Some general commentary about October 10

As ever, I highlight efforts made by opponents of the Gazprom skyscraper project because their voices tend to be dismissed as backward and ignorant within Russia, and are barely if ever heard outside of Russia. Whether or not a person supports the construction of a 400-meter building within sight of the St. Petersburg city center, a fair evaluation of the entire situation demands recognition of the valid comments raised by those who do not support that construction.

However, there are certainly voices raised in support of the skyscraper. On comment forums for all the news outlets quoted in the post just below, at least 1-2 comments expressed support for the project. On September 29, Nevastroyka ran an article quoting several of “the most talented Petersburgers” who support “Okhta Center”: radio and TV host Sergei Stillavin, businessman Oleg Tinkov, media figure Dmitrii Puchkov, Vice-President of the Russian Union of Architects Aleksei Vorontsov, science fiction writer Boris Strugatskii, and web designer Artemii Lebedev (whose blog, asserts the article, is read by over 100,000 people every day). In general, these supporters see the Gazprom project as bringing money, dynamism and excitement to a city with a decaying infrastructure and little economic power.

The comments of such supporters usually assume that opponents of the skyscraper dislike the height or architectural style above all; for this reason, they often claim that the opponents want to live in the past and deny Petersburg a vital, prosperous future. This aspect of the divide between the skyscraper’s supporters and opponents is interesting – probably more complex than just “new growth vs. nostalgia” or “future vs. past,” but in some ways suggesting a difference in temperament. As the magazine Ekspert pointed out about the demonstration in March 2007, and as the Delovoi Peterburg reported pointed out this past Saturday, opposition to the Gazprom tower is not limited to unsuccessful people trying to live in a lost Soviet past. However, Gazprom supporters tend to label them that way.

Previous posts here have emphasized a point that sometimes gets lost in this depiction: opposition to the skyscraper is not based solely on the building’s height or on its architectural design. The chief (although not very sexy) problem lies in the project’s detrimental effect on the new system of building codes and procedures – a system that represents the hard work of Petersburg’s planning community as well as the public participation of residents from all over the city.

10 October Demonstration against Gazprom Tower

On Saturday 10 October, the announced meeting took place outside the Iubileynyi (Jubilee) Stadium. (See post below.)

During the day, Fontanka reported that estimates of the size of the meeting varied. The police estimated that about 2500 people were there; a participant estimated 3500. Other observers reported that about 3000 were present, but not all simultaneously; these observers estimated that about 30% of those attending were clearly against the Gazprom skyscraper, while others had other complaints related to urban development – encroachment on green space, eviction from private car garages, or unregulated infill construction.

Zaks.ru reported that a petition with signatures compiled during the entire course of the meeting gathered just over 4600 signatures total.

The number of signatures prompted a commenter on the Delovoi Peterburg site to claim that the total attendance at the meeting was nearer to 5000 people.

Fontanka reported that isolated groups of protesters on a range of issues could be seen throughout the crowd, including workers from the local Ford plant and people dissatisfied with the presale conditions for residential purchase.

As the Fontanka reporter pointed out, this meeting is the first in the past two years to gather more than 2000 people. She also commented, “The atmosphere on the square recalled the best times of informal parties in the late Leningrad period.” Her coverage focused partly on the participation in the meeting of people who had been in the Leningrad artistic underground and frequented the café “Saigon.”

The headline for a similar article in Delovoi Peterburg on 10 October read “In Petersburg, a reincarnation of civil society in honor of Gazprom.” This reported claimed that “the Saturday meeting in defense of Petersburg resembled the November demonstrations from the 1980s: songs and dances, handing around fruit and vegetables, smiling people, a packed house."

Reporter Belogrudova wrote, “Instead of just the 2-300 ‘dissenters’ who came to the last march, here there were 1500-2000 acording to police, 2500-3000 according to the participants. The ‘marginal’ figures who usually dominate such events were replaced by professors and students, doctors and managers – the kind of faces that you are more used to seeing in the Financial-Economic Institute or St. Petersburg State University, in an expensive clinic or a class A business center than on a square with flags and revolutionary slogans.”

She also reported that the meeting’s organizers considered that they were ahead in the fight to turn aside the skyscraper’s construction. First, during the two years of struggle, opponents have succeeded in changing the terms of the building’s financing: Gazprom now has to pay for the construction itself, instead of getting the city of Petersburg to build it. Second, it has been agreed to do a historical-cultural impact statement, and third, opponents have gotten UNESCO on their side.

What do Petersburgers really think? A quarrel

A week ago the main quarrel related to the Gazprom skyscraper had arisen from dueling polls of resident opinion. The Agency for Social Information obtained results showing that the plurality of Petersburgers favored the construction of the building (46%), while a minority (33%) were definitely against it. A separate poll by ToiOpinion found that, in answer to the question “Do you support the construction of a 400-meter building across from Smolny Cathedral?” 40% of respondents were definitely against and 26% were sooner against – yielding a result of roughly 66% per cent of residents against this specific construction on this specific site. ASI claims to have called 2000 subjects, while ToiOpinion called 1000 respondents.

Aleksandr Margolis, head of BOOPIiK, called the ASI poll “disinformation.” Roman Mogilevskii, head of the ASI, has threatened to sue those who have suggested that his poll was inaccurate. As Fontanka reported on September 30, Mogilevskii criticized ToiOpinion for using the word “skyscraper” in its survey questions, as well as the specific height of the proposed design; he claimed that “skyscraper is a word that has a negative connotation in our culture.” Unlike ToiOpinion, Mogilevskii has refused so far to release the questionnaire used by his team, so it is still difficult to assess his results.

