BIG MOSCOW
Compaction and consolidation instead of sprawl
Ninety percent of the city within its 1962 boundaries (the Moscow Ring Road) has been built over the past fifty years. The monument to Soviet urban planning suddenly found itself confronted with a new reality: and that is the root of the city’s numerous problems. Concepts for creating a comfortable urban environment on the sites of former industrial areas and micro-districts need to be explored.
This means addressing the entire range of problems that have accumulated, interacting with the urban community and creating new city-planning models.
Expansion beyond the city boundaries would only aggravate the ecological and transport situation, resulting in loss of time and shifting attention away from the periphery.
TRANSPORT
Improving connectivity and accessibility
The territory of ZIL has great potential for solving the city’s transport problems. The peninsula could become a hub for all modes of transportation, including inland water transport. Pedestrians and public transport are given priority in the development of the internal transport network. A network of safe pedestrian walkways should link children’s institutions and recreational areas.
ECOLOGY
The Park Ring and the Green River: new urban ecological systems
The project envisages the territory being incorporated into three new ecosystems of the city, making the former industrial area suitable for life. The main steps towards a green ZIL are: cleaning the Moskva River, airing the old riverbed, and developing a concept of energy conservation and ecological self-sufficiency.
QUALITY OF LIFE
Creating a balanced environment
The project shall particularly focus on harmoniously combining multiple functions. ZIL features all the elements of the urban environment of varying scale and significance: production, innovation, housing, and public facilities and spaces. Diversity and richness, density of service and safety, education and culture, health and sports: these are the indicators of the city’s performance as compared to global cities worldwide.
PUBLIC SPHERE
Priority of public interests in ZIL’s program
The ZIL site provides a unique opportunity of creating a new center of public life on the peninsula at a time when the city is experiencing an overall decline of the public sphere.
A large central park, a promenade along the river, a new pedestrian bridge across the Moskva River, a restored boulevard, and over 20 new small gardens and squares will make the urban environment especially attractive.
Engaging one or several educational institutions and a number of cultural and exhibition initiatives in the project is essential to the creation of the public center.
CENTER OF GRAVITY
An educational test site and urban laboratory
In the process of transforming ZIL into a new city center, the members of the urban community must be given freedom to experiment with it. Involving young people in the creation of their own future should help find new models for cooperation with the city authorities. Participation of educational institutions in the transformations from the outset is to become a significant part of the design process.
DECENTRALIZATION
A new city center at the confluence of two rivers
Lying on the opposite side of the Kremlin from Moscow City, the new cultural and educational center can offer tough competition to the business one and indicate alternative ways of creating public centers of gravity. Opening the boulevard and introducing cultural initiatives to part of the premises of the plant will help achieve rapid results and create a place of interest.
To this end, in the first stages, the city and developers must invest in infrastructure and promenade landscaping, not allowing real-estate development to take priority over the public aspect of the project.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
An experiment in urban culture
The multicultural environment of a megacity attracts tourists and citizens alike. The structure of the project should establish maximum diversity. Affordable apartments and rent will attract people of different interests, cultures and traditions to the area. Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Japanese, Tajik, Chinese, Armenian, Vietnamese, Indian, Georgian, and Russian shops, fairs, markets, restaurants and cafés are envisaged within a single curatorial concept.
SELF-GOVERNMENT
A new unit of municipal government
Large municipal management entities—administrative councils and districts—are created artificially and do not take into account the natural boundaries of the city. The shape and size of the peninsula are ideal for creating a new type of a self-government unit in Moscow. The building of the local community center should become one of the key iconic buildings of the complex.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
A city for the creative class
Moscow residents are now enjoying new communication opportunities and are more willing to spend time in the city space. The new class seeks new opportunities in the field of creative work and new standards of the urban environment.
Maximum residential use in the territory near the center and the creation of jobs in the periphery in the near future will to a certain extent help solve the problem of pendulum commuting on the agglomeration level.
ZIL has a unique opportunity of combining innovative production, affordable housing, and culture and education in the same area.
BALANCE OF FUNCTIONS
ZIL as a good neighbor
Constructing a new hospital and filling ZIL’s territory with social and cultural amenities should compensate for service shortcomings in the neighboring areas. Instead of a gated territory, the urban environment will see an upturn in the public sphere and the service sector.
Y. Grigoryan, A. Pavlova
R. Arakelyan
N. Martynov, A. Staborovskiy, N. Tatunashvili, E. Uglovskaya