions on how the state spatial policy should be arranged. Some experts believe that federal support should concentrate on the development of major cities. Others think that millionplus cities have tremendous development inertia, while federal support may be crucial for the fate of small cities, including company towns. It is impossible to support all small and medium-sized cities anyway, so one should determine growth points. The experience of the Kemerovo Region shows that the concern of local authorities, combined with significant financial support from the federal government and private investors can bring radical changes to the socioeconomic situation even in such troubled settlements as old mining towns. In two years, more than 4,000 new jobs were created in the cities of Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Tashtagol and Prokopyevsk, 17 major investment projects were started, and private investment provided four times as much financing as the state provided. In an example of federal cooperation, Vneshekonombank implemented a single-industry town support program, the regional government adopted a special law on special economic zones and municipal authorities and residents supported the project and were eager to see it succeed. But with the current model, such success stories are few and far between across a vast grim landscape. Any system of targeted grants, even based on competitive distribution, will be inefficient without institutional steps to develop federalism. The new model of federalism should guarantee local self-governance and provide cities with a system of opportunities for independent selfdevelopment.
Which stakeholder group has the greatest influence on the development of major Russian cities? (Score out of 100) Federal authorities
49
Regional authorities
21
Mayor’s office
14
State structures
7
Business
5
Civil society
2
Media
2
Regional Responsibilities — A Formula for Success 1. Increasing up the activity and efficiency of management teams. Getting strategic projects approved by business and civil society 2. Skillful structuring of investment projects and better preparation of investment venues
Urban Index Russia 2011 (a poll of more than 300 experts)
what the experts say:
Irina Busygina,
Irina
Bulat Stolyarov,
Professor, Moscow
Starodubrovskaya,
General Director,
State Institute of
Gaidar Institute
IRP Group,
International Relations
of Economic Policy
and Producer,
“There is an impression that the state seeks to secure short-term loyalty, instead of the long-term responsibility of the regions.”
“Every type of city demands a different, in many ways opposing policy, a different priority distribution, and an absolutely different distribution of powers between the federal, regional and municipal authorities. Some cities have naturally become centers of independent development. For others, the state should choose growth points to concentrate its main investment efforts.”
The Moscow Urban Forum
“The federal government should share its regulatory powers and transfer considerably more financial and administrative resources to municipal authorities. And as an investor through federal funds, the center should demonstrate its reliability as a strategic partner that carries out its obligations.”
urban agenda 2012 governance 41
partnership
Attracting Private Investment HOW CAN PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP WORK FOR RUSSIAN CITIES? Cities around the world are familiar with problems connected with budget deficits. Their own revenue and budget subsidies are not enough to cover either their current needs or development projects. Private investment and public-private partnerships help cities to solve these dilemmas and move forward with priority projects. By Mikhail Kukushkin, Moskovskiye Novosti
R
ussian cities remain on the margins of investment processes and make practically no use of public-private partnership instruments. Russian legislation in the sphere of public-private partnership mainly aims to protect budget funds and state property. The terms offered for the involvement of private investors in joint projects are quite limited. Regions try to develop their own laws on public-private partnership, and they have already been adopted in 45 subjects of the Russian Federation. A closer examination reveals that these laws are rather collections of bylaws that cannot radically change the situation. For investors, Russia is a country with already high risks, mainly associated with underdeveloped institutions. These risks are higher at the regional and municipal level than at the federal level. And regions and cities cannot offer investors the guarantees they need, as a rule. More than that, not every municipal authority is interested in attracting investment. Moscow has enough money without private investment. When a city has its budget deficit covered by subsidies from the regional government, every ruble of investment can reduce these subsidies. Many problems are caused by the human resources available to municipal authorities. Municipal officials usually lack the competence to develop high-quality investment proposals and to implement them. Projects often stall without a key figure to drive them forward. The Moscow city government plans to start working more closely with Russian and foreign investors in the near future. The expansion of Moscow and the huge plans associated with that demand huge investment in quite a short timeframe. The following steps can provide for a favorable investment climate:
42 governance urban agenda 2012
A Formula for Success 1. Institutional risk reduction 2. Amending federal legislation on publicprivate partnerships: developing transparent rules that adequately distribute risks between partners 3. Developing a transparent and simple investment procedure for infrastructure construction and connecting to infrastructure
The creation of an investment commission headed by the mayor of the city, which would act as an agency selecting potential investment projects; The creation of an investment project model; Opening a specialized investment agency for Moscow in 2012; Adoption of legislative acts, establishing the approval and execution procedures for concession agreements; The development of a legislative basis for public-private partnership, including proposals on amendments to federal legislation.
4. Creating an incentive system for municipal authorities to attract investment and implement public-private partnership projects 5. Improving the structure of publicprivate partnership projects, a thorough preparation of every individual project
partnership
The priority sectors for private investment in Moscow will be the construction of transportation and road infrastructure, and utility and healthcare services. The municipal authorities expect that investors will create new parking spaces, and plan to use the concession mechanism to build new metro routes. These plans are extensive enough, but the use of public-private partnerships could be even wider. According to a study carried out by consultants Pricewaterhouse Coopers, public-private partnership instruments can be applied in seven out of 16 municipal programs (transportation, healthcare, education, social support, housing, utility infrastructure and energy efficiency), and three more programs (city sports, tourism and recreation, and information) could be fully funded by private investors. In addition, Moscow has an urgent need to invest in infrastructure and connect new consumers to that infrastructure. Budget investments in infrastructure development are too expensive and inefficient. Regulations that envisage returns on investment encourage companies to inflate construction costs. A system of incentives should be created to prevent infrastructure companies from inflating budgets, so that their work benefits both the city and investors. Public-private partnership is a complex area, and every project is unique. Yet, if you don’t implement pilot projects you can’t persuade municipal authorities, businesses and residents that these instruments are efficient and necessary for the city’s successful development. There is much to learn from international experience here. In the Spanish city of Barcelona, for instance, public-private partnerships were started in preparation for the 1992 Olympics. When the Olympics were over, municipal authorities sought to transfer as many Olympic facilities as possible to the private sector. Residential property was privatized, and sports and leisure facilities were handed over to private management. In the former steel capital of America, Pittsburgh, public-private partnerships helped redevelop a rundown, riverbank industrial zone of 60 hectares. Municipal authorities invested about $130 million and attracted $700 million of private investment. This project improved the environmental situation in the city, partially resolving transport infrastructure issues, and provided parking areas. Today,
a former factory has been replaced by a mixture of residential, office and commercial real estate. Pittsburgh, according to business magazines Forbes and The Economist, has been transformed from a shrinking city with huge pollution into one of the most attractive places to live in the United States. International experts say that successful public-private partnerships depend on a common strategy from municipal authorities, businesses and residents — as well as transparent rules that make each of the partners involved accountable.
what the experts say:
Analoly Valetov,
Albert Eganyan,
Tom Murphy,
Deputy Head,
Managing Partner,
Senior Resident
Department for
Vegas Lex law firm
Fellow, Urban Land
External Economic and International Affairs, Moscow city government
“The advantages of public-private partnerships are obvious for us. Besides additional funding for the modernization of infrastructure and the development of innovative industries, the private investor has better control over the end product and gets a better return for their money. Private business has new forms of management and technologies that may not be available to the city government.”
Institute, and former
“Municipalities tend to think that the worse things are — the better. In most cases, they receive subsidies from the regional budget. God preserve them from showing they can do things better and more efficiently, as the regional government will immediately cut their funding. If someone can get $1,000 for doing nothing, why would this person want to do work harder, but only get the same $1,000?”
mayor of Pittsburgh
“In order to implement public-private partnership, you need a number of components. First, you need leadership that can unite the majority of public and private sectors. Then you need a strategy to understand that the whole thing implies the development of the district, and not just construction. And you need investment potential and the awareness of the legal basis for publicprivate partnership.”
What is comfortable, and what is uncomfortable for investors in the urban environment? (100 points) Comfortable
Problematic
State, municipal projects support mechanisms: comfortable — problematic
Land lots for new construction
Access to credit
Rented areas for offices, trade
Availability of trained workforce in the city: excellent — average — bad Exellent Comfort zone — infrastructure and human capital
Average
Bad
Discomfort zone — failing public-private partnership mechanisms
Urban Index Russia 2011 (a poll of more than 300 experts)
urban agenda 2012 governance 43
event
Megaprojects: Safety Rules HOW TO AVOID THE “WHITE ELEPHANT”? The Olympics, a World Expo or some other large-scale international event can change a city beyond recognition. During the preparation stage its residents have to tolerate a lot of inconvenience, but they get investment, new jobs and an inflow of tourists in exchange. Several years ago the Russian government decided to develop its cities through the conduct of mega events: the APEC 2012 Russia summit in Vladivostok, a 2013 Universiade in Kazan, the Olympics and Paralympics 2014 in Sochi, and the World Football Cup in 2018. But one shouldn’t forget that mega events could not only drive the development of the city, but also bankrupt it. By Andrei Litvinov, Moskovskiye Novosti
Success stories: Barcelona — 1992 Olympic Games Barcelona used the 1992 Olympics to build the foundations for long-term economic development, and is still enjoying the fruits of this today. After proclaiming its bid to stage the Games, Barcelona began transforming the city, its sports and infrastructure facilities. From the very beginning, the municipal authorities made this process public and open. They tried to convince the International Olympic Committee that Barcelona was ready to host the Games in 1992, and deserving of this honor. They also made this idea popular among wide strata of the Spanish population. After the Games, Barcelona became one of the most visited cities of Europe and the second most important city in Spain, after Madrid. From 1986 to 1993 Barcelona completed the quickest development of municipal infrastructure in Europe. The city is a classical example of how a mega-event can become a driver of sustainable economic growth.
Shanghai — World Expo 2010 The Expo 2010 in Shanghai was the largest exhibition in the history of World Expo. The show consolidated China’s position as a leading global power, and of Shanghai as a major Asian business center. The Expo’s slogan was: “A better city — a better life.” The authorities tried to implement this principle in Shanghai during the preparation for the event. They allocated $15 billion to develop transportation networks. This program includ-
44 governance urban agenda 2012
ed the creation of new bus routes and the use of special public transit lanes. During the five years that preceded the World Expo the number of metro lines more than doubled, and their length increased from 145 kilometers to 400 kilometers. In 2012, the Shanghai metro is set to become the largest subway system in the world. During the World Expo 70,000 volunteers, speaking Chinese and English, provided services to tourists and visitors to the city. Every day more than 40,000 service personnel worked at the expo. For the first time, it became possible make a virtual visit to the Expo — all the pavilions and national exhibits were available online. The Expo made an estimated profit of $12 billion.
Horror stories: Athens — 2004 Olympic Games The 2004 Olympics is a textbook example of what can go wrong, with poor planning and inefficient investment. All Olympic cities now take into account Athens’ negative experience. The costs of Olympic construction could well be one of the contributory reasons for the debt crisis spreading to the Euro zone from Greece. The Greek government spent almost $11 billion on the Olympics, with the initial budget almost doubling due to delays in construction. Another $1.2 billion was spent on security during the Olympics. Yet, the number of tourists and tickets sold during the games disappointed the organizers, and several years afterward it was obvious that more than half the Olympic facilities had become “white elephants” that were almost never used. The deserted sports facili-
A Formula for Success 1. Start from existing needs and development projects of the city 2. Think of the legacy this mega event could leave for the city 3. Don’t forget the humanity dimension 4. Introduce new technologies 5. Use games to develop the local brand
event
ties included a baseball field, a rowing canal, table tennis halls, judo facilities and hockey fields. Projects aimed at transforming these facilities into useful sites for residents, such as parks, were frozen due to the financial crisis. Greece cannot think of investing anything today.
Future Challenges Milan — 2015 World Expo The economic capital of Italy is preparing for the 2015 World Expo. Milan cannot hope to compete with Shanghai, where a larger-scale renovation program was implemented before the Expo. The organizers decided that the atmosphere of the Milan World Expo should be easygoing and emotional. The main events will be held near the new exhibition center, the largest in the world. It is planned that 21 million visitors will come to the Expo area, which cover a territory of 1.1 million square meters. Investment in the Expo will be 12 billion euros, with the infrastructure costing 1.5 billion euros. Half of the funding will be provided by the Italian government, 33 percent by local authorities, and only 9 percent will come from the private sector. A major part of the cost will cover infrastructure construction, mainly transportation infrastructure, which the city had planned to build later. Almost 70 percent of these funds will come from private investors. There are plans to connect Milans’s three international airports, build three new metro lines and three new highways. A canal is to be built around the Expo, and it will be integrated into the Milan canal system, designed by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century. Food will be the topic of the Milan World Expo. It’s not an only a cult topic for Italians, but one of the crucial challenges for mankind — how to feed the 9 billion people who will live on a planet where water and land are in short supply. The world’s best economists, social scientists, philosophers and artists will contemplate this issue. Professors at Milan’s eight universities have appealed to their colleagues around the world to help them compile the participants’ final resolution from the Expo. rganizers expect that the Expo will produce not only a material but also intellectual heritage.
