Russian Towns, Cities / Urban Development

About the European style low-storey housing, I've dug through some modern Russian projects in that style which I can use to illustrate my point:

'Theatre' in Irkutsk




'Fishing Village-2' in Kaliningrad




'Forest Park' in Tyumen




'Veren Village' in a suburb of St. Petersburg





'Gingerbread' in a suburb of Vladivostok




'Holland Quarter', Ivanteevka (Moscow region)




It's a good compromise IMO between the Soviet-style residential blocks, and individual houses. We need more of this and less Shanghai or such.

kvs wrote:So there is a type of reversion to "5 story walk-ups" like you find in the older parts of European capitals and old US cities such as Boston.
Ones which have not been demolished.    This is a good development since it is "human scale" housing instead of a hive.  

Yeah and we have such buildings in St. Petersburg too, which are often still used for residential purposes.

The population density in central St. Petersburg is quite a lot higher than in any of the residential suburbs though. You'd think it's the opposite, given that far from every historical building in the centre is used for habitation, and that no buildings higher than 5 stories in fact are present there at all.

But the buildings are a lot closer together on average with much narrower roads and fewer green spaces between them, and what's more it's a very common practice dating back from the Soviet-era for the large apartments that such buildings are split into, to be themselves split among tenants with a room to each person or couple and a communal kitchen and washrooms shared out between everyone. Such living spaces are called communal flats and are a lifeline for students, poor families or young people dependent on living right in the center for work purposes. But anyway such arrangements do result in quite a serious population density.

These low-rise housing complexes however differ in that they are newly built, their apartments are all privately owned, and they are typically built further away from the city centre and in the same residential suburbs, or on the outskirts of cities outright - which also affords them a lot of green space around. The end result is that they have the lowest population densities of any of these options, while still avoiding the sort of problems you find in the American suburbs of individual housing with traffic and sprawl and so on.

Sprut-B wrote:What is the issue with Shanghai? The living standards in Shanghai are unparalleled compared to any Western city. 
It would be disrespectful to even compare Shanghai to any European city such as Paris, London, Berlin or Brussels..... If you ask anyone who has ever visited or lived in Shanghai, they will attest to this fact.

The issue is that Moscow is exactly like that itself. An unparalleled amount of highrises and skyscrapers are springing up there right now. Even the renovation program for those 5-storey Khruschevka buildings is going that way. All those buildings are being replaced by 15-storey, 20-storey, 25-storey, 30-storey ultra-modern cubes.

We don't need any more such Akira-style megacities and we don't have anywhere else with the population to achieve that anyway; apart from St. Petersburg which is of course a thoroughly historical European city from its inception.

Ekaterinburg is slowly building up with some skycrapers and it will be cool if Vladivostok or more concievably its new satellite-city further inland goes the same way too. So we will have 2 more cyberpunk cityscapes in the best case assuming their populations keep growing.

But we need a solution for the masses of other Russian cities and something to replace the Khruschevka 60s housing projects with, and then later Soviet-era housing eventually too. Building anything tall will look out of place and won't be commercially justified given how much land is available in and around these smaller cities. So work with the flow instead. Embrace nature, and make something that exists in symbiosis with it. Low-storey housing, green spaces, renewable energy, priority for pedestrian paths and bikes/scooters/etc.. for transport is not a trend monopolized by Europe. It makes just as much sense if not more for much of Russia's conditions.

Who wants to survive a nuclear war... lots of gun nuts think they will suddenly become relevant with their knowledge of guns, but actually it will be the criminals that will thrive because it will be kill or be killed and the brutality and inhumanity to survive will be too much for most law abiding citizens.

You would need to create your own food and also defend your food supply from all the others who can't or wont make their own food.

In a sense it is like the wild west... you have farmers and gun slingers... a bit like Serenity, set in the future in space where there are hunters and farmers... farmers will pay some hunters with food for protection from other hunters.

Anyway, before I get too far off topic, Russian towns and cities should prioritise comfort and ease of maintenance and efficiency and having bunkers underneath to survive a nuclear war would only make sense if those bunkers could be dual use for other things that make them useful... perhaps grain storage or other food types that can be freeze dried and stored for long periods... nuke it so all the bacteria dies.

Use high speed trains to connect suburbs, but also have factory towns where the large employers of people type industry has housing nearby perhaps owned by the industry itself so it can keep commuting to a minimum during the week and then you can go away for the weekend or holiday further afield.

Russia built Europe for itself, by Viktoria Nikiforova for RIANOVOSTI. 09.08.2023.