Other respected polling agencies in Russia, such as BTsIOM and the Levada Center, did not conduct polls.

A loss for historical archaeology

The following site describes and shows the remains of the Nienshans Fortress, located below the site of the proposed Gazprom skyscraper. Originally, the firm's representatives promised a museum dedicated to the fortress and other evidence of pre-Russian settlements.

http://vveshka.livejournal.com/25762.html

The photos and text point out that the remains recently discovered by archaeologists date back over 5000 years to the Neolithic era.

Watch for news from Petersburg on October 10

The text given below is a public appeal from several well-known current or former residents of St. Petersburg who are famous for their cultural or scientific achievements. According to this appeal, the signatories will lead a public demonstration on Saturday 10 October to signal a protest against approval of the Okhta-Center skyscraper project.

Generally, wherever in the world a skyscraper is planned against the wishes of local residents, there is a feeling that nothing can turn back the tide of "progress", economic clout, modernization, and high-profile architecture. The steady and determined protest of all kinds of Petersburgers seeks to overturn this assumption. This in itself is fascinating and worthy of attention, whether you support or reject the skyscraper project.

Posted on the ECOM website:

October 7, 2009
An appeal to city residents to attend a meeting on October 10, signed by well-known Petersburgers

“Skyscrapers will kill Petersburg.”
Dmitrii Likhachev

On October 10 at noon by the “Jubilee” Sports Arena there will be a public meeting and demonstration in support of preserving Petersburg and against the construction of a 400-meter skyscraper “Okhta-Center.” On October 6 the meeting received official sanction.

A skyscraper will destroy the historical appearance of the city. It will bury under itself extremely valuable and as yet unstudied archaeological sites – evidence that the history of our city is even richer than is usually thought. It will set up a precedent for lawless construction, destroying—with official approval—the norms and rules that the officials themselves established. And then the barbarous destruction of Petersburg will acquire the force of an avalanche.

“Okhta-Center” is not an expression of progress, not a step into the future, as many have attempted to show. The skyscraper of “Gazprom,” imagined and designed in imitation of the modern construction in the Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is a confirmation of the new image of Russia as a country of raw materials, a country whose relative stability is founded on the firesale of natural resources. This is not a symbol of the rebirth of Russia, but a symbol of its defeat, at attempt to glorify and immortalize that which the majority of Russian consider to be temporary and shameful for the country which was the first to step into the cosmos. It is a negation expressed through architecture of the entire history of Petersburg, of all that for which generations of Leningraders and Petersburgers lived, worked, struggled, and died.

Petersburg officials and the management of “Gazprom” have by their actions shown that they have no intention of consulting with anyone. They have ignored the opinions of specialists and thousands of signatures from city residents. They have neglected to examine the warnings of UNESCO about the exclusion of Petersburg from the list of World Heritage Sites. There was no reaction to a letter from survivors of the Siege of Leningrad. There was no response to appeals from the most famous representatives of Petersburg science and culture, who have sent several open letters to the President of the Russian Federation.

We see no further point in appealing to the government – neither the city administration, nor the federal level. We appeal to you, Petersburgers. You are the highest level of authority in this debate. All that could be done by experts in the field of historical preservation, by activists in public organizations, by journalists and by members of the scientific and cultural sphere has already been done, and it has not been enough. The decision about construction has been taken. Now there is only one way to refute it: mass public protest. No one but you can now stop “Gazprom,” which seeks to destroy our great and beautiful city. Don’t stay home. Be with us on October 10.

Writers Andrei Bitov, Nina Katerli, Tatiana Moskvina, Andrei Chernov, Mikhail Yasnov
Poet and musician Boris Grebenshchikov,
Ballerina Alla Osipenko,
Filmmaker Yurii Mamin,
Vice-president of the Union of St. Petersburg Architects, member of the International Academy of Architecture Sviatoslav Gaikovich,
Mathematical physicist Georgii Fursei,
Professors Boris Averin, Alexander Bobrov,
Historical archaeologists Lev Klein, Diakon Alexander Musin, Sergei Beletskii
Geologists Georgii Biske, Eleonora Bugrova,
Member of the executive committee of the Council of Orthodox Intelligentsia, Valentin Semenov,
Journalists Daniil Kotsiubinskii, Tatiana Likhanova, Svetlana Gavrilina, Viktor Nikolaev, Danila Lanin, Boris Vishnevskii
Lawyers Natalia Evdokimova, Yulii Rybakov

The Gazprom Controversy continues...

On September 17, I happened to look at the latest headlines on a site I sometimes visit for news of St. Petersburg, zaks.ru (the title comes from the nickname in Russian for St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly). The headline read: "Elastic Petersburg: How the city's Commission on Land Use and Construction approved Okhta-Center." I include the link to that piece below, for those who can read Russian.

http://www.zaks.ru/new/archive/view/60718

On that day, the KZZ (the Russian acronym for the Commission) met without the quorum of 15 members-- they had only 14. Eleven of those voted in favor of the "variance" requested by the Gazprom corporation-- 400 meters instead of the maximum 100 permitted for tall buildings on the proposed site.

The only member willing to talk at length with reporters was Communist Party delegate Sergei Malkov. (Those who automatically think communist=evil might have a look at the actual, populist actions of some members of that party in contemporary Russia.) Judging from the comments, the city's Committee on the Preservation of Heritage and Monuments had been pressured to stay quiet and did not send any formal recommendation to the Commission's meeting; however, the Committee's representative spoke against approval of the variance.