Average TV broadcast audience (millions of people) )
26 Rugby World Cup final
13 Wimbledon final, men
129
280
3 London Marathon
Football World Cup final
Olympics
Sochi — 2014 Olympics The organizers of the 2014 Olympics and Paralympics aim to make the Games work for the region, not the other way around. The idea to hold the Winter Olympics in Sochi has a long history. Russia filed applications twice before, in 1990 and 1994. In 2005 the interests of the city and of the territory were consolidated in a federal program, aiming to turn the city into a mountain climate health resort. A joint bid committee was formed in 2005, and it filed a bid to host the Winter Olympics in January 2007. The book produced to promote the bid had a special section devoted to the heritage of the Olympics. The concept is to create a world-class health resort in Sochi that will offer recreation, business and culture tourism opportunities all year round. The main effort is to build infrastructure. By 2014, Sochi will have to build 200 Olympic facilities, prepare to receive 600,000 visitors and provide a staff of 90,000 people. The amount of work can be compared to the construction of a city with a population of 150,000 people. Some facilities have already been built and are working for the city. The city’s new airport terminal was put into operation in 2010, while new roads and a railway line are under construction that will connect the center of Sochi to the Imereti Valley and Krasnaya Polyana. New standards have been used for the first time in Russia during the run-up to the Olympics: free access for people with disabilities will be the Russian national standard by 2016. It was almost the first time when “green” construction standards have been used in Russia. The Sochi Games will involve 25,000 volunteers — an unprecedented size for a volunteer movement in Russia. But there are risks, too. The costs of mistakes in Sochi will be especially high, as the 2014 Olympics have already become the most expensive Winter Olympic Games in history.
urban agenda 2012 governance 45
debates
Between Europe... WHICH MANAGEMENT MODEL IS BETTER FOR RUSSIAN CITIES? European cities have evolved for centuries, most often through self-organization and self-governance. Today residents play a crucial part in the decision-making process, and municipal authorities have all the instruments and powers to be accountable for city development. The swift growth of Asian cities, mainly in China, was, on the contrary, impossible without targeted state investment into accelerated urbanization and the building of new growth points. THE EUROPEAN MODEL Max Jeleniewski, City Manager, Municipality of The Hague The urban landscape has witnessed dramatic changes in the last 60 years. A number of political, social and economic transformations determine its present condition and appearance. The restoration of Europe after World War II was carried out according to Modernist ideas. Although Modernism as an architectural and urban development concept emerged as far back as the 1930s, under the influence of communism, it was only possible to fully implement its ideology after the war. The distinct features of this approach were strict functional separation of housing, jobs, leisure, green spaces and transportation. Modernists had a radical view of the future, and they weren’t afraid of building a new transportation infrastructure, expanding the boundaries of cities. The first economic crisis came in the late 1960s. People demanded political change all over Europe, and the pressure from revolutionary-minded people made politicians review their approaches to urban development. They began to care more about what happened within the city limits, and this was reflected in the construction of social housing. At the same time, new concepts of urban development emerged, and they were not based on Modernist ideas. The views of American journalist Jane Jacobs, who advocated comfortable living in urban centers, each with their own individual environment and character, were very popular in Europe. The next stage was in the return of the private sector in the 1990s and 2000s. Private investment in cities was falling over the course of 50 years, but the revenue of insurance companies and pension funds were growing. As a result, this money came back to the city and was invested into the redevelopment of urban territories, of industrial zones, first and foremost, through cooperation between municipal authorities and private companies. Such projects were based on the principle of integrated development, when a single territorial unit concentrates all the functions necessary for
46 governance urban agenda 2012
the city: small production facilities, housing, schools, hospitals and green spaces. Monuments, including those of the industrial era, and culture as a whole acquire new significance in this period. The concept invented by American social scientist Richard Florida, who declared the emergence of the “creative class” as the main driver of urban economic development, became widespread. The real estate investment bubble collapsed in 2008. Now we are facing a situation where it’s difficult to find financing: the less funding we have, the less investment we get. And we are witnessing an interesting process: the flow of investment and growing real estate prices can still be found in a few prosperous cities such as London, Paris, Milan, Munich and Berlin. Economic growth for countries as a whole has been halted, but it continues in the most prosperous and dynamically developing cities.
Economic growth for countries as a whole has been halted, but it continues in the most prosperous and dynamically developing cities
The European Experience — A Formula for Success 1. Learn from Europe’s experience of redeveloping urban industrial zones 2. Utilize the input from local communities and civic initiatives 3. Mixed-use development 4. Reasonable growth inside the city limits 5. Expand cooperation across municipal boundaries, using the experience of ‘Le Grand Paris’ project
what the experts say:
Artashes Gazaryan, Founder, School of Management and Democracy, Lithuania
“At present, it is useless to speak of choosing top-down or bottomup models for there is someone at the top who is commanding and distributing. And who is there at the bottom? Are there organizations and people in Russian
cities who are prepared to bear responsibility for their yard, for their house, for their street and for their city? There’s no other alternative to top-down development until personal responsibility emerges. We can only hope for a ‘kind’ government.”
debates
...and China On the face of it, bottom-up and top-down models of urban development would seem to be poles apart. Each country’s model has been conditioned by its own history, sociocultural tradition, institutions and stakeholder groups. Yet a closer examination reveals that you cannot speak of a European or an Asian model in their pure form in the modern globalized world. Cities learn from each other and form their own recipes for success. The question is which ingredients of such recipes fit Russian cities. The Chinese Model The Chinese Experience — A Formula for Success 1. Rapid change 2. Political centralization, balanced by economic decentralization 3. Implementation of large-scale projects with the involvement of international expertise 4. Learning from experience, through cooperation
By Shi Nan, General Secretary, Urban Planning Society of China “Compressed” urbanization has been going on in China for the last 20 years. That’s why we have everything at once: swiftly expanding cities, regeneration of districts inside municipal boundaries, construction of social housing and luxury apartments. Personally, I can hardly say what the “Asian model” is, as I don’t know what it looks like. The system of planning in China is a combination of political centralization and economic decentralization. Certain antagonisms are built into this model. We have taken a number of decisions to decentralize during the last 20 years. Departing from a single plan at the governmental level, we moved to three levels of planning – in economic and social development, land use (and the protection of agricultural lands) and urban planning. Financial decentralization took place in 1994, and tax revenues were redistributed between the local and central authorities. This reform resulted in an imbalance in the funding system, where the growing expenditures and costs were mainly borne by local governments who were forced to look for additional revenues. That is why Chinese cities have been enthusiastically expanded to balance the budget through the sale of land. Another important aspect of decentralization is the expansion of public involvement. Today, by law, citizens have the right to vote on issues of urban planning, and all problems are tackled through cooperation between the government, investors, the professional community and citizens. But the centralizing tendency is also obvious in China, running in parallel with decentralization. Several regional plans have been formed in recent years, which are used by central government to develop the national economy. Another example of this is the system of monitoring urban planning, which covers the capitals of all provinces, major economic centers and historical cities. The general plans of large cities have to be approved by the central government. It is an ancient tradition, and there are rea-
sons for this. China is a huge country, resembling Russia. Moscow and St. Petersburg play an important part in Russia’s economy, so they enjoy a special status. And in China too, major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing are economic centers for the country, so their general plans are approved on a national level. But the number of such cities is growing. There were 38 of them in the 1980s, and now there are 106 such cities. It is obvious that having the central government approve general plans for such a great number of cities is inefficient and unhelpful. Today we are starting to think about ways to transfer greater powers to the municipal level. The central government should concentrate instead on national interests and the general urbanization policy, rather than on specific policies at a local level.
The system of planning in China is a combination of political centralization and economic decentralization what the experts say:
Bertrand Lemoine, Director, Le Grand Paris Project International Group
“It’s necessary to combine global thinking and local master plans oriented at concrete regions. It is also very important to have many projects and initiatives that could be supported by the private sector.”
urban agenda 2012 governance 47
Part IV Identity Vladimir Paperny, Juan Carlos Belloso, David Adam, Sergei Cheryomin, Gor Nakhapetyan, Marina Khrustaleva, Grigory Revzin, Sergey Shpilko, Nikolai Novichkov, Nikolai Pryanishnikov, Natalya Nikitina, Hendrick van der Born, Bill Hutchison, Michael Schindhelm, Chiara Corazza, Alexei Komissarov, Sergei Kapkov, Yury Grigoryan, Ian Mulcahey and Henriette Vamberg on: Ways to Create a Successful City Brand; Selling Your Motherland; How to Attract Tourists to Russian Cities; Where Innovations Are Born; How Public Space Should Be Developed; and Capitalizing on the Heritage of Russian Avant-Garde.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum discussions: “City Branding: Best Practice,” “Best Public Space,” “Tourism and Urban Economy: Ways to Influence City Hospitality,” and “Cities Competing for Human Capital: Fostering Education, Science and Innovation Centers.”
urban agenda 2012 identity 49
column
Vladimir Paperny Vladimir Paperny & Associates
How to Sell Your Motherland
A
n international expert in the branding of cities and countries, Simon Anholt, of the United Kingdom, has acted as adviser to the governments of more than 40 countries, authored many books and contributed to periodicals. It may sound strange, but Anholt hates the word “branding.” The word “brand,” on the other hand, he finds acceptable, although it may imply three different things: Brand image — How people perceive the country, city, company or commodity. It is something you cannot control as: a) This perception is a remote one — in the minds of other people; b) It is “locked,” as you cannot penetrate it and make changes; c) Perception is fragmented, as it exists in the brains of thousands of different people. Brand identity — This is something you can control, through your signature style, text, symbols and images. It is important to remember that design has almost no influence on the perception of a brand. Anholt provides many examples of this, but I’d rather cite my own. Imagine that you come across an amazing leaflet, with wonderful design and well-written text, inviting you to spend your vacations in… Somalia. Would you feel like going there? I don’t think so, as you’d remember poverty, civil war, pirates and other joys. In other words, your perception of the “Somalia” brand has developed over a long period and was influenced by many factors. A beautiful leaflet can hardly change that. Brand purpose — This is an idea uniting people from a given country or company; something that makes many people act as one. Mixing all the three meanings of “brand” in one word often results in confusion, both in words and reality. So what is branding? Anholt sometimes starts his lectures as follows: in the course of 10 minutes he praises himself, his appearance, his intellect, the clothes he wears, his education and aristocratic manners. Listeners are bewildered. Then he explains: the thing I was doing right now is called branding. Do you like me more now? On the contrary, I believe, you have decided that I am a person suffering from an inferiority complex and a lack of confidence. Branding has the same effect. Only actions, not words, can change the perception of a brand. “Why is Nike so successful?” Anholt asks. It has a good product and good marketing. But the main thing is that
50 identity urban agenda 2012
people who buy Nike running shoes are satisfied with them. Neither advertising nor propaganda can significantly change the perception of a brand. So what can change it? To explain this, Anholt again uses his favorite number, three: Strategy — A clear awareness of yourself and your mission. In 99 percent of cases, problems with the brand perception are the result of a false perception of yourself and your mission. Substance — Your product, company, city or country should really produce something good and useful for other people. Symbolic actions — This doesn’t mean anything fake. This implies real actions that have a symbolic meaning.
column
Forming a City Brand
People Culture and Heritage
Management
Export
Investment and Immigration Tourism
The so-called “Anholt hexagon” forms an essential part of his theory, which uses six parameters to measure the brand of a city or a country. Here are these parameters: People. The reputation of the population for competence; education; openness and friendliness; hostility and inclination to discriminate. Management. The opinion of the population on the fairness and competence of administration and its readiness to be involved in the resolution of global issues, such as poverty, the fair distribution of resources and environmental protection. Export. Public opinion on the products and services from this country, and the inclination of consumers to actively strive for the purchase of products and services from this country. Tourism. The level of interest in visiting this country, and the attractiveness of its natural and artificial tourist sites. Culture and Heritage. The attitude of the population toward the conservation of heritage and contemporary culture, including cinema, music, sports, literature and art.
For many foreigners Moscow is interesting as the capital of the Soviet Union, but the city itself cannot make its mind how it should treat this 70-year period of its history. The authorities do not dare to be openly “proud” of the city’s Soviet architectural heritage
Investment and Immigration. The country’s attractiveness in terms of residence, work and education, and what these factors reveal about the assessment of the country’s socioeconomic situation. Here are some interesting facts. In 2008, Russia was among the top 10 countries in this hexagon in only one category: culture and heritage. It was seventh (France came first). During the same year, the composite rating of the United States suddenly jumped from 7th position to 1st, an unprecedented leap. At the same time, the attitude toward U.S. foreign policy remained negative. What influenced this change? The United States’ rating grew due to a single parameter — People. The explanation is simple. President George W. Bush was extremely unpopular. The world was prepared to recognize the difference between an unpleasant president and the population of the country that was disappointed with him. But in 2004, when American citizens elected him for a second term, the rating of the country suffered a dramatic drop. Obama brought about the change, and, as a result, the United States still holds the top spot. It may be useful to apply the Anholt hexagon to the city of Moscow. Let’s focus on culture and heritage, for this is the only category where Moscow can compete with other capitals at present. To rise from its current 7th place, Moscow lacks all the three elements suggested by Anholt: Strategy (A clear awareness of your past, present, future and, most importantly, your mission.) For many foreigners, Moscow is interesting as the capital of the Soviet Union, but the city itself cannot make up its mind how it should treat this 70-year period in its history. The authorities do not dare to be openly “proud” of the city’s Soviet architectural heritage. Real content. As Vyacheslav Glazychev, the professor of the Moscow Institute of Architecture, pointed out, citing the statistics of travel agencies, eight out of 10 tourists say that they would never come to Moscow again. Imagine where would you find Nike if eight out of 10 buyers said that they would never put their running shoes or T-shirts on again? “Moscow is a very hard city,” says Blaire Ruble, the director of the Kennan Institute in Washington. “It’s very difficult to walk around [Moscow] without knowing the Russian language and the city itself. It starts with your first steps at the airport, and goes on until the end of your visit.” Grigory Revzin, a journalist at the newspaper Kommersant, was more definite: “A trip to Moscow is a trip to hell. Here you can experience an adventure, a dangerous, fascinating atmosphere where you can get really rich, or perish. It is extreme urban tourism.” Symbolic actions. The Republic of Ireland made people from creative professions such as artists, writers and musicians exempt from paying income tax to demonstrate the importance of culture in the life of the country. The conservation of the Krasny Oktyabr factory as a publicly accessible, live urban space, the transformation of the All-Russia Exhibition Center (VDNKh) from a low-grade fair into a museum of Soviet history, or the creation of the Russian Avant-Garde Center in the building of Lisitsky’s Printing House would have signaled to the world that we have started to treat our culture and heritage seriously. And then, perhaps, our rating in other categories will also go up, including people, management, export, tourism and investment.