Be it London or Hong Kong, New York or Rio de Janeiro - in any metropolis in the world, a Muscovite can be seen from afar. A sad question froze on his face. Actually, a lot of questions. Why doesn't the bus arrive on schedule every minute? Where is the charger and free Wi-Fi? Why is the restaurant closed, it’s only two in the morning? I have a stomach ache, when will the ambulance arrive? That is, how come she won’t come, are you crazy or what?

Literally everywhere we are missing something, everything is somehow wrong. The Bois de Boulogne might be beautiful, but why are there so many prostitutes there? The Tiber embankments are atmospheric, but why throw junk on them and try to sell it to tourists? The New York subway is dirty and scary. There are often no escalators in the London Underground and you have to stomp upstairs on foot.

Muscovite runners almost started an uprising in Israel when they did not find their native pumpkin latte there. The cottage cheese from (there should have been an advertisement here) has already made thousands of relocators come back. "And they eat Russian fat!" - Sergei Mikhalkov would say morally here.

Poor drinking in the center of Rome cappuccino for 11 euros per cup. Somehow it's boring. Even Bernini's marbles pale next to this ridiculous price. You involuntarily remember your own restaurant on the corner of Tverskaya-Yamskaya - you want to go home.

A lot of it is just nostalgia, of course. Moscow had difficulty letting its children go before, we loved it even in the 90s, with all its cracks in the plaster. But now it's different, today the expression "the best city in the world" sparkled with new colours.

According to independent experts - often from the most unfriendly countries to us - Moscow is included in all the top megacities of the world. But in terms of the combination of "price - quality - safety" it is the absolute leader, there is nothing to argue about.

There are cheaper capitals, but, frankly speaking, it’s scary. There are more luxurious cities, but you have to sell a kidney to live there for at least a week. And only in Moscow you can enjoy ultra-modern comfort at a very reasonable price and freely walk around midnight - after midnight, without fear of unpleasant meetings.

All this seems as familiar as air. We don't even pay attention to it. But by modern standards this is an increasingly rare luxury.

Before the eyes of my generation, Western megacities are confidently and rapidly turning into Gotham City - a few blocks for the rich and a gloomy, endless ghetto for the poor, with areas where neither tourists nor the police go. From New York to Marseille, the big cities of the West made this journey in a couple of decades.

Today, no one in his right mind would go for a breath of air in New York's Central Park after midnight. At the same time, in summer Moscow, life is just beginning - lovers walk along the embankments, tango dances in parks, athletes run through parks. Parents roll strollers in which very young Muscovites sleep.

Safety, healthy food, sports, walks - what else? Even Moscow has an incredibly democratic culture. Dozens of huge concert halls, hundreds of theaters, you can go to a gallery to a good opera for 300 rubles - go at least every day. A huge number of libraries. An endless variety of free lectures, film screenings, exhibitions. "Activities", as they like to say now. Terrible word, but wonderful content.

When I walk along the Moscow boulevard and see smart people in a cafe, it seems to me that 30 years ago, all of us, Muscovites, wanted to build some kind of magical "Europe" in our country. Well, how we imagined it there from films and books: cozy restaurants, wine in tall glasses, beautiful dresses, flowers around, sidewalks are washed with shampoo. 

Everyone is kind to each other, and even one's own misfortune is more easily experienced in the noise of a large smart city.

It is not clear how, but we succeeded. Magical, idealized, romanticized by us "Europe", which has nothing in common with the modern EU - here it is, here: in the Hermitage Garden, in Arms Lane, on Malaya Bronnaya. And you don't have to go anywhere. Let Paris continue to mutate into Gotham City. Without us, gentlemen.

Now different people will run into the comments and squeal: "Consumerism! They snickered there in their Moscow!" These people want to say: look around. For this consumer colossus to work properly, millions of people work day and night in Moscow. Chefs knock with knives, orchestra musicians tune instruments, sprinkler drivers wash sidewalks with shampoo, taxi drivers carry passengers, a corps de ballet is engaged at the barre. And all this so that a Muscovite - or a guest of the capital - is fed, watered, dressed, shod, culturally served on time.

Even in the dead of night, Tverskaya is full of cars. Until dawn, the windows of Moscow houses are burning - cars are made here, and drones are made here. Behind this window, the professor is reading a book, preparing for tomorrow's lecture. And here a young programmer does not sleep, writes a game that - what the hell is not joking - will make him a millionaire in a few years.

Moscow air defense reflects Ukrainian drones. Muscovites are fighting on the very front line, as it should be during a people's war: workers, poets, and philosophers are fighting together there. Everything is like two and a half thousand years ago, when the philosopher Socrates and the playwright Aeschylus also successfully fought for their native Athens . "Moscow Regiment" - this is the name of the poem by Vadim Pekov, you can find it in social networks, read it.