The ECOM group continues to provide as much information as it can about the specific details of the project. The next link below is a site showing the digitally created photo-mockups of how visible the skyscraper would be from various points around the city. An English translation of the accompanying text will be posted soon.

http://ecoist.livejournal.com/112298.html

The firm that designed the winning project is headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Thomas Campbell, a co-author of the "Article by Petersburg Activists" linked at right (an American who has lived in St. Petersburg for 15 years), sent this piece from The Guardian, written in March 2008. The author, Steven Rose, refers to the major street demonstrations that month and to their connection to outrage over the skyscraper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/03/architecture.russia

Petition against Gazprom skyscraper -- signable!

The text below is a slightly edited version of the English text of a petition, available on the internet in Russia at this site:

http://bashne.net/?page_id=74

ANYONE can sign this petition and join many others all over Russia who have added their names. The site offers space to add individual comments.

Petition against the Gazprom Skyscraper:
"We, the undersigned, stand against the construction of the 396-meter skyscraper “Okhta-Center” in St. Petersburg.

We consider this project inadmissible because the construction of a building of such height would irretrievably change for the worse the unique architectural landscape of St. Petersburg, which is recognized as a valuable cultural inheritance not only of this city but also of Russia and the entire world.

We regard it as illegal for the following reasons:

1.According to the laws of St. Petersburg it is prohibited to construct buildings higher than 100 meters in this area. There are no legal grounds for making an exception for this project. Its realization is justified only by the commercial interests of the “Gazprom” company.

2.Appraisal of the visibility of a 396-meter skyscraper from different parts of the historical center of St. Petersburg has shown that such a building would be visible as a backdrop to all historical skylines of the city which are protected by law. Thus, the “Gazprom” project would be a crude violation of this law.

We call for legislative action at both the federal and local levels and demand prohibition of any construction higher than 100 meters on this plot."

Comment from Viktor, posting on 1 September 2009:
"This tower would look normal in many world cities – New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Frankfurt. But in Petersburg it would be an obvious admission of the domination of money over culture. Dough conquers all?"

ECOM activity in August 2009

Announcements from ECOM translated from Russian
31.08.09

“Okhta-Center” only needs a height of 37 meters in order to meet all its public obligations.

(See http://www.ecom.su/news/index.php?id=1267 for the Russian original of the text below.)

A study of the data provided by the Joint Stock Company (JSC) “Public-Business Center (PBC) Okhta” at an exhibition in the administrative offices of the Krasnogvardeiskii district has shown that all of the planned square footage can be accommodated by the existing site with a construction height of 37 to 46 meters. Thus it is clear that there is no need for the construction of a skyscraper in the “Okhta-Center” complex—not even an economic need.

In spite of the fact that the topic of hearing set for September is the degree to which the proposed site for the construction of “Okhta-Center” is inappropriate for building, the construction company JSC “Public-Business Center Okhta” continues to insist that the erection of tall buildings is dictated not only by the physical characteristics of the site but also by economic factors. In a note of clarification shared at an exhibition preceding the hearing, we read: “The expenses of the investor-builder on acquisition and rent of building sites and real estate to be located on it, on conduction of engineering analysis and removal of construction debris, on preparation of the territory, on the conduction of archaeological studies unprecedented in scale on the entire site and its environs, on removal of engineering infrastructure, on the creation of new engineering and transportation infrastructure (construction of an electricity station, laying of infrastructural materials, reconstruction of transportation onramps, building of new roads, tunnels and bridges, the establishment of a linear park) are significant.” For the project to make a return on investment, the total area of the complex must be not less than 310 thousand square meters, out of which, true, 103 thousand square meters go towards an underground four-level parking garage. In this manner, for structures with public-business and social-cultural functions there must be allotted 209 thousand square meters. According to the declaration of the builder, the indicated area is impossible to accommodate on the site without erecting a 400-meter-high skyscraper.

Experts from the Research Center ECOM conducted a thorough arithmetic analysis of the data presented by the PBC “Okhta” and came to unexpected conclusions. “We agree with the assertion that it is necessary to construct about 250 thousand square meters of floor area in order to achieve a usable area of 209 thousand square meters, accounting for the building’s engineering structures and so forth,” says Alexander Karpov, director of ECOM. “We are even ready to agree that the median ceiling height of each story in the complex would be 5.2 meters. But further, you have to do the math on the calculator.”

The constructed volume of the above-ground portion of the complex, allowing for a median ceiling height of 5.2 meters is derived from 251, 160 sq. m. x 5.2 m, thus 1, 306, 032 cubic meters. This volume must be accommodated by a site with an area of 47, 130 sq. m. However, the structure must not be too dense: according to construction norms and rules, in order to assure adequate insolation and natural lighting, and also in accord with fire safety and other security regulations, we take the coefficient of floor ratio to be 0.6. Therefore, the area occupied by building on the site may be calculated as 47, 130 sq. m. x 0.6, yielding 28, 278 sq. m. It remains only to divide the total volume of built premises by the area of the building, and we can derive the probable height: 1, 306, 032 cubic meters divided by 28, 278 square meters, giving us 46.2 meters.

That is, everything that “Okhta-Center” promises to the residents of Krasnogvardeiskii district – the Gazprom offices and its subsidiaries, the health and fitness center, the institutions of culture and art, health care and education, as well as restaurants, cafes and even a laundry and dry cleaner – all this can be accommodated on the site without exceeding the legally designated height of 48 meters.