urban agenda 2012 identity 51
marketing
The City as a Brand HOW DO CITIES SELL THEIR IDENTITY, AND WHO BUYS IT? To win the global competition for tourists, investment, business, talent, technologies and events, cities must know how to manage their reputation and change it for the better. The development of a city’s brand improves its attractiveness and promotes economic success. By Denis Boikov, IRP Group, and Alexander Trifonov, Moskovskiye Novosti
N
ot so long ago brand as a term referred to a company, a product or service. The notion of a city’s brand was used for the first time in 2002 by Simon Anholt, a leading global expert in branding. “Brand mania” has spread around the world over the last decade, but not all brands are actually successful and efficient. Building a brand for a city is a time- and labor- consuming process. A strong urban brand has a complex umbrella structure. On one hand, it should represent the concept of the city as a whole, telling us about its identity, ambitions and goals; while on the other hand, it should be aimed at clearly segmented target markets and audiences. No matter which audience is being targeted, the city offers an “umbrella brand” as a whole, always indicating an individual sector intended precisely for this group of consumers. Before developing a brand, one should understand what kind of city it is, what message it carries and which audiences should receive that message. Quite often, it’s impossible to answer these questions without a clearly defined strategy of the city shared by both its authorities and residents. The success of a brand is not determined by an unusual logo or a successful advertising campaign. A symbol, as such, cannot make the city attractive and competitive. Take, for instance, the “I Love NY” sign, with its ubiquitous, mass-produced copies, which still retains its identity and embodies a cosmopolitan metropolitan area open for all. But it would never be so popular with residents and tourists if New York had not been precisely that kind of city — a point of attraction for the planet; a “melting pot” of cultures. The creation of a brand should be preceded by the development of a city’s new content and new quality. A solid foundation must be built to change the city’s image, first and foremost: the city must be safe, clean and comfortable to live in. A textbook example of the successful transformation of the urban environment and the reputation of the city is offered by Barcelona. Today it is the third
52 identity urban agenda 2012
global city of Europe (after London and Paris). But, according to Barcelona Global general director Mateo Hernandez, the city is only now launching the creation of its brand, which will be based on the notions of leadership, ambition and entrepreneurship. Quite often brand developers have to work with already existing biases and myths about certain cities. For the brand is a part of the human mind map. People go to see mountains in Switzerland, culture and cooking in Italy and France. It is difficult, but not impossible, to change notions of this kind. Here’s an example: the Angel of the North statue by Antony Gormley, a British sculptor, was constructed in the dying industrial town of Gateshead, in northeast England, in the 1990s. The Angel, quite unpopular with Gateshead residents at first, pushed the city into the top 10 most recognizable cities of the country. Today the development of Gateshead continues, and the city is inviting leading architects and designers to develop cultural centers along the waterfront of the River Tyne. The development of the cultural component and the construction of signature buildings often provide the basis for the rebranding of old industrial centers. Perm chose this way, too. An industrial city closed to outsiders once, it launched a competition for the creation of a new cultural capital several years ago. A large-scale renovation of infrastructure, the construction of a new museum, and the reconstruction of the city’s theater are planned for the next few years. Today, in the absence of capital investment, Perm can rival Russia’s twin capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the wealth and depth of its cultural calendar. The absence of strong brands for the cities of Russia reflects the issue of urban identity. It is very important to discover a positive foundation in the existing history for an urban environment to form a brand, and this is not easy. Fairytale characters can help, such as Ded Moroz, or Father Frost, in Veliky Ustyug, and Roly-Poly tilting dolls in Ulyanovsk. Myshkin used its name to claim the
marketing
A Formula for Success
position of the birthplace of mice. And Uryupinsk, relying on its reputation as the worst provincial city in Russia, launched a clothing line under the slogan of: “I’ll drop it all and go to Uryupinsk.” Moscow was not in the habit of discussing its brand for a long time. The capital exploited well-worn images such as the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, matryoshka nesting dolls, vodka and caviar. As a result, today Moscow’s brand is rather negative in its connotations. Abroad Moscow is associated with dirty money, corruption, crime and risky investment — for the people who have never visited Russia, that is. Those who live and work in Moscow have a more positive view of its investment and business climate. A survey conducted by the Moscow city government in cooperation with KPMG confirms this. A dearth of information means that the perception of Moscow is worse than the reality. That is why it’s so important to keep talking about the city, forming positive expectations of the changes planned for the city in the medium term. A city’s mayor is an important figure for branding. Dozens of institutions and agencies are involved in the implementation of the brand strategy, and this effort requires a coordinator. But an organization built on the principles of public-private partnership, as it was in Barcelona, can also be the subject of brand promotion. A successful brand creation is impossible, however, without the support of its values and ideology by the city’s
1. Create the image of the future for your city 2. Develop a plan to achieve it 3. Invent a creative approach to its new identity 4. Ensure that residents and businesses back you 5. Promote the new image in the information space of your country and to the rest of the world
residents. The creation of a brand is an investment into the city and its residents. Residents play a crucial role in the promotion of the city’s brand and its implementation. That is why it’s so important to involve municipal communities and public opinion leaders in the development of the brand, engaging and infusing them with a common idea. This is the only way for a brand to create new development opportunities for a city.
what the experts say:
Juan Carlos Belloso,
David Adam,
Sergei Cheryomin,
Gor Nakhapetyan,
Marina Khrustaleva,
Grigory Revzin,
Barcelona Brand
Global Cities General
Moscow City
Troika Dialog,
Moscow Architecture
Historian, Art Expert,
Project and Barcelona
Director, Adviser
Government
Managing Director
Preservation Society,
Architecture Critic,
Strategic Metropolitan
to London’s Mayor
Minister, and head
Chairperson
Journalist
Plan, Project Advisor,
for City Brand
of Department for
the Founder of the
Development
External Economic
“To create a brand looking into the future, one should be aware of the city’s past.”
“At the start of the last century one critic said, describing urban development in Moscow, that Moscow is characterized with ‘confused agility’. I believe that this is a part of a certain brand.”
Barcelona Global Association
“Advertising without the support of reality turns into propaganda. And we have to show that we are creating a new atmosphere, developing creativity, and changing our city with real action.”
and International
“There is always an association between the thing and the place where it was produced. That is why cities take great efforts to penetrate into your brain to find a place for themselves in your mind map. This influences their export.”
Affairs of Moscow
“Moscow should position itself not only as a financial center, but as a city comfortable to live in.”
“I’ll see that things are moving when the emblem of Moscow is replaced with a dynamic and modern logo.”
urban agenda 2012 identity 53
tourism
Creating a Tourism Culture HOW CAN RUSSIAN CITIES ATTRACT TOURISTS?
The travel industry is a crucial part of the economy for many countries and cities around the world. Tourism drives the growth of trade and the service sector, convention and exhibition activity and the entertainment industry. Today, Russia’s cities are not attractive to either foreign or Russian tourists. There are many reasons for this: a complicated visa regime; costly flights; a lack of information about Russia; and underdeveloped hotel and service industries. By Natalya Berishvili, Moskovskiye Novosti
T
ourism is an industry of experience and impressions. Packing for a trip, someone should understand why he or she is taking a long flight and what awaits him or her so far from home. Due to a lack of information, however, Russia as a tourist destination is in reality a closed book to foreigners. Only Moscow and St. Petersburg, just two of Russia’s diverse cities, are really known abroad. As a whole, Russia is perceived as an expensive, unsafe and quite inhospitable country. The first problem the foreigner faces is to getting into Russia. Complex procedures for acquiring a visa and high airfares to many destinations do not make Russia an attractive destination for cultural, educational or event tourism. Business travel accounts for most visitors to Russia at present. The tourist infrastructure development as an issue has gradually improved recently. Major Russian cities are reconstructing their airports, one by one. Moscow has a doubtless advantage in it with its three major international airports (Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo) each with an Aeroexpress rail link to the city center. There are plans to connect Moscow airports to each other via a commuter service by 2015, providing the basis for the transformation of the city into an international airport hub. One more issue for the Russian travel industry is underdeveloped hotel infrastructure. The duration of stays in hotel rooms is an important index of urban hospitality. At present, Moscow experiences a deficit of mid-range, family mini-hotels, which could allow travelers to live in homelike conditions. Unlike in St. Petersburg, where such hotels cooperated to form an integrated network, Moscow lacks the residential property to create such hotels, and
54 identity urban agenda 2012
Tourism share of GDP, %
the prices of rooms in existing hotels are quite high. But according to Sergei Shpilko, the chairman of the Moscow Committee for Tourism and Hotel Property, prices of rooms in the capital are high only in spring and autumn, when business events are held in the city. For Moscow is a center of business tourism today. In summer and in winter, and during the holidays, room prices are comparable to those in European: according to Shpilko, a room in a hostel costs upward from 430 rubles, and at a 2–3 star hotel upward from 750 rubles for children and 1,000 rubles per adult a day in a double room. According to official data, Moscow currently has a total of 215 hotels with 37,500 rooms. It’s still a small number for the scale, potential and ambitions of the Russian capital. If you look at tourist responses on TripAdvisor, a major international travel portal, the number of hotels and restaurants in Moscow is much lower than in major European capitals. And the situation with hotel infrastructure in other Russian cities is even worse. Russia’s travel industry lags far behind in information technology, too. It was only in early 2012 when Moscow’s integrated travel portal was launched — St. Petersburg and Kazan were ahead of Moscow in this (www.visit-petersburg.com, www.gokazan.com). Russia also has no travel portal, although many countries, like Britain, for instance, have been aware of the importance of a multilingual presence on the Internet for a long time. New technology provides additional opportunities for the promotion of cities and websites. Thus, interactive modeling (including 3D) has found greater use recently, allowing potential tourists to visit a city at any time of the day or season. This should inspire people to come to the city and see it with their own eyes.
Bulgaria Russia Egypt EU countries World Passenger flow through the airports of major global cities, millions a year
New York Paris2 London 3 Moscow 4
1
1 John F. Kennedy International airport 2 Roissy-Charles-deGaulle International Airport 3 Heathrow Airport 4 All Moscow airports
tourism
Everything mentioned above can be regarded as weaknesses in tourist infrastructure. But there also are intangible obstacles hampering the development of the travel industry in Russia. Russians are not accustomed to service jobs, and they are not particularly warmhearted or naturally hospitable to foreigners. Special training sessions, like those planned for Sochi on the eve of the Olympics, and local projects aimed at the creation of a hospitable environment in the city, could change this situation. For example, in Novocheboksarsk, Katya Vasilkova, a young resident of the city, invented and implemented the Say Cheese project. Coming back to her town from Prague, she was indignant to see that people on the streets of her city always looked worried or sad, and never smiled. Due to her efforts, road signs with smiles appeared in the city, and “happy buses” drove across the city with funny stories on board. The city changed as a result and became more hospitable. Examples of this kind show that individual initiatives can be no less influential on the attractiveness of a city than the policy of the municipal authorities. That’s how a whole cultural cluster emerged in the Moscow Region city
of Kolomna from 2006. Starting with handmade Kolomna marshmallows, produced according to an ancient recipe, Moscow residents Natalya Nikitina and Yelena Dmitriyeva bit by bit restored the ancient brand of the city, using sources from history and literature. Three years later a museum and a museum factory were opened in the city. The project is backed by the Moscow Region’s Culture Ministry, the Potanin Charity Fund, Our Future Fund of Regional Social Programs, and others. In Perm, the regional administration played a crucial role in the development of tourism. Continuing its line of promoting Perm as a cultural capital, it held the first annual festival White Nights in Perm in June 2011. Performances, concerts and exhibitions were visited by 430,000 people, who spent a total of 200 million rubles in the city in a month. It wasn’t bad for the first event, and such events consolidated the reputation of Perm as a cultural capital. No matter who created the tourist product, the authorities or local activists, these examples demonstrate that the strategy of “glocalization,” where the local product must retain genius loci, its sources and originality, and simultaneously be open to the world, meeting international standards, are a good formula for success today. While Moscow and St. Petersburg continue to compete for foreign tourists, Russian cities are more interested in Russian travelers. Every year, Russians spend about $30 billion abroad, and Russian cities actually do not compete for this money. If you want to change the situation, you should act in two directions at once — developing infrastructure and forming an identity, a unique local product, and telling the world about it with the unified effort of the city authorities and local communities.
Mini-hotels
Restaurants
1. Simplify the visa regime 2. Support local brands, cultural, educational and event tourism in the regions 3. Develop group tourism inside the country 4. Develop the small hotel business: family hotels and apartment hotels 5. Disseminate information on travel products in the Internet, in the media and at industry shows
what the experts say:
How big cities measure up on the TripAdvisor website: Hotels
A Formula for Success
Entertainment
Moscow
218
79
822
643
London
1,072
406
9,327
1,589
Paris
1,839
66
3,923
1,027
Berlin
662
126
7,476
532
Sergei Shpilko,
Nikolai Novichkov,
Nikolai Pryanishnikov,
Chairman, Moscow
Cultural Alliance
Moscow Higher School
Committee for
Project Federal
of Social and Economic
Tourism and Hotel
Directorate, Head,
Sciences, Educator,
Property
Professor
Architect
“Among the tremendous number of events held in the city one should find the crucial ones that could signify the image of the city. We must inform the travel market about them at least six months before they start, or nobody will be able to sell them, either in Russia, or abroad.”
“I certainly do not see any antagonism in what we should start with — building hotels or organizing events. We should race in every direction at once, developing infrastructure and building roads from the airport to the center of the city, and even lavatories. But we should start with putting this territory on the tourist map.”