And all this is my Moscow. Every September, hundreds of thousands of Rastignacs from the provinces come to us, rent apartments, greet their neighbors uncertainly, look around: how is it here, they won’t laugh? Our capital is not just a social elevator, it is a whole social escalator. Welcome, please don't push. Not even a year will pass before these Rastagnacs will be grumbling about “the ones who have come in large numbers.” But we are all like that here.

My paternal great-grandfather “came in large numbers” to Moscow from the Yaroslavl province at the end of the 19th century. He worked as a waiter, of course: it was a traditional labor niche for Yaroslavl residents. My maternal ancestors moved to the capital in the mid-1920s, almost immediately after the Civil War. They lived poorly, but worked as hard as they could.

What a pity that I can not show them today's Moscow, I think they would be delighted. When the whole city goes out to the "Immortal Regiment", it seems to me that we are doing just that - showing our ancestors how we live today, asking them: how do you like it?

Today, in our hearts, we believe that it’s not Kiev (it’s not supposed to be by gender), but Moscow is the true mother of Russian cities. Happy birthday, eternal city!

https://ria.ru/20230908/moskva-1894849028.html

Nuclear war is a factor that Russia needs to consider but equally development in missile defence will improve too...

I think comfort and efficient transport links that allow people to get where they want to go quickly and safely and cheaply, and live in comfortable housing with the local resources they want as well as what they need.

A married couple with children are going to want parks and places to visit like museums and fun parks, and a house with a few bedrooms and room for all dads garden stuff and his cars and whatever he has for a hobby, while young working man might want a room to sleep in and a kitchen to prepare meals and the rest of his house could be the combined toilet bathroom laundry room and room for his car or motorbike... he doesn't want a lawn to mow or a garden to weed.

Different people will want different things and tower blocks are a solution but not the solution.

Only places hive cities may emerge are among inhospitable environments. So in the far future, on other planets such as for example Mars. Because life support for humanity will have to be maintained artificially and concentrated in a limited volume.

But it doesn't make sense on Earth. Not even in cities with no room for further expansion like Hong Kong or Singapore. Because there will always be new mega cities springing up over the course of decades with new opportunities and the overcrowded ones are naturally going to be more prone to exorbitant living space costs, diseases and so on.

I was only talking about a futuristic, realistic megastructure that could house thousands of people comfortably, like a small town. It's nothing like the dark and gloomy Hive city concept, which is more of a grim dark fantasy thing.

Sorry, I misunderstood... I thought hive would mean like a bee hive... groups all living together in a shared structure that meets everyones needs in a hostile environment... so for example in a desert or the arctic all the buildings joined together and perhaps partially or completely underground to reduce heating or cooling costs.

In Australia there is a place where everything is underground and it is actually rather interesting. And of course the sets used for the first Star Wars movie has underground dwellings. I also believe places in Europe including Turkey have dwellings built into the sides of hills as caves.

On the moon and Mars underground would actually be the best place to live because a few metres of rock and perhaps water storage could be used as a barrier to cosmic rays and radiation from space and the sun without having to take tons and tons of lead for the job.

Rock is a good insulator so heating and cooling the interior would be more cost effective too.

I would think the hive nest type design could work on any scale from a tiny village in Siberia to a town or city in a more moderate location.

What greenies wont talk about is that the loss of animal species is not pollution and deforestation... it is humans spreading farms and cities and towns and houses into the natural habitats of animals. You can have a huge open savannah of grasslands but put roads through it, it will change migration patterns and effect things in a negative way. Start building farms and putting up fences and animals wont understand and trample fences and attack livestock and eat crops... all of which will result in local farmers labelling the animals that have lived there a lot longer than humans as being pests and in need of eradication.

Perhaps living in clusters or hives might reduce the human footprint on the planet and free up more space for nature and animal habitats.

Chernobyl is the key. After years of humans leaving the place wildlife has flourished and grown to the point where it has recovered the damage that humans made to the area with their buildings and fences. Humans killed more animals and plants than nuclear radiation did... take away the humans and add deadly radiation and the animals and plants grew better... and this is not hollywood... animals and plants were killed by the radiation which does not make super humans or super animals like in the movies, but the radiation killed and mutated less animals than humans did... we are worse than radiation for nature around us.

I would see Hive structures as an attempt to be more efficient and effect the world rather less than we do now... but perhaps part of that is restricting and limiting travel and access to the rest of the world which will likely prevent it ever being implemented unless things get so bad parts of the planet become unlivable.

Soaking walking tour around Belgorod, in southern Russia



Beautiful little city there