Further, if we take the ceiling height not as 5.2 meters, as proposed in the glossy brochure at the exhibition, but, for example, as 4.2 meters (as in the note of clarification on the project), then the average height of the construction could be 37 meters.

It’s true that the builder, offering documentation for exceeding the height parameters, insisted that a large part of the site is unfit for construction, since some of our cultural heritage is located there – the fortress Nienshans and buffer zones for tunnel collectors and lots of other stuff. However, this did not stop the designers from planning on the site a multilevel parking garage which will occupy in a single mass not merely 60 but 77 per cent of the site. This includes that territory on which once was located our cultural heritage.

The conclusion of the arithmetic study is unequivocal: all of the needed premises for Zone 1 of “Okhta-Center” could be accommodated above the underground parking (on the foundation) in several buildings without violation of the height regulation and other parameters set by the St. Petersburg Rules on Land Use and Construction. Which, we remind you, were adopted by the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and signed by the City Governor in February 2009.


Announcement
28.08.09
The official text of the decision of the 33rd Session of UNESCO about St. Petersburg has been published (July 2009).

In 2010, the historical center of Petersburg may be entered onto the List of World Heritage Sites in danger—and thus may end up in the same group as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Central African Republic and other states that have suffered from war or Third-World status.

See http://www.ecom.su/news/index.php?id=1265 for Russian original and http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1910 for the text of the UNESCO document.

Announcement
27.08.09
Instructions have been published for builders and legal site owners: “How to build in St. Petersburg without paying attention to the Rules on Land Use and Construction. Part 1: Instructions for preparation of documents for approval.”

See http://ecom.su/news/index.php?id=1264 for the entire text.

The instructions were prepared based on the text of “Note of clarification to the application for a variance from the maximum allowed heights made by the Joint Stock Company "Public Business Center Okhta.” The original of this note is also provided at the above link.

More recent news about the Gazprom project

Posted on the ECOM website on 12 August 2009
'The metrical desires of Okhta-Center: why 403, and not 48?'

Today at 4pm at a session of the St. Petersburg Commission on Land Use and Construction, the OAO “Public-business center Okhta” will present justifications for the variance from the maximum parameters permitted for construction in the Krasnogvardeiskii District. The owner claims that the unfavorable characteristics of the “Okhta-Center” construction site “force” him to exceed the height designated in the Rules on Land Use and Construction—that is, 48 meters—by 355 meters.

What are these unfavorable characteristics of the site which make it essential for the designers of the “Okhta-Center” to exceed the height regulation by 355 meters? (Just a month ago that figure was 348 meters.) Today the plantiffs – the company “Public-business center Okhta” and the Committee for the Management of City Property – will propose to the Commission on LUC the following “unfavorable” features:

--Limitations placed on the site by surrounding water, the impossibility of construction in protected riparian zones, the impossibility of construction at the perimeter;
--The trapezoidal configuration of the site – an unfavorable shape for effective planning solutions;
--The impossibility of observing comprehensive security requirements while still observing planning regulations;
--The necessity of restoring the historical site in the building’s foundation (a five-pointed star at the base of the building), which limits the possible area of construction.

Alexander Karpov, director of the ECOM Research Center, comments that “Neither the confinement of the site by water, nor the shape of the site, nor the other stated features prevent the construction of a building with a height of 48 meters. We should note that in Petersburg hundreds of sites have a trapezoidal form, and hundreds, if not thousands, are located on the shores of water. If we accept these arguments as a sufficient claim for a height variance, then the height regulation can be confidently rejected, and all the embankments will be built up with tall buildings, visually turning the Neva into a narrow canal.”

Provided on Zaks.ru on 9 July 2009
'From the resolution of the 33rd Session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO' (which met in Seville on 30 June)
[St. Petersburg’s entire central historical area is on the list of World Heritage Sites.]

[Zaks.ru obtained the text of the document from St. Petersburg Legislative Deputy Aleksei Kovalev.]

Section d) Gazprom – Okhta-Center
The proposed tower is an example of complexities produced by the existing systems of legislation, planning, and management. In 2006, Gazprom organized an international competition for a project on the banks of the Neva in the neighborhood of the mouth of the Okhta River. The competition parameters were not resolved with the preservation agencies. The project presents a tower with a height of 300 meters, even as the current [legal] system limits the height to 100 meters. The winner of the competition, RMJM (UK) proposes to build a tower with a height of 396 meters.

Requests made to the Participant Country to present more detailed information about the project were not honored. It is asserted that the tower fulfills a social need. At the present time, archaeological excavation is taking place at the site, where remains have been found of a Swedish fortress dating from the 14-16th centuries. The sponsors see the project, which has tried to make allowances for these remains, however physically they do not stay in the same place. The proposal to construct a tower at Okhta has produced a strong reaction among non-governmental organizations.

The [World Heritage] Mission remains of the opinion that if the current siting and height are retained, the tower presents a threat to the outstanding universal value of the [Heritage Site]:

--The tower contradicts the characteristics of the [Site] as a horizontal, shoreline, and urban landscape;
--The tower threatens the authenticity and wholeness of the [Site], creating dissonance with the “skyline” of the historical panorama of the Neva River;
--The tower places certain crucial visual axes under threat;
--The proposed height of the tower violates the existing regimes of the territory and could set a dangerous precedent.