“There’s a need to keep improving hospitality. Our community is too preoccupied with itself — some just survive, some live on the rent. We are not interesting for the world that way. What particular occupation can we offer? The Hindus have yoga, the Thais have massage and the Irish have dancing. But we can’t imagine anything except pancakes and Maslenitsa.”
urban agenda 2012 identity 55
innovations
A Magnet for Intellectual Capital WHAT KIND OF CITIES BREED INNOVATION? Globalization and the growing mobility of people all over the world are increasing the competition between cities to attract the creative class, entrepreneurs and innovators. Cities become more attractive not only with a greater number of universities and international companies, but also with the openness and comfort of the urban environment, ecology, culture and even climate. By Anna Yevsyukova and Filipp Kulpin, IRP Group
T
he transition from an industrial economy to an innovative economy has changed the appearance of cities and the lifestyle of their residents. Knowledge and human capital are the main factors of development now. People, not machines, are crucial for innovation. New technologies are born in small companies, which need a creative atmosphere to inspire discoveries, instead of long hours of work. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, wrote that the individual has creative abilities, but they can be lost due to the influence of the environment he or she lives in. It turns out that the quality of the urban environment may stimulate the production of innovation or, on the contrary, prevent it. In the 1960s Jane Jacobs appealed to urban planners to take care not only of the physical shell of the city, but also of the quality of life in it. Several decades later Clayton Christensen, a Harvard University professor, created the theory of breakthrough innovations turning into the drivers of economic growth, radically changing the space around us. The intersection of Jane Jacobs’s and Clayton Christensen’s ideas is where the concept of the “smart city” is
born, of the city that, like a magnet, can attract and motivate innovation producers, the so-called creative class. Each such city is unique. But there are common criteria important for its development. The city is “smart” if the ecological system of cooperation has been formed in it. Despite cultural differences and geographic distances, creative people meet and exchange knowledge and ideas. In the 1960s, the largest science cluster in the United States was in Boston. But the breakthrough innovation of the last few decades was not born there; it emerged in Silicon Valley. And that happened because from the very beginning a system of cooperation was formed there, transforming Silicon Valley into a paradise for creative people. The creative process is not limited to office hours, and cannot be forced into work hours, “from nine to five.” So all over the world people spend more time out of their offices. Consequently, the demand for entertainment, culture and sports goes up. Public spaces become one of the main components of the “smart city” infrastructure. This is where cooperation emerges and innovation is born.
A Formula for Success 1. The ecological system of cooperation in the urban environment 2. An improving environmental situation 3. Modern urban infrastructure development 4. Attracting students and leading specialists from around the world 5. Creating demand for innovations
For whom is the urban environment comfortable for in Russia? (100 points) Average
Leading experts
17.2
Creative people
15.1
32.5
15.9
31.5
Scientists, researchers
Ver y c om f or t able
Urban Index Russia 2011 (a poll of more than 300 experts)
56 identity urban agenda 2012
39.9
Uncomfortable
13.6
26.4 32.5 30 Medium
13.3 14.4
2.9 4.4 8.1
Very uncomfortable
innovations
Skolkovo, the First Smart City in Russia Skolkovo is more than a science or technology park: it is a full-fledged city, though it is a special city in which creativity is the rule rather than an exception; a prototype for the city of the future. The roughly 400-hectare territory in the Moscow Region’s Odintsovo District will house approximately 21,000 people, while the total number of employees will amount to 31,000 people. The first facilities will be built at the Innovation Centre in 2012, while the main construction program will be completed in 2015. Skolkovo is a city with an open code. The central zone, with its colorful architecture and unique opportunities for communication, will attract residents from the Moscow Region and the capital. The city’s buildings and open zones will serve as public spaces that are fully open to visitors. Up to 50,000 people can come to Skolkovo daily.
Rail transport and well-planned road junctions will provide quick access — ranging from 30-40 minutes — from Moscow’s historical center. Skolkovo is an energy efficient city with minimal or zero emissions of environmentally harmful substances that ensures the total recycling of household and municipal waste. At least 50 per cent of the energy consumed by the city will come from renewable sources. The well-developed water system uses significantly less water by Russian standards without compromising comfort or hygiene. Energy passive and active buildings that do not require energy from the outside and even produce more energy than they consume will be built at Skolkovo. Household and municipal waste will be disposed of in the most environmentally friendly way possible — the use of plasma incinerator technology. Skolkovo will set new environmental standards in transport. Walking and cycling will be a priority in the city. The use of vehicles with internal combustion engines will be prohibited.
The core of the “smart city” is usually formed by the universities where students from every corner of the world come to study. Research centers, laboratories and technology parks develop around these universities. Multiculturalism in the urban environment is very important to attract leading experts. In such cities as New York, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Dubai and Singapore, foreigners make up a significant percentage of the population. The emergence of communities of people from different countries in the city increases the diversity of its environment, putting diverse knowledge and experience into one melting pot. Russian cities have a good starting point for the development of innovation. Their advantages include an advanced education level and a skilled workforce. But systematic changes in the urban environment are needed to
bring foreigners to Russian cities. The creative class demands a high quality of urban infrastructure, including a well-developed public transit system, energy efficiency, fiber-optic communications, transport links to other leading global cities, good quality healthcare, and a welldeveloped, diverse culture. The demand for innovation is still low in many of the cities and regions of Russia. The main reason for this is the lack of funding and the limitations of the law on state procurement where the price, not the quality of the product, is the main criteria. That is why the initiative of the Moscow city government, which decided to allocate 5 percent of its public procurement to innovative products and to implement several pilot projects to introduce new technology, is so important. Such decision may attract innovative enterprises to Moscow and other cities in Russia.
what the experts say:
Hendrik van der Born,
Bill Hutchison,
Michael Schindhelm,
Chiara Corazza,
Alexey Komissarov,
KCAP Partner
Ernst & Young Senior
Strelka Institute
Le Grand Paris
Moscow Department
Counselor
for Architecture,
Investment Agency,
for Science,
Media and Design,
Managing Director
Industrial Policy and
“A revolution has taken place during the last several years. Now the main thing for young people is to find a place with Internet connections, so they can work on their projects in public spaces.”
“Any city exists in three dimensions — economic, social and environmental. It comprises diverse elements. Today people are trying to reconceptualize these spheres through innovative methods, new approaches and creative ideas.”
Urban Culture Theme Director
“Now we face a new phenomena associated with migration, the continuous movement of people. This fundamentally changes the concept of the city.”
Entrepreneurship,
“What are nightclubs for? To have innovation and talented people? Our answer was that they are necessary because young people should think, sipping a glass of wine, and if you made your mind to invent a new Apple or Google, these people should gather at a place where they don’t work.”
Head
“There has been a lot of talk about innovation for several years in this country. But few people say why innovations are needed, what they mean for the city.”
urban agenda 2012 identity 57
public space
Trespassers Welcome HOW CAN PUBLIC SPACE HELP CITIES FORM THEIR IDENTITY? Modern urban development places a special emphasis on the creation of public space. This is what defines the quality of life in a city and the desire of residents to live in it. By Ksenia Chudinova, Snob.ru
A
bout 50 years ago Jane Jacobs, an American journalist, wrote in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “Big cities are self-sufficient and open only when every person is involved in their creation. That is why public spaces in a city are not just zones of free access, but spaces of communication defining the spirit of the city and zones of common responsibility between the urban authorities and residents.” Until recently, the only place where you could find the notion of “public space” in Russia was in legal documents. Thus, the Code of Administrative Offenses regulated the behavior of citizens in public space, defining it as “any place where people are.” The notion of “public space” has a short history in urban development. It refers both to the territories of common use, and a part of indoor space used by an unlimited circle of persons (atriums, ground floors of business centers). Parks, unlike public gardens and boulevards, do not fall into this category because they are managed by a legal entity which can limit access to their territory. So, it turns out that there is public space, but there is no description of this term in legislation. Correspondingly, there is no clear-cut strategy of developing public spaces for the benefit of the city and its residents. The idea of public space in the life of the city has several dimensions. They are important as a place of political self-expression. They provide the basis for the creation of urban communities. Businesses emerge from them. As a whole, it is public spaces that make the city a more attractive place for residents, tourists and investors. According to urban development experts, a successful public space is defined by the following set of criteria: accessibility and safety, openness and friendliness, convenience, design and a wide range of opportunities to use it, and its thematic “content.” Moreover, in our northern climate it is also important to create the conditions for all-year-round use of public spaces, building additional structures near main buildings, pavilions, and covered walkways.
58 identity urban agenda 2012
The work to develop public spaces is an indispensable part not only for an urban development policy, but also for the marketing strategy for most global cities. At first, one should decide what forms the identity of the city, what makes its cultural and public life unique, what message it carries to its residents and the rest of the world. If you don’t have answers to these questions, it is impossible to determine what public spaces the city needs, and how residents and business can be involved in their creation. Conventionally, three models of creating successful public spaces can be defined. The first model is to build new public spaces for a specific purpose, such as Gensler’s proposed floating park on the River Thames in London. The second model involves designing a wholly new concept for an existing public space. One example of this approach can be seen in the Sony Center in Berlin, built where the Wall previously divided the city. It is now the venue of the international Berlin Film Festival and one of the favorite sites for Berliners and tourists alike. The third model involves the restoration of an old site and providing new content for it, as happened with Gorky Park in Moscow recently, and with Central Park in New York several decades ago. All these examples prove that, working on a physical public space, one shouldn’t forget about its content. It is not only beautiful design, safety and comfort that attract the audience, it is also the “filling” of it. It is important to have cultural content in every place of that sort. This is impossible without the involvement of creative teams, initiative groups, the media and local businesspeople. The number of resident stakeholders involved in the life of the public space has a direct influence on its quality. In Russia, the frequent inability of public officials to talk to the residents of the city, and the passive behavior of urban residents who were taught during the Soviet era that public space is for the government, can interfere with the implementation of this approach.
A Formula for Success 1. Create public space development programs 2. Ensure that property owners and developers take upon themselves the obligation to create and maintain public spaces and to monitor this process through public service institutions 3. Involve local communities and initiative groups in the creation of public spaces 4. Draw up proposals for the content and events for public spaces
public space
But practice shows that the best public spaces are born through partnership between municipal authorities, local communities and business. Many global cities have public ordinances that force owners of buildings and developers to maintain and create public spaces. In London and New York the common practice is to make entrepreneurs, residing within the area of the public space influence, pay additional taxes. Barcelona’s authorities believe that all the life of the city goes on in its squares. So they can use such an instrument as the confiscation of land when they see that owners do not maintain public space properly or if they are planning construction on this site. As a rule, land is repurchased through the mutual agreement of different parties, and according to its market value. Public ordinances of this kind do exist in Russian legislation, but they are often not suited for practical use. So municipal authorities have actually no instruments for interaction with developers in the creation of public spaces.
Nevertheless, the potential for the development of public spaces in Russian cities is quite high. Here is a simple example: about 40 percent of Moscow’s land areas are green spaces, and on a quarter of this greenery are real forests. And today the city has enough funds to develop this territory as public space. Besides that, Soviet architecture and urban development left a big enough legacy in the form of large squares, wide boulevards and avenues. While these squares were filled with people twice a year in the past during the May and November rallies, today they remain empty. The creation of new public spaces and the revival of old ones is necessary for Moscow and other Russian cities. Public spaces make the city more comfortable for residents and tourists. They are necessary to give a city its identity and to develop the awareness of involvement in the life of their city for its residents. The development of public spaces will help Russian cities actively compete with global metropolitan areas for resources, investment, tourists and human capital.
what the experts say:
Environmental comfort for target groups of various cities (100 points - maximum ) 61.1 66.7
St. Petersburg
77.8 54.5 Kazan
40.9 54.5 45.1 56.2
Moscow
69.3 76.2 71.4
Yekaterinburg
76.2 50.0 Nizhny Novgorod
Yury Grigoryan, Education Director, Strelka Institute for Architecture, Media and Design
“Public space is the theme that energized the Moscow public. The city’s chief architect aims to construct successful public space. Society is starting to bring the city back to life.”
Sergei Kapkov, Moscow Department of Culture, Head
Ian Mulcahey, Territorial Planning Director, Gensler
“Moscow is quite an aggressive city, its people are scared, and its citizens rarely smile at each other. In an aggressive city, people radically separate private from public space. They believe that public space does not belong to them. The bad thing is not that people delimit their private space, it is that they don’t feel their affiliation to the space, they are not prepared to develop it on their own.”
“We associate cities with definite public spaces and the experiences we have in them. Metropolitan areas become famous for their public spaces, and it is through them that we plan the future for cities. Open spaces are not taken for granted, they are a priority for an investment in infrastructure.”
46.7 43.8 58
Average
53.4 50.6
Scientists, researchers Creative people Top experts
Urban Index Russia 2011
Henriette Vamberg, director, Gehl Architects
“Developers should not ask: what the city could do for my building? They should ask: in what way my building can be useful for the city?”
(a poll of more than 300 experts)
urban agenda 2012 identity 59
column
Marina Khrustaleva Arkhnadzor and Moscow Architecture Preservation Society
The Image Revolution: a Bright Future for Russian Avant-Garde
A
rchitecture shapes the image of a metropolitan area. Cities that have existed for centuries have many layers of monuments from various epochs. It is the multi-layer architectural texture created by monuments that makes up the “feel of the city.” Western intellectual practice, as well as legislation, recognizes the value of heritage — the tangible evidence of continuity of civilization. Moscow has lost a considerable part of its architectural wealth during recent decades. The distortion of the architectural face of Moscow negatively affects both the identity of Muscovites as well as Moscow’s tourist appeal. Soviet avant-garde architecture has been recognized the world over as a source of artistic inspiration for architects and designers throughout the 20th century. Yet it has been twice “repressed” on native soil. The first time was in the early 1930s, when the vital, multi-layered, complex architectural life of the previous decade was declared unfit for the burgeoning Soviet system. Meanwhile new buildings, still smelling of fresh paint (and nowadays recognized as masterpieces) were deemed insufficiently decorative, and totally alien to Russian soil. Architects were encouraged to study the classics and national traditions. The buildings of the 1920s — transparent, sunlit structures, comprised of clean lines and planes — were hastily clad in a tapestry of classic columns and decorative features. The second rejection of avant-garde architecture came about during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Everything Soviet — without regard to period or age — was swept aside as something negative and having outlived its time; communal housing and factory canteens were associated not with dreams of a bright future but with poverty and communal day-to-day life, the smell of cheap soup, and cracks in window frames. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who termed monuments of constructivism “flat-snouted,” was a typical representative of this generation. It became commonplace to demean these buildings as morally obsolete, built hastily and on-the-cheap, and to talk about the
60 identity urban agenda 2012
technical impossibility of restoration — basically implying that the buildings were no longer needed. Until recently, the state of architecture monuments built in the 1920s and ’30s aroused concern: even the buildings that were given the status of regional monuments of architecture in the 1980s were not restored. But Avant-Garde heritage has come into focus in Moscow recently. The Planetarium, the Bakhmetyevsky Garage and Melnikov’s clubs were restored with various degrees of authenticity; while the reconstruction of the Textile Institute dormitory has also started. Businesspeople are showing an interest (even if not of a selfless nature) in familiar buildings. The Russian branch of DoCoMoMo resumed its work in 2011. Due to cooperation between the Arkhnadzor public movement and the Skolkovo School of Management an initiative group was formed to create a center for Russian Avant-Garde. The center was able to prepare an expert assessment to give the grave of Kazimir Malevich in Nemchinovka the status of a protected monument (the grave is in the middle of a residential development at present) and to arouse the interest of the Moscow government in the idea of developing the new brand of the capital in the spirit of Russian Avant-Garde. Nevertheless, architectural monuments are still in danger. The Soviet past has become fashionable, but it is rather associated with the aesthetics of Stalinism, and has almost nothing to do with the revolutionary romanticism of Avant-Garde. Recognized masterpieces recommended to be inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List, such as the Shukhov Tower or Narkomfin House, are slowly degrading. The Ogonyok printing house building, built according to a design by El Lissitzky, a star of the Russian Avant-Garde, was destroyed in a fire and is faces the threat of demolition. The capitalization of symbolic Russian avant-garde assets will enable Moscow to stand out among the world’s cities. It will give Muscovites another reason to be proud of their city, and attract tourists with this amazing layer of our heritage.
