Russian Towns, Cities / Urban Development

It comes with trees!

Hole wrote:It comes with trees!

I think it is in itself a nice concept. But this is a vanity project and not a practical building.

Skyscrapers do not make sense in a city like St. Petersburg. There is a height limitation and there
is no real estate pressure like Manhattan where skyscrapers make sense.

kvs wrote:

Hole wrote:It comes with trees!

I think it is in itself a nice concept.   But this is a vanity project and not a practical building.  

Skyscrapers do not make sense in a city like St. Petersburg.  There is a height limitation and there
is no real estate pressure like Manhattan where skyscrapers make sense.

Complete waste of money to display corporate vanity.

To be fair, St. Petersburg itself has been a propaganda project since 1703. And it has worked very well, the city now accounts for a not insignificant fraction of the entire country's economy.
It would have never cemented itself were it not for all the excessively expensive vanity projects of past Russian Tsars.

I cautiously welcome the move from being the Venice of the North towards being the Dubai of the North
As long as we don't lose our heritage while doing so.

St. Petersburg needs to become a truly global city and attract people from all over the world. Currently Moscow is the only Russian city that can claim such a title but St. Petersburg certainly has the potential

3 of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe, but well on the outskirts of the historic city, will I think encourage more people to visit it, and to do business here. Such architecture can only be found here.

ALAMO wrote:

flamming_python wrote:To be fair, St. Petersburg itself has been a propaganda project since 1703. And it has worked very well, the city now accounts for a not insignificant fraction of the entire country's economy.
It would have never cemented itself were it not for all the excessively expensive vanity projects of past Russian Tsars.
I cautiously welcome the move from being the Venice of the North towards being the Dubai of the North
As long as we don't lose our heritage while doing so.
St. Petersburg needs to become a truly global city and attract people from all over the world. Currently Moscow is the only Russian city that can claim such a title but St. Petersburg certainly has the potential
3 of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe, but well on the outskirts of the historic city, will I think encourage more people to visit it, and to do business here. Such architecture can only be found here.

You know the drill buddy. If one takes out 2-3 biggest cities in the UK or US, half of the economy is gone either. That is nothing really spectacular or unexpected.
What shocked me, is a fact that Gazprom cluster brought 30k jobs into Peter. This is something worth distribution, as we don't talk about the grocery store assistant salary level.
But some high paid jobs, that can make a real difference.
If you can give a whole area for high added value business, build the world's tallest skyscrapers to show the real face of modern Russia ... See no disadvantages here.
I suppose those will associate any newborn business projects along with Russia, and a professional trader or agent won't be glued to either Pete or Moscow, in the very future.
If they are to pump 100bcm of gas into China, they must secure the background there. And I don't mean the Vlad only.

All sorts of skyscraper projects have been floated for Vladivostok over the past 10 years but the winds in the region pose a problem for such construction. Nothing insurmountable I'd imagine, but it's just added costs, and around Vladivostok there is plenty of space to expand. For now, it's still too small a city. Needs to attract some more immigration from Russia and the Asia-Pacific region. The new Sputnik satellite-town they're planning to build in between Vladivostok and Artyom might help with that; essentially gluing all 3 places into a million-people conglomerate, and with a better space for some skyscrapers too.

But basically skyscraper construction I can foresee in 4 places, and those are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg (which has a few already) and Vladivostok.

If it is windy then put wind generators on top of it... not the wind mill type... the other more compact type that generate power no matter which way the wind comes from without needing to turn.

Instead of building tall and thin perhaps broad box like buildings would be better... the reduced external surface area would make heating and cooling more efficient and the outside of the buildings could have patriotic murals painted on them... or LED lights that can be used to display images like a giant TV screen...

A general overview of a typical urban development from the point of view of a resident.
I will add from myself: Kupchino is considered the most depressive and unsafe area of St. Petersburg.

The criticism of urban development such as Kupchino is not realistic. Go anywhere in North America and even in western Europe and
you will see the same multi-story apartment block island development. Five story walk-ups which are the pastel painted classic architecture
people love so much stopped being built 100 years ago. The main difference between North America and Europe (including Russia) is
the number of single family residential buildings. But there are plenty of apartment blocks anyway. Cities like Boston have the old style
that resembles Europe.