In conjunction with a request made by the 32nd Session of the Committee, meetings took place at the highest levels between the chairman of the Committee, the director of the Center and the St. Petersburg authorities, including the city governor.

Stories from the ground

The link to "Article by Petersburg Activists" goes to an article posted to the online journal Mute in January 2008 by two collaborators in St. Petersburg, Thomas Campbell and Dmitrii Vorobyev. It is written in English and includes insightful images. Both authors continue to be very involved in urban activism in Petersburg.

ECOM activity in July 2009

Translated from the ECOM website

3 July 2009
Exhibition opening: The Lawless Skyscraper

At 3pm on Monday 6 July in the St. Petersburg Union of Architects (52 Bolshaia Morskaia Street) an exhibition will open entitled “The Lawless Skyscraper” (Neboskreb vne zakona). The co-organizers are VOOPIiK, the All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments, and the Research Center ECOM. They invite all Petersburgers to familiarize themselves with the exposition, which presents the results of a visual-landscape analysis of the influence of the skyscraper “Okhta-Center” on the legally protected historical landscapes of Petersburg.

In the Union of Architects, the exhibit will be open for visitors through 9 July from 12 to 6pm. From Monday 13 July it will be accessible to Petersburgers for another three weeks at the press club “Green Lamp” (Zelenaia lampa) at 3 Gagarinskaia Street. … Follow news about the exhibit on the ECOM site, on the Contact page or the ECOM blog “Diary of an Ecoist.”

Visitors will become acquainted with an analysis of the evaluation of the skyscraper’s visibility completed by experts at VOOPIiK and ECOM; they will see photo-mockups created on the basis of computer models which can show how any panorama will change if the project is realized. In the Visitors’ Book all who wish to do so can leave their commentaries on the exposition.

The exhibit “Lawless Skyscraper” is associated to a public hearing on the the construction of the public-business center “Okhta” which will take place on 10 July with the participation of a public committee that includes various non-government organizations and movements.

[For examples of such images for other proposed high-rise projects, see the posting “Persuasive Images” from June 24, 2009]

13 July 2009
“A public discussion of questions related to the construction and function of ‘Okhta-Center’ took place”

On 10 July a public discussion took place on questions related to the construction and function of the public-business district “Okhta-Center.” Officials invited to the dialogue (from KGA and KGIOP) as well as representatives of the “Okhta” corporation chose to ignore the hearings.

We should note that until 7 July the two sides-- the “Okhta” corporation and the organizational committee of the public coalition-- were conducting negotiations, and in this process the rules for the proposed discussion were being worked out. Official invitations to the impending hearings were composed and signed by both sides. However, without informing the organizational committee of the public coalition, “Okhta” used the media to publish a refusal to take part in the discussion.

At the discussion the following questions were raised:

--How is the construction of a 396-meter high point in the Okhta neighborhood related to the requirements of urban planning law?
--What influence will a 396-meter-tall building in the “Okhta-Center” complex have on the legally protected historical panoramas of St. Petersburg?
--How will the construction of an office building for “Gazprom” affect the life of Petersburgers?

Participants at the hearings included deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, representatives of non-government organizations and movements, residents of Krasnogvardeiskii District, and members of the Union of Architects and of the St. Petersburg Division of the All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments, St. Petersburg State University Research Institute for Integrated Social Research, the Russian Geographical Society, and the Legal Defense Council of St. Petersburg.

The position of supporters of the “Okhta-Center” project in its current form was presented by the leader of the non-government youth organization “Right Bank,” Marat Kozlov. In his presentation, he attempted to reduce the polemics between supporters and opponents of the project to the statement “some like it, some don’t,” although he encouraged any dialogue and exchange of opinions.

It is unfortunate that immediately after his presentation Marat, who had so warmly called for dialogue between the project’s supporters and opponents, left the hall, thus missing the opportunity for dialogue with opponents-- including with representatives of the public organization “Okhta Bend,” which unites many residents of the Krasnogvardeiskii District.

Legislative Assembly deputy Aleksei Kovalyov in his presentation gave voice to several recommendations from the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO, saying in part: “The Okhta-Center tower fundamentally and irrevocably will change the horizontal skyline of this protected site, which has been an important feature of the city since the moment of its founding, and will thus place under threat its wholeness and evident universal value.” The committee considers that work on the “Okhta-Center” project should be halted. “In the case of a lack of substantial progress, the World Heritage Committee may consider inclusion of the site in the List of World Heritage Sites under threat.”

[An excerpt from the resolution of the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO will appear in a future post.]

ECOM prepared a video from this hearing which can be seen at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJj1QB2scDo

ECOM in St. Petersburg

[I first heard about ECOM during a research visit to an independent news agency in August 2005. During my research fieldwork in fall 2006, I could see that they were active all over the city in press conferences, public hearings, and citizen demonstrations. Many St. Petersburg news publications including Delovoi Peterburg and Ekspert now regularly solicit commentary from ECOM staff about developments in the city.]

Translated (by me) from the main ECOM blog at http://www.ecom-info.spb.ru/

The research center ECOM is a non-commercial organization. Its goal is the development of techniques that apply collective intelligence to decisions made by federal and local government authorities and entrepreneurs. One of the main aspects of the Center’s activity is the drafting of normative statements on ecology and city planning. ECOM has organized citizen research studies [impact statements] about the main city planning documents of St. Petersburg: the Master Plan, the Rules for Construction and Land Use, and legislation on the preservation of green spaces. ECOM specializes in nonstandard sociological techniques of public participation in decision-making, such as citizen and administrative public hearings, evaluation methods based on the participation of clients, citizen research, and others.