Part V Construction Veniamin Golubitsky, Alexander Skokan, Oleg Ryndin, Oleg Bayevsky, Philippe Chaix and Steve Moore
on:
How Russian Cities Can Build Non-Standard Design Housing at a Reasonable Price; How to Bring Business Districts to Life; and Changing from a Square Meters’ Market to a Buyers’ Market.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum discussions: “Housing: Political and Technological Solutions,” and “City Centers and Business Districts.”
urban agenda 2012
construction
61
housing
Combining Standard and Designer Concepts HOW CAN RUSSIAN CITIES BUILD COMFORTABLE HOUSING AT A REASONABLE PRICE? The Russian construction industry faces two crucial tasks: to quickly commission large volumes of residential property and simultaneously perform a large-scale renewal of old development areas. A common recipe for cost reduction in the achievement of these goals is to find a comprehensive solution within the boundaries of large territorial units, districts and neighborhoods. Urban development solutions, combining various functions and creating a distinct image of urban space, are urgently required. By Andrei Susarov, Moskovskiye Novosti
W
e have been living in new economic and social conditions for 20 years, but our urban environment has not changed. We still choose cheap, standard, low-cost construction where the main criterion is the area where the housing is being built. One of the reasons for this is in the development norms existing since the Soviet period, which don’t take into account the new needs of the population, changes in mobility and mass car ownership. Another reason for the domination of cheap construction is the structure of the residential real state market. High demand for real estate does not promote good quality. New technology is expensive, and we need a lot of housing, quickly and cheaply. Today the buyer of residential real estate is more interested in location than its consumer characteristics. The buyer either has limited finances and is looking for the cheapest purchase, or is buying property as an investment. Being aware of this trend, developers minimize their construction costs and don’t think of using new technologies, or improving the quality or energy efficiency of residential property. This results in the construction of cheap buildings with high maintenance costs. The attempt to tackle this issue with the use of administrative tools, such as inspections, self-regulated organizations, is not efficient enough. Any barrier can be overcome if the market does not demand quality. The situation could change if it became more profitable to create a good-quality living environment than simply to build as close to the center of the city as possible. The procedure of allocating land for new developments envisages high enough requirements for investors on the size
62 construction urban agenda 2012
of residential property to be located on this land. So developers are forced to build as densely as possible. The same negative incentive is present in the comprehensive renewal of districts, when the choice of project depends on nothing but its cost. The least expensive solutions are
what the experts say:
Alexander Skokan,
Oleg Ryndin,
Oleg Bayevsky,
Architect
Moscow Department
GUP NIIPI for
for Urban
Territorial Planning,
Development Policy,
NPO-2, Deputy
Deputy Head
Director
“The high liquidity of residential property, when a considerable part of it is bought as investment, and not to improve living standards, has a negative influence on the quality of construction.”
“By 2030 we shall be struck by a cumulative wave of crumbling and dilapidated housing. Only by renewing the residential property fund, which has not yet reached its physical lifetime limits, can we resolve this issue ahead of time.”
“Urban development norms require that we provide social infrastructure within a reasonable distance from housing projects. Cars have transformed our lifestyle, however. We don’t go shopping within 400 meters from our home now, we prefer to visit the shop we like, where prices are nice, and where parking is convenient. The development of new areas of Moscow is a good reason to amend these norms.”
housing
M ODERN
What kind of city would you choose?
CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGIES
7 C HINA
32
15 storys in 4 days
A Formula for Success
B RAZIL
130 euros per square meter
% 65
Standard design buildings Designer construction Mixed-use blocks
implemented as a result. Not only the cost of the project, but the quality needed to enhance the urban environment, should be a factor in project implementation. Urban housing made from standard prefabricated parts is quick and easy to construct, but its aesthetical quality is dubious. Designer cities where every building is constructed according to an individual project design are time- and money-consuming, but they create a higher quality urban environment. A city of blocks could combine these two approaches, when designer projects are mass-produced according to a standard development plan in various patterns. Modern technology makes it possible to achieve almost unlimited variety in urban environment images, based on standard designs. And when the urban environment is unique, its perception by urban residents is much better, and their assessment of the quality of life is also higher, respectively. Besides that, this approach makes it possible to build real estate property of different cost and types in the same area. To avoid the mistake Paris made in the past, where suburbs were transformed into ghettoes for the poor, it is important to construct residential property of different cost for different consumers — for young families, for the elderly, for people with special needs and for people with low incomes. The size of consumers’ wallet should be reflected only in the type of purchase, be it an apartment, a town house or a cottage. Yet, in parallel with large-scale residential construction, the problem of crumbling and dilapidated residential property is also important in Moscow. About 4 million to 4.5 million square meters of residential property, out of 250 million square meters available to Moscow residents, needs either capital repairs or completely demolishing. Experience shows that the renewal of crumbling housing is also more efficient on the scale of a block than of a separate building. The solutions when a new building is built to resettle the residents of a building to be repaired inevitably leads to a denser built-up area, exacerbating transport problems and arousing civic discontent due to the deterioration of living standards. It is possible to win public approval for large-scale reconstruction plans for old developments (or to overcome resistance to them) only when the residents of old districts don’t have to change their way of life and relocate. This issue can be tackled only when significant “temporary allocated public hous-
Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll, December 9, 2011
ing” is available, enabling temporary relocation of residents and their return to their own apartments after reconstruction. It is also necessary to involve the public and professional community in the review of reconstruction projects. To achieve this, competitions should be conducted in two phases. During the first stage, the public should be presented with the general concept for the development of the neighborhood. In the second stage, several tender winners should develop their concepts in greater detail. This approach makes it possible to take into account the interests of both municipal authorities and the residents, without imposing huge costs on investors and project developers.
1. Urban planning at the district, not the individual building, level 2. Combine standard design buildings and designer city approaches in each neighborhood 3. Create temporary allocated public housing for the return of residents to their apartments after the repair of old buildings 4. Work out incentives to improve energy efficiency and reduce the maintenance costs of residential property 5. Organize public reviews of district reconstruction projects, involving residents and professionals
urban agenda 2012 construction 63
business
Urban Business Logic HOW CAN WE BRING BUSINESS DISTRICTS TO LIFE? The greater development of technology and business standards place high demands on the urban environment. Can Moscow meet this challenge and compete with its rivals in the global economy? A lot depends on whether the city authorities and business can create business districts that are up to this task. By Alexander Trifonov, Moskovskiye Novosti
T
he world’s top urban experts today agree that the creation of specialized, purely office districts is a road to nowhere. Such business districts are empty and deserted at night. White- and bluecollar workers leave them, commuting to bedroom districts through horrendously long traffic jams. Then they have to make the return journey on their way back in the morning. Unfortunately, Russian cities still follow the model of separating business and bedroom districts in their development today. Office buildings are concentrated in the mainly non-residential city center, while the business potential of the city’s suburbs is practically not utilized at all. Yet the mixed-use concept has been recognized as optimal all over the world, and it envisages the combination of different categories of real estate in the same area. In our country, office centers and even office blocks are wedged into the city without taking into consideration the architectural context. The image of ultramodern Moskva-City skyscrapers, with mirrored glass windows, rising against the background of crumbling apartment blocks, is an eloquent example of this. The mixed-use principle holds that the difference in the functions of neighboring buildings does not suppose that each of them lives a life of its own. Business centers should naturally fit into the texture of the surrounding district. This approach, which is very attractive for business, is hardly used in Moscow, to say nothing of other Russian cities. Moscow today claims the role of an international financial center, but the quality of commercial real estate in the Russian capital doesn’t yet meet the demands of international companies. It’s true that many internationalstandard office buildings with high maintenance, security and equipment levels have been built in the city recently. But Moscow is no match to its rivals in many other supporting aspects. The quality of transportation connecting the business district to the city’s center and other districts is one of the most important aspects of the urban environment. Moscow’s overloaded public transit system is already work-
64 construction urban agenda 2012
ing at maximum capacity, and the increased stress on transit infrastructure is rarely taken into consideration when plans for the construction of office buildings are made. To reach many Moscow business centers, visitors have to use private vehicles, and developers cannot offer anything except street or illegal parking to them. The historical center is an undoubted advantage for Moscow, including its potential for the development of business functions. But development in areas of stable architecture is not a simple task. The most important thing here is to harmoniously match the context, retaining the basic topology of the area without spoiling the historical appearance of neighboring buildings.
A Formula for Success 1. Building districts with various, mixed-use functions 2. Good public transit access to business districts 3. Creating a highquality architectural environment 4. Non-profit partnerships for the comprehensive management of business districts
BID Activity Hierarchy
Innovation
Collective action
Marketing and promotion
Security and insurance
Clean, green development
business
What is your view of Moscow’s business districts?
18
3
%
Concentrated in one location (in the New City, for instance) Several business districts distributed over the city (including the creation of new districts)
79
Relocating business districts outside Moscow
Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll, December 9, 2011
Here Moscow developers, who often prefer construction to restoration, have a lot to think about. We need to improve the equipment used in buildings, infrastructure, communication and, most importantly, environmental and safety standards. Sometimes, observing one important condition for business can produce impressive results. For example, a shopping street in London’s West End was made much more attractive through the efforts of the local business community to improve security for customers and shop owners alike. For quite a long time, theft had driven up the cost of retail trade in this district. Shop owners got together and helped the police increase the number of arrests and convictions, leading to a drop in crime rates.
what the experts say:
Philippe Chaix,
Veniamin Golubitsky,
Steve Moore,
General Manager,
President, Renova
President, Washington
La D é fense Seine
StroyGroup
DC Economic
Arche Public Development Authority, Paris
“A business center should have a beautiful story to tell, and to do this it needs top-class architecture. People and companies should be proud of the place they work. Architecture enables us to dream and reflects values present in us – dynamics, harmony, our history and culture.”
This is not an isolated example. The Business Improvement District (BID) model has been working in the United Kingdom for the last 30 years. This model involves management companies that work to enhance the attractiveness of particular districts. Local entrepreneurs invariably play a leading role in the creation of such structures, as they pay business taxes that depend on the cost of real estate in these districts. Working together with local authorities and business organizations, management companies can resolve such problems as parking, cleaning and streetscaping. Their activity is based on the confidence of their business partners, transparency, efficiency and innovative solutions. Management companies embracing business-to-business principles could significantly improve central districts of Moscow such as Taganka, Patriarshy Prudy and Novy Arbat. In the United Kingdom and the United States, nonprofit organizations are active in the urban administration, as a rule, being responsible not only for the development of individual districts and blocks, but also of the city as a whole. In Washington DC, for instance, a special nonprofit partnership was created to promote and expand business potential. Uniting the interests of the municipal authorities and the business community to promote the city’s economic development, the partnership maintains a database of all development projects in the city, promotes investment venues and initiatives, works to develop creative industries and attracts new experts. Russian cities should also learn from this experience. Representatives of business and public organizations often complain that the authorities do not sufficiently involve them in urban development decision-making. The real reason for this is that they often pursue their own goals and interests. The result is that the city is sometimes pulled in different directions by authorities and business, canceling out each others efforts. Only the active involvement of all stakeholders can enable cities to significant improve the urban environment.
Partnership
“A district should develop organically, but linking the development to even the most wonderful plans of an official does not always work. So business should get involved at the planning stage, when the goals are being worked out.”
“The nonprofit partnership has many marketing instruments, taking into account the interests of investors, local communities and other partners interested in the development of a city.”
urban agenda 2012 construction 65
column
Veniamin Golubitsky President, Renova StroyGroup
From Square Meters to a Buyer’s Market
M
oscow, from a developer’s point of view, today resembles someone who has just decided to build a house. This person does not have an understanding of what his house will look like, but he knows very well what he shouldn’t do. He shouldn’t destroy monuments, build without taking into account the availability of parking spaces, cause traffic congestion or destroy playgrounds for children — among many other things. But now Moscow is going to determine the right way to “build the house,” through a competition to design a plan for the city’s agglomeration development, and to update its General Plan. In some ways, Moscow is looking toward the model of Paris’ “Le Grand Paris” project, which has been developed over many years. But the Russian capital doesn’t have the luxury of time. Business must not sit idle — it should offer help to the government to resolve the problem, or the consequences will be seen soon in skyrocketing real estate prices associated with speculative hopes — and the stagnation of developers’ business. Real estate developers are starting to understand that urban territorial development has to be integrated. The great risk of the new General Plan comes with the definition of purposes for territories. The biggest mistake for the city as a customer will be to simply define what it wants to build at certain locations: “Here I need a kindergarten, here I need a school, here a block of residential property, and so on.” It looks rather like a contract order: rules for builders are articulated, and they start building. The ideal scheme in the evolution of the real estate development business in the new Moscow and in other cities of Russia resembles a simple structure, comprising two parts. The first level is the General Plan of the city, while the second comprises integrated urban development projects (IUD). Such a scheme presents a new task for market participants — they will need to sell comfortable conditions for life, a quality habitat — rather than simply square meters. Renova StroyGroup has a positive record of implementing such a project: In the Academichesky district in Yekaterinburg, where the city allocated an area of 1,300 hectares of land for Europe’s biggest comprehensive development.