During the USSR period the old buildings in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) were not simply demolished but rebuilt internally. The character
of the city was protected. The "commie blocks" were built on previously undeveloped land as the city expanded. I have been there
several times in both the old parts and the newer parts. The narrator makes it sound like the commie blocks overran the classical
urban areas and made them ugly. This is simply false. The video shows lots of garbage in the yards, this is not universal to such
areas of the city and reflects the lack of effort to do cleaning. You can make the old and charming parts of the city look like shit
if you let them decay as well. After 1976 this was happening as the paint and plaster was neglected and started peeling off. The
threads on St. Petersburg architecture at the SkyScraperCity forum give a view of the situation. Over the last 20 years there has
been a dramatic improvement as neglected buildings have been restored and rebuilt.

The high rise apartment blocks built in the southern districts of the city in the 1980s are nothing like the Khruschevkas. They have
multi-bedroom apartments that include their own bath and normal sized kitchen. The ventilation is superb and you do not hear
your neighbour breathing through the paper thin walls you find in some newer US condominiums. This is based on direct experience.
The "drab facade" criticism is mostly BS. If you need bright colours to fight depression, then you have mental problems. The
quality of a residential area is in the layout of shops, parks and other recreational venues. I know of one set of residential blocks
in a city on the Volga which is literally ash grey in colour but which has localized small shops where you can buy any food you want
which is something you can't do in any of the North American suburbs.

Russians still have unrealistic perceptions of how "bad" they have it. Move to North America and see what reality tastes like. Now
that Russia has a housing market, people should vote with their mortgages and buy the quality housing they want. No more excuses
about how the dear leader is not providing.

Majority of eastern europeans believe most americans, germans, dutch, etcstill live in 2 story 5-8 bedroom houses and drive 2 muscle cars, all while funding that with a lower middle income job.

Western propaganda is hell of a drug.

Meanwhile I know many Americans with PhDs working in tech who still live with housemates in 2-4 room singe story houses as large as khruschovka apartments and they gloat how good they have it in the US because they're not ruled by "criminal oligarchs" like Russia is.

Fun fact: Entire urban centers in the US can be completely owned by a single family and they have the final say whats built in their city. These rentier family owned areas tend to be very overpriced with poorly maintained and cramped housing, with terrible house managers due to lack of competition. Irvine is a perfect example. But hey, the US is based on property rights so its taboo to talk about "redistributing" anything.

limb wrote:Majority of eastern europeans believe most americans, germans, dutch, etcstill live in 2 story 5-8 bedroom houses and drive 2 muscle cars, all while funding that with a lower middle income job.

Western propaganda is hell of a drug.

Meanwhile I know many Americans with PhDs working in tech who still live with housemates in 2-4 room  singe story houses as large as khruschovka apartments and they gloat how good they have it in the US because they're not ruled by "criminal oligarchs" like Russia is.

Fun fact: Entire urban centers in the US can be completely owned by a single family and they have the final say whats built in their  city. These rentier family owned areas tend to be very overpriced with poorly maintained and cramped housing, with terrible house managers due to lack of competition. Irvine is a perfect example. But hey, the US is based on property rights so its taboo to talk about "redistributing" anything.

Your observation about entire urban centers owned by a single family is spot on. In my area, a big landlord is the Rubensteins. The family owns a palatial estate in the most affluent area on acres of land. Turns out they pay very little property tax because they have it taxed under an agricultural exemption (despite being in the built-up suburbs). Seems that they grow a little hay on their property that they then sell to a livestock operator who leases adjacent municipal land for $1 a year to feed his steers.

And here is a typical residential neighborhood of Moscow.

News that you won´t get in the west

Hole wrote:

<blockquote class=

News that you won´t get in the west

Also Moscow and St. Petersburg have some of the best ranked airports in Europe. How could those vodka swilling, tracksuit wearing, slav-squating, hardbass bumping, mud-hut dwellers be capable of this?

Hole wrote:

<blockquote class=

News that you won´t get in the west

How does Delhi make the list of quality of life chart?

Looking at the other cities on the list it looks like it was filtered based on size. Clearly many smaller cities would crowd out Lagos, Delhi, etc.

St. Petersburg should be on that list, too.

Kemerovo region, or Kuzbas, still has a lot of problems with pollution. Considering all of the windfall profits from coal and iron export,
owners should be pressed to clean up their business. Oftentimes, it seems that region administration needs a major shake up, so they start to do their job.
It is one of the most troubled regions in Russia by many parameters (crime, pollution, AIDS prevalence, alcoholism and drug usage).

https://ngs42.ru/text/ecology/2022/02/04/70422842/

The winner of the architectural competition for the new Kamal Theatre in Kazan, Tatarstan