[ECOM’s actions and statements reveal the staff as bold independent thinkers who absorb what is useful to them from others’ practices and precedents. They believe in the potential of a market economic system to provide a useful system of incentives and opportunities, but they do not accept axioms of market inevitability (see below).]

Translated from Diary of an Ecoist,
a related blog at http://www.ecom-info.spb.ru/about/index.php?id=998

At a certain moment we realized that we are “ecoists.” Ecoism is when a person wants to live in an environment that is favorable for HIM or HER, without regard to “government interests” in economic development, ignoring the assertion that “progress cannot be stopped,” and not accepting as fact the UnConDitional InEvitaBility of the construction of new factories, roads, and so on. The chief motto of the ecoist is: “Whatever is good for Nature is good for me!”

How can such a person live in the contemporary world? And what should be done with the contemporary world so that we could live in it, and not merely survive? This is what we ponder on our informal blog, using the opportunity of live interaction with various people and participation in virtual break rooms/collectives.

In the words of ECOM: "About Us"

The Research Center ECOM was founded in 1999 under the aegis of the St. Petersburg Naturalist Society.

The main goal in the founding of the Center was the development in Russia of modern approaches in the area of environmental conservation, including: environmental impact statements, ecological management, sustainability indicators, the Local Agenda for the 21st century and others.

Currently the work of ECOM is focused around the problem of public participation in decision-making with environmental implications. The Center’s staff conducts work on the mechanisms of effective public influence on government and business.

For more than 6 years ECOM has successfully realized projects directed at:

- Increasing the role of the public in the process of preparation, deliberation over, and execution of environmentally significant decisions in the economic and social spheres.
- Development of methods for and immediate realization of professional evaluation of the impact of plans, programs and projects on the environment and social fabric.
- Construction of a partnership between public organizations, enterprises and government bodies for the achievement of common goals in environmental conservation. Integration of eco-technology and environmental management approaches in governance.
- Development of a legal foundation that shapes responsibility for the environmental and socio-economic impacts of decisions made by business and government.

The main aspects of the work of the Research Center ECOM are:

- Integration of improved methodology and procedures for environmentally oriented decision-making at the local and regional level in the Russian Northwest.
- Drafting legislation outlining public participation.
- Conducting of information campaigns, public hearings, and similar events.
- Defense of citizens’ environmental rights (legal representation, consultation).
- Consulting business-structures and local government bodies on questions of organization of public participation.
- Realization of educational programs in the area of public participation.

The staff of the Center participate in municipal and regional projects as experts and consultants on questions of organizing public participation. They have also originated academic courses which are offered at the leading universities of Petersburg: the Northwest Academy of Government Service, Nevskii Institute of Language and Culture, St. Petersburg Technological Institute, and St. Petersburg State University. The Center has an open environmental library with a unique selection of contemporary academic literature and reference materials.
ECOM is a partner of leading Russian and international organizations for nature conservation, and is a member of the European Eco-Forum, the Northern Alliance of NGOs for sustainable development (ANPED), and the Coalition of NGOs for the Kyoto Protocol. The experts of ECOM prepared recommendations on citizen participation for the Representative for Human Rights in St. Petersburg.

Height Developments in early 2009

Spring 2009 saw many developments surrounding the Rules on Land Use and Construction. In February, the Legislative Assembly passed the Rules (4 February); City Governor Matvienko signed them on 20 February.

It is a great step forward for the city that the Rules have been passed; they provide the city with standard zoning rules that govern any construction project. However, several scandals have persisted surrounding the height of a range of sites.

For example, the construction company LEK received retroactive permission to leave its large residential complex “Imperial” unchanged just days before the Rules were to go into effect on 9 March 2009. (The complex is located just north of the Novodevichy Monastery, along Moskovsky Avenue between metro stations Frunzenskaya and Moskovskie Vorota; see image in post below.)

In keeping with general city policy and sections of the Rules, an architectural firm was charged with conducting a study of whether the building’s height would affect the visual environment around the Novodevichii Monastery (St. Petersburg’s overall historical architectural appearance and skyline have been designated as objects of conservation). The building’s final height of 73 meters more than doubles the height that eventually made it into the Rules for this district of the city – 35 meters. In April 2009, that firm was scapegoated for the final result. On 6 March 2009, city officials decided that it was most reasonable to let the construction company complete the buildings, partly because many of the apartments located in the top floors of the new buildings had been presold.

On the positive side for those who see new tall buildings as a damaging interruption to the city’s appearance and infrastructure (see post from 8 June), the Legislative Assembly did vote in late January to reduce the permitted heights for at least 78 proposed new vertical “dominants” around the city (see post below with new PZZ maps for the same locations shown on 8 June).

On 23 June 2009, new procedures were approved for obtaining exceptions to the Rules. This is meant to be similar to common procedures in the U.S. for obtaining variances to codes and ordinances. In Petersburg, clearly the most urgent departure that developers want approved is a building height that exceeds what the Rules permit. Reports suggest that developers for some 150 projects would like such a variance… More on this when I have processed the information from various sources.

Persuasive images

The following three images were published by Zhivoi Gorod ("Living City"), an organization that works to make St. Petersburg residents aware of urban developments plans that, as they see it, threaten the visual integrity of the city as well as political transparency. Their work was initially galvanized by the Gazprom skyscraper announcement in late 2006.