66 construction urban agenda 2012
Integrated urban development projects envisage the inclusion of all real estate property categories, ranging from economy class to elite, including infrastructure, jobs and compulsory conservation of ecosystems, on the same territory. They set new quality standards for the real estate market. When a large enough territory is used as a unit of planning, developers have to compete for customers by offering a better quality of life, not just a better price per square meter. As the area is to be developed as a single, integrated whole, IUD projects can create conditions associated both with energy efficiency, and the use of state-of-the-art plant infrastructure, safety and the development of social, educational and leisure facilities in the territory. It is possible to provide these services in a district, but not in a single real estate unit. Today, integrated urban development projects come up against an underdeveloped land market. We have two extremes here. Either the developer purchases land for a sky-high sum and tries to make the most from it, constructing high buildings and violating all construction rules (as often happens in Moscow and other major cities). Or land auctions do not find buyers and follow the principles of “let it go at last” (in the cities with a less developed real estate market). Then it turns out that the entity which acquired this land cannot use it because it does not have available funds, a proper credit record or a good credit rating. If Moscow’s new development rules, which are expected to be approved in the near future, define a district as a unit of integrated development, developers will have to compete for these projects, and we shall witness an important transformation in the next five to 10 years: At last the development market, the market of square meters and construction volume, will turn into a market of quality real estate in every segment.
Real estate developers are starting to understand that urban territorial development has to be integrated
Part VI Infrastructure Vasily Gatov, Carlo Ratti, Boris Medvedev, Yelena Nechai, Nikolai Lyamov, Mikhail Blinkin, Darya Borisova, Julian Smith and Donal McDaid on: How Cities Change in the Real-Time Era; Digital Media in the Future City; and How City Transit Can Become Quick and Comfortable.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum discussions: “The Future of Cities in the Age of Telecommunication,” and “Transport Issues in the Metropolis: Future Development”
urban agenda 2012 infrastructure 67
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Vasily Gatov Director, RIA Novosti Media Lab
The Media City of the Future
T
he famous 19th century revolutionary thinker, Friedrich Engels, developed an idea from his contemporary John Morton that, historically, all cities have followed the path of ancient Athens — bringing together a number of citizens in the same place out of society’s basic needs to wage war, develop trade and organize public administration. Now we can take this theory one step forward and say that it is practically impossible to perform the fundamental functions of a city, even in a society based on slavery, without successful and advanced communication. Eventually, practically everything that comprises a city — its geographical location, buildings, residents, law and governance principles, modes of transportation — are connected with ways of distributing information (that is, media in the contemporary meaning of this word). The media environment is the most dynamic part of the modern city. Ranging from street signs to new forms of outdoor and indoor advertisements, or the city’s brand to communication strategies creating new metropolitan areas, communication is growing and taking up an increasing portion of the urban environment and municipal governance practice. Existing in the present, the community of people that forms a city keeps peeping into the past (and tries to look into the future) through the media. The urban environment is an ideal breeding ground for the media, in the widest sense of the word. High population density makes it easy to deliver high-quality information swiftly to a large audience. The pace of city life promotes growth in the frequency of media contacts. The economies of modern cities lead to considerable concentrations of high-income population, creating a zone where media and telecommunication companies can experiment in reaching various audience segments, sending targeted messages and distributing increasingly sophisticated forms of information.
68 infrastructure urban agenda 2012
Modern urban media have several layers that, due to rules that we do not yet fully understand, mirror various strata of the city’s population, administration and transportation. The media helps to knit these strata together, using both broadcasting technology — “from one to all” — and the technology of the networking society — the viruslike dissemination of information “from all to all.” The very structure of metropolitan areas, which implies superfluous social links, has determined the emergence of the biggest innovation of the 21st century: Internet social networks. Why should an urban resident need virtual friends, Internet events and news if he or she sees, hears, smells and touches thousands of people in the urban environment — in its transit systems, offices and parks?
Which telecommunications technologies have the greatest influence on the life of a city?
Developing the city’s various data collection and transmission systems Formulating the policy for urban media space management that matches the interests of residents and the city’s marketing strategy Creating systems for citizens to express their points of view
Moscow Urban Forum interactive poll, December 9, 2011
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Yet, social networks have proven to be an efficient tool to meet the demands of the creative class in major cities, functioning as an information filter, promoting the organization of network communities, encouraging initiatives and forming a new kind of politics that stays outside the offline structure and above the offline system. The organization of protest activities in Moscow and Russia’s other largest cities around the country’s recent parliamentary and presidential elections almost fully depended on Facebook and VKontakte, the most popular social network in Eastern Europe, which turned out to be an ideal environment for the development of the prototype “angry citizens” network.
Today the symbol of the Kremlin has practically lost both its content value and its communication efficiency Cities’ media layers can be both visible and invisible. Transportation, newspapers, outdoor advertisements, city navigation, television, the color of street facades and company signs are on the surface. The telecommunication infrastructure of cities (cable and wireless communication networks) and residents’ network communities (ranging from trivial ones, based on the same place of residence, to the most sophisticated and even clandestine ones) form invisible layers. Sensor M2M (machine-to-machine) networks, which maintain communication and interaction between people and places and are based on informational infrastructure, will acquire increasing importance over the next few years. The interaction of these layers generates differing images of the city: the one communicated to network users, and the one remembered by tourists. Then there’s the hidden, “community” image, the virtual “handful of treasured earth” that every resident of the city carries with them when they change their place of residence. The growing media of metropolitan areas alters the message of urban symbols that previously seemed absolute. For almost 900 years, the Kremlin was the key message sent by Moscow as the center of Russia, as its power, politics and culture. Recently, however, the value of the Kremlin as a symbol has changed its “sign” from positive to negative, and has even been dropped in some cases, by active participants of communication, for the creative class. Today the symbol of the Kremlin has practically lost both its content value and its communication efficiency. It’s virtually impossible to find another symbol for the city which has accumulated such a huge negative media value. One could even expect that any future authorities of Russia would reject the use of the Kremlin as the symbol of the state, replacing it with something more modern and neutral — a step public opinion has demanded for a long time.
Carlo Ratti, a leading architect at the SENSEable City Lab at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has highlighted one more media layer in the urban environment: the sensor network. Modern metropolitan areas, struggling in the mesh of communication networks, not only consume huge media resources but also create huge volumes of data demanded by urban users. Experiments by MIT students revealed dozens of “sensor media” in modern metropolitan areas. These media have different uses, ranging from management to entertainment. The study of a large city’s WASTE networks, i.e. decentralized social networks without a central hub or server, gives a clearer picture of globalization than lengthy discussions at Group of Eight summits. Transportation centers not only help to manage streams of moving people and commodities, they also reveal areas of potential interest for the development of certain urban functions. The traditional media of the cities — from those born on the squares of Athens and gaining power in the pamphlets and slogans of Paris at the time of the French Revolution, to newspapers and TV channels that built cities around themselves in the second half of the 20th century — are but a part of the urban communication pattern today. Equipped with the crucial invention of the last decades of the previous millennium, an interactive computer network functioning in real time, modern media can penetrate everywhere. Ubiquitous mobile communication, high-speed networks carrying exabytes of data, “digital citizenship,” connected and smart sensors, the “senseable reality” that changes depending on who it is serving at the moment — none of these are in the future anymore. They are already reality, and this fact has a huge influence on the urban environment and on us, its residents.
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telecoms
The City in Real Time HOW WILL CITIES CHANGE WITH THE USE OF TELEMATICS? The information technology levels we have achieved today make it possible to collect information on practically any aspect of city life in real time, and even alter them on the fly. But there is no understanding yet of how this can be combined in an integrated information system to process quickly the huge stream of dataflow coming in every second. By Yevgeny Moiseyev, Moskovskiye Novosti
M
odern cities are following an evolution pattern resembling Formula One’s in the last two decades. The sport has changed dramatically during this period: The only thing you needed to win a race 20 years ago was a swift, reliable vehicle and a brilliant driver. You need much more to be at the top today. You have to hang every possible sensor on your vehicle to transmit information to your team’s headquarters for second-by-second analysis. And decisions have to be made in real time, or you won’t win. Contemporary cities are evolving along the same route today. Metropolitan areas are covered with a network of telecommunication systems, collecting all kinds of information. The progress of technology makes it possible to tackle tasks that seemed unimaginable not so long ago. Here are some next-day technology examples from Carlo Ratti, head of the SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States. “We have quite a clear picture of how certain commodities find their way to being used by consumers – of their supply and distribution routes. But our laboratory decided to study where these commodities ended up after they were used and discarded. Some 3,000 Seattle residents took part in an experiment where sensors were put on the objects they threw away, allowing researchers to trace the movement of waste. For two months, researchers followed how and where waste moved across the country, and they came to a disappointing conclusion: recycling facilities for various kinds of waste are located in a way that cannot be called optimal. Data of this kind, received in real time, allows us to reasonably select locations for recycling facilities today.” “In another example, the laboratory’s researchers decided to study people’s networks, their communication and links. The analysis of this data in Britain and the United States created a map of “human links” for these countries. It turned out that the existing administrative divisions quite often didn’t match how people really link up with each other.”
70 infrastructure urban agenda 2012
We aren’t speaking about proven business solutions here, of course, but individual projects and scientific experiments. But even today, telecommunication networks make it possible to develop online monitoring systems for urban use. In most cases it is M2M telematics, or devices exchanging information through various communication channels. Such solutions are already extensively used in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Western Europe. But the use of M2M telematics is very much at its inception in Russian cities. It is not a matter of supply, as Russia’s three major mobile operators have been providing this kind of service for more than four years already. There are no orders for this technology from municipal and regional authorities. Yet the growth rates are quite high today, nevertheless. MTS, one of the major players in the market, has identified four main areas for development: transportation, the power industry, healthcare and security.
A Formula for Success 1. Implementing telematics (telecommunications and informatics) in the public transit system 2. Implementing new high-tech electricity meters 3. Implementing security systems that include online video observation 4. Implementing new technologies in the ambulance service 5. Integrating various information streams into a single management system for the city
With the support of RTI Systems
telecoms
The transportation solutions are, perhaps, the most obvious. The monitoring of public transit or taxis can affect dispatch service decisions. Public transit monitoring systems have been put into operation in a number of Russian cities. These systems send information on the movement of buses, trolleybuses and trams to a command center, supplying the end user with reliable information about the arrival of vehicles through the digital screens installed at bus stops. Analysis of this data helps to optimize the route network and the hourly traffic flow of public transport, quickly react to trouble situations (accidents, road repairs, traffic jams, etc.) and enhance the quality of transit services provided to city residents. The power industry is already collecting information from electricity meters in real time, helping companies to get a picture of energy consumption. This applies not only to meters in apartments and office buildings, but also to special solutions that account for heat and power consumption across the power company. A program of this kind was launched in Yaroslavl: 100 SIM cards were installed on the grid nodes to automatically transmit heat and electricity consumption to the data processing center. As a result, the cost of monitoring heat and energy consumption was cut by 75 percent. Medical telecommunication solutions are quite new for Russia, but their use is growing quickly. Sensors can monitor the patient’s health and send information instantly from the ambulance to the hospital. Telematics are also used by security companies in video observation systems, first and foremost. The implementation of such a system in Moscow’s Tverskoi District helped to increase crime detection rates for resi-
High-quality management and decision-making systems are necessary for the efficient use of information and communication technologies dential burglaries by 12 percent and for street assaults by 15 percent. As a whole, according to MTS forecasts, a growth in the use of M2M telematics is expected in the next few years, and the transportation and power industries will drive this trend. The use of monitoring systems in transportation is forecast to rise to 4 times current levels, and in the power industry to 4.5 times 2010 levels by 2015. The main issue hindering the implementation of such systems is not technology, but organizational difficulties. Essentially, information and communication technologies are nothing but a data collection tool. High-quality management and decision-making systems are necessary for their efficient use. Experts believe that the next step will be to create a comprehensive urban model for monitoring and reaction, integrating all information streams. To achieve this, we should tackle the compatibility issue, as different vendors supplying information software for urban needs use proprietary codes and standards in their products. This issue is quite an acute one already.
what the experts say:
Carlo Ratti,
Vasily Gatov,
Yelena Nechai,
Boris Medvedev,
Head, MIT SENSEable
Director, RIA Novosti
Mobile Telesystems,
Director, GUP
City Laboratory
Media Laboratory
Business Marketing
NII Information
Director
Technology, Moscow
“There is a beautiful paradox: you can forget about technology when it is ubiquitous. When technology is everywhere, when every atom is monitored, you can focus on what mankind actually needs. You can read books and newspapers, and meet your friends – everything we have been doing for thousands years.”
“Today connections to mobile networks are counted in the billions, and in a decade we’ll have dozens of billions of connections. It is not due to the increase in the population – the United Nations forecasts that the population of our planet will grow only by 1.5 billion during this period. This increase will be driven by the number of machines speaking to machines, sensors speaking to sensors and servers: devices that will inform us of their condition.”
city government
“A person doesn’t need LTE or 3G. A person needs to have services on their mobile device. If a person is satisfied with their speed, he doesn’t care about which technology is used.”
“We need to create an urban development model of a comprehensive nature where information technology has a clear place.”
