Moscow Reconnects with Its River - Urban Land Magazine
31/03/15 10:03
Advertisement
Urban Land Magazine
INDUSTRY SECTORS
Americas
Asia Pacific
CAPITAL MARKETS
Europe
MARKET TRENDS
Foundation
Join ULI
SUSTAINABILITY
DEVELOPMENT
INFRASTRUCTURE
PLANNING & DESIGN
Urban Land > Planning & Design > Moscow Reconnects with Its River
Moscow Reconnects with Its River
Most Read
Most Shared
Rethinking Private Accessory Dwellings
By Timothy Misir, Citiscope
Text Size: A
March 26, 2015
Print
Email
Share
Facebook
LinkedIn
AA
Twitter
March 6, 2015
Golf: No Longer a Hole in One
March 4, 2015
ULX: 10 Next-Wave Mixed-Income Housing
Projects
February 23, 2015
ULI Announces Final Four for 2015 Hines
Competition
March 2, 2015
13 Urban Trends to Watch
March 26, 2015
Get Weekly Updates
Enter Email Address
SIGN UP
The winning design proposal for the Moskva includes both natural and landscaped areas to reconnect city dwellers with the
river. (Project Meganom)
Barely a mile (1.6 km) from the Kremlin, an unusually warm winter evening draws a crowd to hang out along the
bank of the Moscow River.
Small groups of people sit on benches along the
promenade, drinking mulled wine and eating
sandwiches bought from pop-up food stands, while
others gather around a bandstand where local indie
music groups often perform. The river itself is quiet, and
parts of it are still frozen, but even in summer there is not much river traffic, save for some sightseeing boats.
This is the Crimean Embankment, known locally as Krymskaya Naberezhnaya. The 4.5-acre (1.8 ha) site was fully
Advertisement
pedestrianized just over a year ago. Parking spaces for cars and a busy roadway were replaced with a quay,
fountains, sun loungers, bike rental facilities, and a boardwalk. A decommissioned cruise ship docked here offers
boutique shopping and educational spaces, while artists sell paintings at a refurbished open-air market. The site
immediately became a popular destination for skateboarders, cyclists, and other city dwellers wanting some respite
by the water.
Not long ago, this sort of public space was hard to imagine anywhere in Moscow, let alone by the river. Known as
the Moskva, the waterway has long been severed from city life. For the most part, the river is a concrete-bound
channel whose embankments are used for roads, parking, or industrial purposes.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin is intent on changing this—and making over this 0.6-mile (1 km) stretch of riverfront is just
the beginning.
Last fall, Russia’s capital sponsored an international design competition to reimagine what the whole river and its
surrounding areas could look like 20 years from now. The winning plan, by a consortium led by the Moscow-based
http://urbanland.uli.org/news/moscow-reconnects-river/
Page 1 sur 8
Moscow Reconnects with Its River - Urban Land Magazine
31/03/15 10:04
architecture firm Project Meganom, envisions a green waterfront with both sculpted parks and more natural spaces.
It also imagines new transportation links—both on water and on land—that put the river at the heart of Moscow’s
future.
In recent years, the Moscow government has paid increasing attention to improving the quality of life for city
residents, particularly through the development of cultural and recreational areas. Several streets in Moscow’s
historical center have become fully pedestrianized—a rare victory for people over cars in the battle for city space.
An ambitious makeover of the Gorky Park has turned a place that once was to be avoided into a model park whose
biggest problem is coping with a crush of visitors.
Sobyanin sees the river plans as another key piece of this livability strategy. It is also part of how Moscow hopes to
compete against other European capitals in the global race for business, talent, and jobs. He put it this way in a
December interview with news channel Russia-24: “I believe that improvement of public spaces is likely to give the
city a competitive advantage.”