The image above shows what the view down Izmailovsky Avenue would look like if several proposed buildings in the project "Izmailovsky Vista" were actually constructed.

In a similar computer simulation, this image shows what an observer would see from Peter and Paul Fortress looking southeast towards St. Isaac's cathedral IF buildings were built that exceeded recommended heights (in red).

This Zhivoi Gorod photo shows the residential complex "Imperial" along Moskovsky Avenue under construction in March 2009.

New maps of height guidelines

The final PZZ map set offers comparisons with those displayed in an earlier post. For example, on sheet 93, the permitted heights at upper left have been lessened: dominant No. 145 has been decreased from 140 to 105 meters; Nos. 26-28 have been decreased from 122 to 100 meters.



On sheet 104, the permitted heights indicated in a previous post at 150 meters have been reduced to 120 meters. The Gazprom site (at No. 70) is still set at 100 meters.

The three posts published on June 8 will make more sense if the third one is read first-- this one and the next with images are meant to support that text.

This map (sheet 93) reflects decisions made in Resolution 1731 (now superseded) and shows the area around the proposed Zenith Stadium (Zenit is the name of the city soccer team). Note that the maximum height of the stadium is 57 meters; notice also the cluster of heights over 100 meters just north of the stadium in an area of assigned "vertical dominants."

This sheet (104) shows the area around the Gazprom Okhta-Center project and eastward. The Gazprom skyscraper is designated here as "vertical dominant No. 70" and given a height of 100 meters. To the southeast, at the bottom of the sheet, notice two spots designating 150 meters maximum height. Both images are publicly available on the St. Petersburg city planning site.

City Maps and the Height Regulation

This map shows the results of Resolution 1731, proposed in December 2007. The different colors signal different heights permitted in different areas of the city; these detailed heights vary even within the same colored zone, and are printed on larger-scale maps that accompanied this one. Of particular interest is Zone 8 (purple), which specifies minimum heights ranging from e.g. 64 meters to 129 meters. I accessed this map from the St. Petersburg city planning website. The maps took a while to download, but they are freely available-- which, it should be noted, is a significant public service.

This map shows some of the prestige projects proposed or underway around Vasilievsky Island in the Neva delta (located at the center of the city map above). The yellowish areas at center right are the Peter and Paul Fortress (top) and the Winter Palace (center); you can see how near the center some of the projects are.

This map shows some of the projects proposed to the east of the historic center. The Stockmann Shopping Center is actually under construction after the demolishing in fall 2006 of a historic building at the top of Nevsky Avenue on Vosstaniya (Uprising) Square.

St. Petersburg Height Regulation

The following paragraphs are an excerpt from an article that will be published in the December 2009 issue of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. I will remove this post once that article becomes available online and I can provide a link to it. Meanwhile, it is important for the blog to clarify the controversy around the Height Regulation.
***

The original Height Regulation was established in St. Petersburg during the nineteenth century and was observed throughout Soviet times. Its fundamental tenet is that no building in the historical center may exceed the height of the cornice of the Winter Palace (24 meters), except for churches and the Admiralty. Its effects were extended over the rest of the city via a corollary that no building be visible from the Neva River embankment or interrupt the “horizontal silhouette” created by the effect of low buildings extending around the expanse of the river; permitted heights vary from district to district. During the 1990s, citizen outcry based on the Regulation successful prevented construction of a skyscraper on the western edge of Vasilievsky Island; Academy of Sciences member and Russian literature scholar Dmitry Likhachev, the city’s “conscience,” warned residents to preserve the city’s horizontality and low skyline.
Far from just a romantic ideal, the Height Regulation was seen as a barometer of development and a safeguard for the character of many residential neighborhoods. In the regulatory chaos of the 1990s and early 2000s, numerous buildings stretched the limits of the Regulation. Extra height and density strained the infrastructure for water and other city services; also, a building that exceeded the Regulation by just a few meters could block the legislated quantity of sun in a courtyard or change the use profile of a neighborhood– that is, change the landscapes on which people built their notions of a good society and social space. Planner Vladimir Roshchin explained this relationship between functional zones and height regulations, noting that in the first version of the Rules (prior to initial citizen comment in fall 2006), certain rezonings would allow heights over 5 stories in some residential areas and “people were afraid precisely of this. … Where there is a possibility to preserve the current height, we’ll preserve it” (Roshchin Interview, 2006).
During the October 2006 hearings on the Rules, restrictions on building heights emerged as a key way that residents sought to track the quantity of building in their districts and the type of new construction (such as hotels or malls) that officials planned to permit. The Rules were supposed to include an updated Height Regulation. Roshchin’s words, in fact, indicate an intended compromise between existing heights and opportunities for growth.The Gazprom project negated the terms of this compromise. In November 2006, the effective regulations for height on the Okhta-Center site would allow nothing higher than 42 meters, 48 meters in case of proving extreme need (Delovoi Peterburg, 11-9-06; 4-28-04). ... Yet Miller openly insisted that the building could be no less than 300 meters tall, and the height of the winning design was 396 meters. Newspapers immediately began to report rumors that officials planned to abrogate the Height Regulation entirely in order to enable the Gazprom project to go forward; this would be a precedent that would enable further violations of the Regulation in other places (St. Petersburg Times, 1-12-07; 9-7-07).
...height (just as elsewhere in the world) signals prestige and global economic sway.
... The precise Height Regulation in effect in November 2006 was Resolution No. 648, passed by the city Legislative Assembly (under Matvienko) on 4 April 2004, referred to as the “Temporary Height Regulation” since a new one was expected to emerge with the new Master Plan. As implied above, the Master Plan document was framed generally and did not include such details of construction parameters; the Rules on Land Use and Construction included maps with a range of zones indicating intended use, but permitted heights remained unclear; this left the 2004 Regulation in force. Meanwhile, throughout 2007, the Rules were discussed and lobbied at KGA but did not advance to the Legislative Assembly. On 28 December 2007, a new Height Regulation was passed in that body as Resolution No. 1731 – by phone vote, or “poll,” as newspapers reported – without the required public consultation. City residents were first made aware of this new version at the hearing on 14 January 2008 for the Temporary Construction Permit specifically for Okhta-Center. A map appended to the Resolution (available on the city website) designates a new range of zones with greatly increased heights throughout the city... This new version allows a height of 100 meters at the Okhta-Center site. [see next post] ... The wording of the Resolution invalidates the Temporary Regulation of 2004; the resolution itself reportedly took effect in April 2008, but a note on the city website still stated in July 2008 that it had not.
In any case, as of autumn 2008 neither the Rules nor the Resolution were yet law. Resolution No. 1731 reportedly constituted a kind of appendix on height for the Rules; these were finally sent to the Legislative Assembly on 2 July 2008, with the intention of considering them in September 2008. However, according to Boris Nikolashchenko, head of the working group for the Master Plan, he has an order to reformulate the height parameters even after the submission of Resolution 1731 to the Assembly (Novaya Gazeta, 7-24-08). Public pressure on the city administration has again increased in light of a scandal that broke out in June 2008 after a published photograph “suddenly” showed how a new building in the center of Vasilievsky Island could be clearly seen behind historical landmarks when standing on central city bridges. In January 2008, Nikolashchenko was quoted as saying, “Everything is done in order to push through the irresponsible project for the Okhta-Center skyscraper. The authorities don’t consider the public (obshchestvennost′) at all. It wasn’t like this even in Soviet times. … In 2004 everything was very democratic and open” (Novaya Gazeta, 1-21-08).
[end excerpt]