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transportation
Unjamming Traffic How Moving Around the City Can Be Made Quick and Comfortable? Big cities are smothered by traffic jams and their transport infrastructure is stretched to its limits. International experience shows that to successfully overcome transportation problems, urban authorities should prioritize public and environmentally friendly transport, strictly regulating the movement and parking of vehicles. By Ilya Baksakov, Moskovskiye Novosti
D
uring the post-Soviet period, many Russian cities faced a similar problem: their road networks were not suitable for mass car ownership, as urban development plans were made when private cars were a luxury. Today, the density of the roads network cannot grow at the same rate as the number of private vehicles. The first city to use a comprehensive approach to resolving this issue was Moscow, which recently faced a real threat of transport collapse. The daily commute from the “sleeping districts” to Moscow, and from the Moscow Region to the center of the city, is creating an unbearable burden on the roads network. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that for quite a long time the development of the Moscow transportation system was planned separately from that of the Moscow Region. The Greater Moscow project provides a real opportunity to work out plans for the development of an integrated transportation system for the capital and the surrounding region. Resolution of the transportation issue starts with planning. Russian cities do not have adequate transportation statistics and an integrated system for land use and transport management at present. So taking decisions on construction, the city often doesn’t have a full picture of what additional load it could create on the transport system. This burden is great, already. In Moscow the roads network density is a half that of Berlin or Paris. According to the Moscow traffic police, the number of vehicles registered in Moscow topped 4 million in late 2011. It is virtually impossible to significantly increase the roads network in the city. And, as modern research shows, the more roads you construct, the quicker vehicles fill them. Many cities have bet on the development of public transit to resolve transport problems. The Moscow city government is following the same route, planning to invest 1.6 billion rubles in the development of the Moscow transportation system by 2016. The municipal program includes the construction of 87.9 kilometers of metro lines, 470 kilometers of roads, 32 transport hubs, the commissioning of a high-speed streetcar, opening a Moscow Inner Ring Railway, the use of the Moscow River for public transit, and many other steps.
72 infrastructure urban agenda 2012
Public transit offers an optimal solution for limited urban spaces. The metro, streetcars, trolleybuses and even eco-friendly modern buses have a lower impact on the environment than the traditional car. The diverse modes of public transport should be managed from a common center to provide speed and comfort for travelers to any point in the city. Modern navigation systems allow for the management of transport streams in real time, the adjustment of schedules and synchronicity in the work of various kinds of public transit, ensuring safety and comfort for passengers on any given route. It is not enough to build an individual parking lot, to commission a metro line or an express bus route. All this needs to be planned as a part of the common process, and multimodal transportation hubs are crucial links in this system. But even large-scale investment in public transit will not bring the desired results if you don’t work to change the behavior of travelers. According to ARUP polls, the
According to the International Association of Public Transport, to carry*
people you need
km of roads for private vehicles
km of bus lines
km
of metro lines * one-way trip
With the support of NIS GLONASS
transportation
what the experts say:
A Formula for Success
Donal McDaid,
Nikolai Lyamov,
Mikhail Blinkin,
Darya Borisova,
Julian Smith,
ARUP Company,
Deputy Mayor
Scientific Research
McKinsey & Company
PwC Global Rail
European Region
of Moscow
Institute for Transport
Partner
& Infrastructure,
Transport Department, Director
“Cars often take too much space in the cities — it should be used by people.”
and Road Industry,
“We are developing the transport system in three main directions: public transit, expanding the road network infrastructure of the city, and the creation of a smart transportation system.”
Coordinator
“Just as in business, a team, organization, and the decisionmaking process in all aspects of transportation planning — routes, rate, infrastructure, vehicles, maintenance — are very important for the management of the city. Quite often the lowest-level decisions are made in the center, by the transportation department, or a transportation company contracted by the city.”
Research Supervisor
“The use of bicycles in the city is not associated with the climate. Residents of Stockholm, Helsinki and Canadian cities use bicycles a lot. It’s all about the environment: until we use Euro-0 cars, bicycles can be used only with gas masks.”
majority of car owners do not see comfortable alternatives to traveling around the city, and the quality of public transit is assessed as “very bad.” Municipal authorities will have to overcome this bias, for the assessment of public transit quality does not depend only on the comfort and cleanliness of buses and metro trains, but on their speed and timetable compliance. The so-called “last mile,” the distance that passengers walk to and from the stop, are of special importance for assessment. And there is a lot to improve in Moscow in this respect. ARUP’s research registered a low share of traveling on foot in the Russian capital compared to the cities located in a similar climate, such as Helsinki, Copenhagen and Warsaw. And the number of bicycles is almost zero in Moscow. While many cities around the world prioritize the development of so-called sustainable transport, Russian cities are packed with cars, environment norms for fuel are not observed, and pavements are used for chaotic parking. To bring about a real change in the situation, municipal authorities will have to use often unpopular measures against the owners of private cars, which are gradually being forced out of city centers. A ban on free parking, the introduction of a congestion charge, the creation of bus lanes and significant fines for the violation of traffic rules have all proved to be efficient when consistently introduced and strictly regulated. Ultimately, cities are created for people, not for cars.
1. Integrated land use and transport planning
“Moscow traffic should be regarded as a complex modern business. It is necessary to know where people drive to and from every day. If we don’t understand customers’ needs, we cannot make the correct decisions.”
2. Developing public transit, pedestrian and bicycle traffic 3. Optimizing the management of the existing road network 4. Tightening parking rules for private vehicles 5. Introducing an integrated transportation management system that combines data collection and decision-making in real time 6. Linking all kinds of transportation and routes into an integrated urban network, developing transportation hubs
Only a comprehensive solution can radically improve the transport situation in Moscow* Road density. kilometers per 16,000 hectares or urban area
Road length per 1,000 vehicles per kilometers:
Population density people per hectare
Private vehicles in millions of cars
Paris
75
4.1
54.9
0.7
London
50
3.4
40.5
2.8
New York
65
5.7
68
1.4
Moscow 2011
31
0.7
100.3
4.5
Moscow** 2016
36
0.07
100.4
5.3
* M cKinsey & Company data ** I f the Moscow Transport System Development plan for 2012–16 is implemented
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Part VII Sustainable Development Alexander Bocharov, Arthur Markaryan, Nikita Vaisberg, Vartan Avakyan, Christopher Choa, Anton Kulbachevsky, Alexander Malyutin and Artashes Gazaryan on: How We Can Make Russian Cities Energy Efficient; The Resilient City; and What It Means to Be a Sustainable City in the 21st Century.
Based on the Moscow Urban Forum discussions: “Resilient Cities: What Challenges Lead to Changes?” and “Smart Grids: New Technologies for Increasing Efficiency.”
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energy consumption
Smart Energy How can we make Russian cities energy efficient? Developing smart power grids in a city is not just a fashionable trend – it’s an important way to reduce maintenance costs. To make such grids more efficient, we need to change residents’ patterns of energy consumption. But neither the construction of smart grids nor changes in consumer behavior will take place until the authorities introduce strict energy consumption norms and provide legislative support for energy-saving initiatives. By Yevgeny Moiseyev, Moskovskiye Novosti
S
mart grids have been in development for many years already. This technology makes it possible not only to make generation, transmission and distribution of power “smart,” but also to connect renewable energy sources to the greater grid. This way smart grids enter the market: generating surplus power, they can sell it to the supplier or, vice versa, purchase energy on the market when they need it. The reduction of energy consumption and the development of renewable sources are the main trend of recent years in Europe. This implies not only the use of wind or solar energy, but also of waste incineration as a source of energy. Even separate buildings are no longer consumers only, a new term was invented for them — prosumers*, as they do not only consume energy, they also produce it. Electricity is either produced by solar cells, or energy is recuperated when elevators go down, or in the form of heat in the industry. The Skolkovo innovation hub is working on the implementation of such technologies. But not all European inventions can be used in Russia. The efficiency of solar cells is questionable here. Central Russia has only 10 percent sunny days, so it is not clear if solar cells would ever generate any profits. But there are other ways to develop alternative energy sources. The Skolkovo Fund, in particular, is pursuing a project to recover heat generated by the data processing center in Skolkovo, which is to provide computing capacity to startups, research and educational institutions, the technology park and other Skolkovo resident enterprises. According to the construction plans, the center will consume more than 1 megawatt of electricity. If you could recover this energy, it could heat a whole district, if not a city. But the development of alternative sources will not produce the desired effect if we do not reduce consumption. And the change in residents’ behavior is crucial here, as people should be educated to consume energy in a better way. The use of public transit and environmentally friendly trans-
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portation (such as bicycles), walking to and from work and “planned consumption” all helps to save resources for the city. According to Ericsson’s research, the saving produced by changing people’s behavior is comparable to that from the implementation of new technologies, or even exceeds it. Russia has tremendous energy-saving potential. Today Russian cities have neither smart grids nor alternative energy sources, and there is no one working to change energy consumption behavior. A significant change can even be achieved without the construction of smart grids. According to Siemens, which analyzed the prospects for the implementation of energy-saving technology in Yekaterinburg, by 2020 the city could achieve a 44 percent reduction in energy consumption by using technologies that
* From “producer” and “consumer.”
energy consumption
The use of public transit and environmentally friendly transportation (such as bicycles), walking to and from work and planned consumption all help to save resources for the city are commonly used today around the world. The most elementary measures could produce an energy saving of 22 percent, and if we use state-of-the-art technology, this figure could rise to 79 percent — in other words, we could consume just one-fifth of current energy levels. As consumers, we have not been brought up to use smart grids. To start with, we should do such boring things as insulating outer walls and using triple glazing, heating management systems, water-saving devices, heat recovering ventilation systems, energy-saving lamps and other ways to save electricity. At the same time, projects to create fully-fledged “smart grids” in Russia run up against a number of fundamental problems.
The necessary legislation is lacking. The federal law on energy-saving forces the generation industry to conduct an energy audit of the industry and to introduce energy efficient technologies by the end of 2012. But the reform of the power industry has not been completed, and the transformation of the power system cannot be achieved without an agreement among numerous players in the market. They include the regional grid companies, municipal grids, private owners, the regional energy committee, energy departments of the region and of the city, among others. It is practically impossible to implement an integrated energy efficiency policy with such a number of market players all pursuing their own interests. Investment. The distribution grid is regulated on the regional level. So it is difficult for the municipal authorities to influence the rates and the investment program. Strict regulation of retail rates. It is very difficult to stimulate consumption through smart grids in the absence of a free retail market. Lack of strict energy efficiency requirements. The creation of smart grids in European Union countries is required by law. In Britain, for instance, 25 percent of electricity ought to be generated from alternative sources, and energy efficiency requirements are strict. This is a crucial barrier interfering with the development of energy efficiency in Russian cities.
what the experts say:
Alexander Bocharov,
Arthur Markaryan,
Nikita Vaisberg,
Vartan Avakyan,
Siemens, Supervisor
SPb Renovation,
Skolkovo Fund
OTIS Russia,
for the Development
General Director
of Smart Grids in the Cluster of Russia and Central Asia
“Transforming the legislative basis for the retail electricity market, the rate regulation system and the implementation of appropriate methods in distribution networks, including the definition of a concrete, clear center close to the administration of the city to coordinate projects, would enable us to overcome the existing technological gap.”
“Administrative and legislative barriers do not encourage us to pursue sensible approaches to energy consumption. We think that we have a lot of everything, so we can consume as much water, gas, heat as we can, and we don’t create the conditions to have it any other way. Europe has accumulated tremendous experience, while Asia is moving in the same direction. All this could be and should be used in Russia, because energy use per person is way over the top in this country. We should adopt strict laws, applicable for everyone, to reduce energy consumption.”
A Formula for Success 1. An agreement between the leaderships of the region and the city is a necessary condition for to introduce a smart grid in the city. This is the only way to influence the majority of the power supply chain participants 2. Energy efficiency starts with insulated walls and triple glazing, not with high-tech projects 3. The authorities should explain the advantages of a responsible attitude to energy efficiency to the population. Lower consumption means lower cost 4. Legislative regulation is key to the development of smart grids in Russia
General Director
“Every day we go to work, take our seats on public transportation and consume electricity in our offices, while the heating is working in our homes at the same time. We don’t think about it – it’s our way of life. Europeans seriously ask themselves: “Why am I going to work, and what will I gain there?”
“We should define for ourselves what the cost of our love for the environment, energy efficiency and innovation is. This love is no longer expensive with certain legislative documents. Its cost becomes the same as that of ordinary equipment.”
urban agenda 2012 sustainable development 77
Central management system Ń ollects information from smart counters to regulate energy flow and to balance supply and demand for electricity
How smart grids work
Housing
Generating capacity and other electricity suppliers manage energy production better when they receive information on the demand for electricity in real time
Industry
Electric cars can connect to the grid for recharging, but they can also return energy to the grid
Office buildings Intermittent sources such as solar cells can also be connected to the grid
Smart meters exchange information on the use of energy and rates between consumers and suppliers of electricity
Power grid
A system for energy demand management in residential, administrative and industrial buildings helps consumers manage consumption and optimize it
Source: Singapore Energy Market Authority
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Christopher Choa, AECOM Design + Planning, International Consulting Company Specializing in Construction Infrastructure Projects, Director
The Rise of the Resilient City
W
e live in extraordinary times. If the 19th century was the age of empires, and the 20th century the age of nations, the 21st century will come to be known as the age of cities. It’s already happening gradually, but in this century, the influence of nations will diminish and the economic and political influence of cities will increase. During this transformation, some cities will win and some will lose; the most successful cities will be the most resilient ones, the ones best able to adapt to the pressures of a globalizing urban age. A majority of the world’s population now lives in cities and as the world continues to become more urban, the economy of the future will be very different from the economy of the past. As an urban resident, I enjoy natural advantages over my counterparts in rural and suburban areas. Because I live in a big city, I have the privilege to be surrounded by an educated and adaptable workforce. The great cities that I have lived in or visited generate a majority of global wealth and almost 100 percent of global innovation. The densest of these cities consume less energy and resources per capita and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions per person than their less dense neighbors; from that point of view, Manhattan – with a density 2.5 times greater than central Moscow – is one of the most environmentally friendly places on the planet. Dense cities are resilient cities, because they are better adapted to change; they create more social, economic and environmental opportunities than any other institution that we have ever devised. In the 21st century, what will it mean to be a resilient city? Globalized culture has completely changed the way we create value. Because of the Internet and the accessibility of air travel, young residents of Paris and Shanghai are becoming more temperamentally attuned to each other than to their immediate neighbors in the French countryside or an adjoining Chinese town. People in Cairo are becoming more aware of life in London. Seoul and Sao Paolo are creating a new trading axis. As residents of major cities in the future, we will continue to have more and more in common with our peers thousands of kilometers away. But there is also a warning in all this; only the cities that can prove themselves to dis-
tant friends will prosper ahead of others. For Russian cities to remain relevant, it will no longer be enough for them to be linked to the nation, or simply to be relatively stronger than other Russian cities. In order to grow and thrive, these cities will have to rise to the upper ranks of global standards to appeal to a wider international community. The resilient city becomes a magnet for international talent, not just a focus of national activity. Moscow does not rank as highly as it should in various global competitiveness indices, such as the World Bank Knowledge Index, the McKinsey City Rankings, the Mercer Quality of Living Survey and others. A great city like Moscow needs to climb in these international indices if it is to thrive and remain relevant. Highly-ranked cities create a vibrant urban environment that motivates private enterprise and works hard to attract and maintain a young, educated population. These resilient cities fight to maintain valuable population density in their central areas. They don’t give up easily; they are careful to avoid low-density urban sprawl. Instead of simply expanding to undeveloped areas, the resilient city regenerates its former industrial areas for new commercial life, emphasizing mixed land uses. The resilient city works hard at transport management and developing attractive public spaces; it reduces road blockages with progressive initiatives like congestion charging, parking management, and by prioritizing pedestrian movement and bicycles. If Russian cities follow this path, they will be attractive not only to their residents, but also to potential residents, visitors and investors. In the new urban age of rising competitive cities, the risks of failure are real. But with the right mix of policies, the resilient city can create a bright future for itself.