“Forsaken Spaces”
Moscow’s rivers were crucial to the city’s early
development. In the mid–18th century, the city’s first
industrial zones and factories were located along the
Advertisement
Moskva and Yauza rivers, enabling raw materials to be
shipped in and finished goods shipped out. Although
Moscow long ago ceased to be a center of industry,
Related Articles
dilapidated plants remain: Industrial zones account for
about a quarter of Moscow’s 124 miles (200 km) of
March 26, 2015
The Growing Separation of People and Jobs in
Metropolitan America
Between 2000 and 2012, the number of jobs within the
typical commute distance for residents in a major metro
area fell by 7 percent, according to new research by the
Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.
riverfront.
Many residential districts also are situated along the
Moskva, but a lack of recreation zones, amenities, and
access to the waterfront means that the river is not part
Plans call for introducing plants that would serve to filter water
flows into the river. (Project Meganom)
of life in the city.
“As a resident of a building that faces the river, I know firsthand that walking along the river is no fun,” says architect
and urbanist Nadia Nilina. “First of all, because it is nearly impossible to cross over the highway that severs the river
from the city.”
Getting from one side of the river to the other is not easy, either. Bridges are few and far between—some are
spaced as far apart as nine miles (14 km). London and Paris have twice the number of pedestrian bridges as
Moscow, despite having smaller populations.
River pollution also is a problem, despite the fact that there aren’t many active industrial facilities along the river.
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Cedar Gateway –
San Diego, California
March 23, 2015
Cedar Gateway, a $32 million ROEM housing
community, consists of 65 environmentally friendly
apartments on seven floors above more than 4,300
square feet (400 sq m) of ground-level retail space.
ULI Case Study: Riverfront Park of Denver,
Colorado
March 16, 2015
A transformative residential development capitalized on
old rail-yard land in the heart of the city.
Particularly in the city center, storm drains carry melting snow, road runoff, and silt into the river. That makes
waterfront locations even less inviting.
“They are forsaken spaces, abandoned by the city,” photographer Natalia Melnikova told the Architectural Council of
Moscow after shooting a series of pictures of Moscow’s riverfront factories. “There is car traffic and technically there
are sidewalks too, but nobody ever uses them.”
Port of the Future
The Crimean Embankment project showed that this could be changed. Building off the project’s success, Moscow
officials staged the design competition to begin an even bigger conversation about what the river could become.
Held by the Moscow General Planning Research and Project Institute, the state agency in charge of territorial
planning, the competition was the largest in the city’s history.
The design area covered more than 39 square miles (100 sq km). The goal was to make the Moskva’s
embankments more accessible, to connect areas located close to the water and to make the river a focal point of
the city. The competition’s brief used examples from waterfront revitalization projects in Oslo, Hamburg, and Bilbao,
and cited master plans for Paris’s Seine, Berlin’s Spree, and London’s Thames Gateway as successful precedents
for integrated river development.
“People should be able to walk along the river, to access it easily,” Sergei Kuznetsov, the chief architect for the city
of Moscow, told local radio station Vesti FM recently. “We have to create pedestrian and cycling routes, improve the
territories that are abandoned, littered, or misused. It’s important because wastelands like this turn into breeding
grounds for criminal activity, stray animals, and pollution. They have to be cleared, cleaned, and redeveloped.”
Kuznetsov was part of the jury that picked Project Meganom’s entry from among six finalists. The winning concept
is called “Port of the Future.” The term “port” is meant to signify not only new transit, walking, and cycling
connections but also serve as a metaphor for the numerous focal points that would develop along the river—a new
typology of public space for Moscow, where the city meets the river.
The plan proposes creating 11 large ports and 26 smaller ones. At each location, the master plan introduces a
combination of several simple “activation strategies.” These include increasing the amount of greenery, beautifying
the embankments, creating landmarks, and introducing basic amenities that are currently lacking such as toilets,
snack bars, and benches.
http://urbanland.uli.org/news/moscow-reconnects-river/
Page 2 sur 8
Moscow Reconnects with Its River - Urban Land Magazine
31/03/15 10:04
“The idea is to bring some value to places near the river,” says Project Meganom’s Anna Kamyshan, the proposal’s
project manager. “They are tools to make the river more active. They all work together.”