In order to grow and thrive, Russian cities will have to rise to the upper ranks of global standards to appeal to a wider international community urban agenda 2012 sustainable development 79
resilient city
Passing the City Survival Test HOW CAN RUSSIAN CITIES CHANGE, YET STAY RESILIENT?
The notion of a resilient city is of great importance in modern urban development. Resilience implies flexible reaction to external challenges: climate change; the closure of production facilities that are no longer needed; the reorientation of trade; and the migration of people in and out of the city. As a living organism, a city can grow and develop when conditions are favorable — but when they change, the fight for survival often begins. By Andrei Litvinov, Moskovskiye Novosti
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everal years ago, a photo essay about a distressed Detroit was very popular on the Russian Internet: it showed empty streets and deserted buildings with broken windows. The former automotive capital of America looked like a disaster city from some video game. The oil crisis of 1970s had decimated companies and destroyed jobs. People were leaving, and the population of the former centers of industry was halved in a few decades. Russian cities have faced the same problem in recent decades. The collapse of the Soviet planned economy, with its strict distribution of production forces in the country, and the mass deindustrialization that followed, made a number of old industrial centers and single-industry towns, depending on a single key local enterprise, economically inefficient. There was a huge shift of economic activity and, consequently, populations to Russia’s biggest cities. Experts say that the demographic map of Russia looks more and more like a tadpole: from Moscow, its head, its tail stretches out to the remaining industrial cities in the Volga, the Urals and southern Siberia. Contemporary opinion is divided over whether singleindustry cities and towns should be supported, and what form this support should take. Direct support for industrial enterprises is proving to be inefficient; the artificial maintenance of low-cost jobs is slowing the process of economic deterioration, but cannot reverse the situation. There are no standard solutions. Every city or town of that kind needs a special program to find new sources of development and to reorient it toward other kinds of economic activities. For example, the single-indus-
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what the experts say:
Anton Kulbachevsky,
Alexander Malyutin,
Artashes Gazaryan,
Head, Land Use
Director, Sustainable
Founder, School of
and Environment
Design & evelopment,
Management and
Protection, Moscow
Ramboll
Democracy (Lithuania)
“For me, resilience is not so much about restoration as about longterm forecasts. The sociocultural functionality, aesthetics, harmony with the environment and our influence on it, economic efficiency – these components determine the resilience and sustainability of urban development.”
“Planning ahead, we can foresee that in 20 to 30 years streets of this width and with this transport scheme could block development and smother the city. This means that we can react to something that will happen in 20 to 30 years.”
city government
“Moscow has been built for 200 years, and it is difficult to influence the central part of the city. But we can reduce the load on it, add new territories, pursue thorough urban planning and environmental policies, and retain natural biotopes that have survived. So I believe we can look into the future with confidence that we shall be able to reduce the load on the center and shift this load to the new areas.”
resilient city
try towns of the Urals could draw upon the experience of the Ruhr Valley, the center of the European coal industry, where former mines were transformed into tourist attractions. Resilience in the face of climate change, and keeping its influence on the environment to a minimum, is increasingly important for cities, too. The bigger the city, the more complex its maintenance system, ranging from metro lines to fiber-optic cable, and the more vulnerable this giant becomes. For example, a snowstorm can result in a breakdown in transportation systems in many European cities. In Moscow the extreme heat of the 2010 summer, the wind storms of 2010 and 2011, and the freezing rain of 2011 raised questions of whether utility services were ready for climate extremes. Although it is difficult to forecast natural and climatic disasters, observing sustainable development principles and using modern technologies help to anticipate them. Planning build-up areas, for instance, we can reduce the average annual temperature in individual districts of a large city by 0.5-0.7 degrees Celsius, which can be especially important in the light of global warming. Skillful forecasts and planning are the key tools in the creation of resilience and sustainability for a city. The lack of attention to these factors in Russian cities has resulted in mistakes that could have been avoided. Moscow has been a striking example of a city that outgrew its borders and functioned at the top of its capacity for a long time. Resources flowed into the center of the city from every corner of the country, but the city itself was practically separated from the region around it. Expanding Moscow’s borders and increasing its territory to 2.5 times its present size is an attempt to meet this challenge and define alternative development and conurbation centers. It is not just Moscow that is changing its plans over the next few years. On a smaller scale, the problems of the Russian capital apply to all major cities in Russia. New agglomeration development plans
are being worked out in Vladivostok, Chita, Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk and Samara. The planning should cover the strategy for a reasonable growth of the city, taking into consideration resources for further development. The resilience of major cities is associated with their success in competing for various resources – financial, human capital, technology, institutions, etc. on the interregional and global level today. The inflow, renewal and circulation of resources help the city successfully to develop and resiliently react to various challenges. That is why both the integration of the city into international trade, and its connectivity and flexibility for its residents and visitors are so important now. The modern metropolis should be able to transport millions of people across the city every day. This is possible only with a well-developed public transit system, connected into an integrated network. Multimodal hubs are crucial for this system as they are able to quickly redistribute passenger flows between different kinds of transit. While Russia’s 5,500 railway stations, spread from Vladivostok in the Far East to Kaliningrad in the West, are able to process 1.2 billion people annually, this compares unfavorably with Tokyo’s busiest railway station, Shinjuku, which alone can process 3.6 million people a day, or 1.3 billion people annually. The ideal railway station is a “city within a city,” where you can find everything from offices to shops and hotels. The importance of airports is also growing. The concept of an aerotropolis is already used to describe a city where the airport is not only a gateway to the city, but a fully-fledged business city, and a center of gravity for new offices and residential quarters. This model had been fully implemented in Asian metropolitan areas, which have been developed practically from scratch. Moscow is currently fighting for the right to be the main hub for air traffic between Europe and Asia. Reorienting the transit and business infrastructure towards the city’s airports will be an important step on the road to global success.
A Formula for Success 1. Diversification of the economic structure, developing new sectors of economy and services 2. Developing multimodal hubs at the international, interregional and municipal levels (airports, railway stations and other transport terminals) 3. Creating alternative centers within the boundaries of the city or agglomeration 4. Protecting the environment: introducing sustainable technologies and long-term planning, taking into consideration climate change 5. Planning the development of the city in conjunction with the surrounding territories
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COUNTRIES AND PARTICIPANTS
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FORUM PARTICIPANTS
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JOURNALISTS
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MOSCOW KIROV ROSTOV-ON-DON ULYANOVSK VOLGOGRAD
journalists
PERM YAKUTSK
IZHEVSK UFA
SVERDLOVSK
91
87 KHABAROVSK
KYZYL BLAGOVESHCHENSK
COMPANIES
482 companies
THE FORUM WEBSITE REGISTERED
37,842 visits
119,063 views
11 channels 721 media items 58 interviews
CREATED BY MIKHAIL SIMAKOV
PENZA
what the media said
Snob.ru “It was an incredible, amazing forum: More than 800 participants from every corner of the planet, a wide-ranging agenda and fascinating presentations from legendary stars of urban development. This would have been an unachievable miracle in Moscow just a year ago.” (December 9, 2011) Slon.ru “The Moscow Urban Forum is devoted to the challenges faced by modern cities: metropolitan areas, small and medium-sized cities and single-industry towns. The forum is a venue for the discussion of the most important trends in modern urban development, for the professional community to learn about the state-of-the-art technologies and best global practices in urban environmental development.” (December 8, 2011) Expert Online “The Moscow Urban Forum, held in Moscow last week, featured many prominent global experts in urban development. As well as issues common to all cities, the forum discussed the future of the Russian capital.” (December 12, 2011) Moskovskaya Pravda “The Moscow Urban Forum, an international event, was held in Moscow for the first time. Its topic – Global Solutions for Russian Cities – is of immense importance, for the Russian capital, first and foremost, which is working out a new development strategy within the framework of ‘Greater Moscow’ and the Moscow agglomeration.” (December 9, 2011)
CREATED BY MIKHAIL SIMAKOV
The Moscow News “Initiated by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and set to run annually in the future, the event forms part of a long-overdue city government program to modernize Europe’s biggest city, currently lagging far behind its European counterparts in terms of living standards and infrastructure.” (December 16, 2011)
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Speaking at the opening of the forum, Sergei Sobyanin points out the importance of avoiding stereotypes in urban planning
Alexander Voloshin presenting his vision for transforming Moscow into a global financial center
Dmitry Kozak delivers a welcome speech, where he read out a message to the forum from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
Leading experts from the Urban Land Institute, who conducted an expert assessment of Moscow
Xu Bo, Deputy General Secretary of the Beijing city government
German Gref participating in the discussion “Global metropolises”
A meeting of global minds…
Deputy Mayor Andrei Sharonov and Greg Clark, of the Urban Land Institute, co-moderating the plenary session devoted to Russian cities
Max Jeleniewski listening to speakers at the forum with great interest
Maurice Leroy, France’s Urban Affairs Minister, speaking enthusiastically about the project “Le Grand Paris”
Mikhail Shamolin, President of AFK Sistema, the intellectual partner of the Moscow Urban Forum
Joe Montgomery, CEO of ULI Europe, taking part in the discussion: “How to Prepare the City for a Mega Event”
Elvira Nabiullina, Economic Development Minister, and Andrei Sharonov, Moscow Deputy Mayor
Marat Khusnullin, Leonid Kazinets and Vyacheslav Golubitsky discussing the concept of public-private partnership on the sidelines of the forum
Cello player Borislav Strulev catches the infectious mood of excitement at the forum
Informal events were an integral part of the forum
Jan Gehl and Edward Blakely discuss the future of the world’s cities
Doing business after hours – Shi Nan greeting Steve Moore
Roman Tkachenko, head of the RD Group Office in Russia, toasting to the forum’s success
…and informal communication
Professor Greg Clark, of the Urban Land Institute, and Barcelona experts Mateu Hernandez and Jordy Carnes
Inspiration and strong emotions: Olga Sharonova and Alexei Chuikin in animated conversation at a reception
Bertrand Lemoine and his colleagues from France viewing a model of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
Anatoly Komm and his team of master chefs conjure up some culinary magic for the guests
ULI Vice-President Alexandra Notay is very optimistic about the future of Moscow
Former Milan Mayor Gianpietro Borghini studying proposals for Russian cities
lexicon
Bulat Stolyarov General Director, IRP Group, and Producer, the Moscow Urban Forum
Overcoming the Language Barrier
T
he language we use tells other people much more about ourselves that we would like to admit. About 20 years ago, a sharp businessman from Europe did not need to come to Russia to study the Russian business environment. It was enough to have a look at the lexicon used by our business periodicals to get a clear picture of business as it was done in Russia. Our present political lexicon is more voluble than any complicated freedom level ratings or election results as a reflection of the situation with our institutions. And the language our engineers speak will show you far more clearly how efficient project development and construction are than any comparative analysis of capital and operating costs, or technologies. Urban development is no exception to this rule. You can form an opinion about the urban environment in Russia from the ratings and studies performed by Mercer, PwC, McKinsey and the new Russian Urban Index prepared by us for the Moscow Urban Forum. But you can take an easier road: listen to what language we use to speak about the challenges of our cities, what words help us prepare and adopt decisions. Our urban development language is the same as our cities; it is poor and underdeveloped. We are now starting to learn the words people use to speak and think about the development of cities where they are good and comfortable. This gap is, perhaps, the most important one — it is much more important than traffic jams, the current state of the airports, infrastructure and public space. Without making progress in the language we use, we won’t be able to tackle anything else, by definition. When we and our foreign partners work over strategies and master plans for Russian cities and territories, the first barrier we have to overcome onsite is the notional one. We cannot start to speak with the city about its development without agreeing on common terms with its leaders, for it is impossible to plan or implement a development project for the city in the terms it is accustomed to.
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The urban development dictionary is quickly expanding around the world. It is enriched year by year with new terms and meanings by the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of urban development as the most complex sphere of humanities. The quality of urban development cannot but rely on the integration of best practices in social science, economy, political science, architecture, engineering, technologies, marketing, investment and environmental studies. The urbanization of the global economy is turning cities into testing grounds where these disciplines fuse into one science — the most quaint and sophisticated of all, perhaps. The language barrier is absolutely the most important one for the fate of our cities, as for the cities of any country of the developing world. Significant breakthroughs in the quality of urban environment achieved by some countries in Asia and Latin America in recent decades were mainly supported by linguistic progress. Plans for the development of cities should be open to the best global expert assessment as the carrier of the lexicon of certain quality, and no task can be a more profound priority. And surely the translation of the discourse about cities into rich, modern language will require a full renewal of official terms too, and of urban development legislation, first and foremost. This is the mission of the Moscow Urban Forum — to promote the development of our dictionary. There is no other reason for the ugly quality of our cities than the absence of a modern dictionary, and this is what we should work on. Fortunately, our forum is not alone in pursuing this goal. We stand, most probably, on the threshold of a significant urban development renaissance. Such phenomena as The Village, Project Russia, Strelka Institute and international competitions for plans to develop the Moscow agglomeration, for the redevelopment of the ZiL factory and for Russky Island will catalyze the emergence of a new dictionary. Without such a dictionary, the task of transforming Russian cities would be as fantastical as an exercise in nuclear physics for a scholar of the Descartes era.