The strategy is ecologically focused, paying a lot of attention to landscaping and proposing to incorporate wetland
parks on the urban periphery. In the city center, a lower-level embankment with plants also would introduce more
greenery and serve to filter water flows into the river, Kamyshan explains.
The plan also aims to turn space for cars over to people. Roads along the river would be pushed back and replaced
with promenades and cycling paths. The river itself would be the city’s new central street, with 75 miles (120 km) of
green embankment by 2017. Rather than building new bridges across the river, a new focus would be placed on
developing water transport.
“I think it’s more of an ideological statement,” Kamyshan says. “There has never been a design proposal for all of
the river’s coastal territories. So I believe it’s the first step towards opening the river to the city’s inhabitants, and of
course, it’s not the last one.”
Implementation and Obstacles
The focus nowadays is turning to implementation. As the competition’s winner, Project Meganom will be invited to
be a consultant in the city’s efforts to revitalize its riverfront, though Kuznetsov, the city’s chief architect, has said
that ideas from all six finalists will be incorporated into the city’s final plans.
Some doubt whether the city can follow through on its big visions. Moscow’s economy is weak, dragged down by
international sanctions against Russia. Inflation is taking off and the ruble has fallen in value against the U. S. dollar
by almost half in the past year. Meanwhile, the city has other commitments, such as developing “New Moscow,” a
massive territory absorbed by the city in 2011.
“I have serious doubts that the enthusiasm associated with the newly discovered discipline of urbanism in Moscow
will last much longer,” says Nilina, who also took part in the competition with the Dutch urban design practice
Maxwan. Nilina also highlights the unclear and sometimes conflicting goals of city authorities and a lack of
communication between departments.
“To achieve serious results in the redevelopment of the postindustrial zones on the river, broad consensus between
the developers and the administration must be achieved,” she says. “We need strong alliances built, where the city
is responsible for the protection and multiplication of the ‘public good’ and the developers have clear rules and
incentives to implement serious projects in the city.”
Project Meganom’s Kamyshan echoes Nilina’s concerns. “We need new investment models,” she says. “Those
places belong to the city. They basically have to be developed using city money, and these sums are huge. They
just can’t do it. They can only afford to do one small area, like the Crimean Embankment, and that’s all. The
outskirts of the city center stay untouched.”
Zoning rules also will need to be changed to realize Moscow’s riverfront ambitions. Many areas along the river are
not zoned for commercial and mixed-use development. Only certain functions, such as schools, are allowed at other
sites. As Kamyshan says, “If you aren’t allowed to build anything, how can you ask investors to pay for anything?”
Mayor Sobyanin says these problems can be overcome. Developing tourism, culture, and recreation remains a
priority for Moscow, even in lean economic times, he says. “Many say that this is not the right time for improvement
projects, such as parks, pedestrian-only streets and squares, and open spaces, and suggest mothballing all of
them,” he said in the interview with Russia-24.
“If we want to attract people and investment and have a sustainable economy, we should not cut investment.
Rather, we should encourage more investment to make the city comfortable and people-friendly.”
Citiscope is a nonprofit news outlet that covers innovations in cities around the world. More at Citiscope.org.
SHOW COMMENTS
13 Urban Trends to Watch
By Henry Cisneros
Text Size: A
March 26, 2015
Print
Email
Share
Facebook
LinkedIn
AA
Twitter
Adapted from Urban Real Estate Investment: A New Era of Opportunity, now available at the ULI Bookstore.
The contours of an urban renaissance—long in the making—are quickly coming into focus. Massive societal and
economic changes are converging to create a new urban reality, a transformation of importance to the millions of
Americans in the nation’s metropolitan areas. Demographic changes are creating markets for mixed-use and mixedincome models of urban design. Job growth in advanced industries fits the preferences of knowledge workers
attracted to urban neighborhoods. The “smart” institutions of the new economy, such as research universities and
http://urbanland.uli.org/news/moscow-reconnects-river/
Page 3 sur 8