Street Activism (written 10 September 2007)

On Saturday, September 8, the third of three large demonstrations this year took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. A locally produced online newspaper put the number of demonstrators at 1500; the few Western media outlets who gave the demonstration brief coverage had numbers that ranged from 2000 to 4000. The organizers had expected more than 5000 people. As has happened before, Russian observers of the demonstration have concluded that smaller-than-expected numbers mean that the causes represented by the demonstrators have little resonance with the public at large.

The most prominent of the “causes” is opposition to the proposed skyscraper that would be headquarters for the Gazprom corporation. The skyscraper was announced in summer 2006 and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller awarded design rights to a British firm in early December 2006; the struggle between proponents and opponents has continued since then. Opponents have appealed to native Petersburgers’ love of their historical city center and horizontal skyline. After all, this is the city where the first large demonstration against Soviet policy took place in the late 1980s over a proposal to demolish a building where a beloved nineteenth-century poet once lived (just a friend of the more famous Pushkin); this was a key moment in the glasnost movement in St. Petersburg. Those who want to use the Gazprom issue to whip up local sentiment can’t be blamed for thinking they could recapture some of that spirit. Prominent city architects, art historians, local politicians, and even the renowned film director Alexander Sokurov have spoken out against the skyscraper. Those who favor the project say that they want to see Petersburg become a modern, vibrant city; those who oppose it fear that the city will lose its UNESCO status as a World Heritage Site in particular, and in general, lose its soul. But Gazprom isn’t even the main issue.

The Gazprom skyscraper indeed raises some serious questions about how things are happening in the city. We don’t hear much about the transportation problems that the skyscraper would create, in a city where underground parking is often prohibitively expensive or inadvisable due to underground rivers and marshy ground. Depending on your taste, it is just the wrong building to help Petersburg take a big step into the 21st century. But even Russian politicians who think they can unite democratic opposition behind the opposition to Gazprom are missing the real story of grassroots civil society development.

First, there’s transportation. The city wants the building to make St. Petersburg more vibrant and modern, but it hasn’t succeeded in building its ringroad highway around the entire city; the “ring” only serves the eastern side, and suffers from chronic traffic jams caused largely by inefficient insurance regulations. Even more importantly, Gazprom has become a convenient rallying point for city residents of all ages who are frustrated with nontransparent construction practices that have destroyed neighborhood parks and in some areas tried to make residents responsible for the bill to demolish their own buildings so that new, more expensive housing can be built in their place.

The Gazprom issue has been such a tempting one for would-be political organizers in St. Petersburg because it represents so many neighborhood-level problems writ large. The very same challenges with inadequate infrastructure or nontransparent resettlements and transactions have brought together residents in many different districts of the city – usually into small, isolated bands of people who are upset enough to spend their time studying city code, writing letters, speaking to reporters, and attempting to get their story out. When they can, they try to attend each other’s demonstrations (which usually must remain small, due to recent requirements that any public demonstration that does not first obtain a permit must not exceed five people). Sometimes, when I interviewed activists from different districts in fall 2006, I was the first person to pass along phone numbers and put them in contact with each other.

It is tricky right now to evaluate phenomena of Russian “civil society.” Those who participate do not look like successful American protesters or political activists, and so perhaps prominent American commentators are reluctant to throw their lot in with them. The demonstrators who make it into photographs tend to be senior citizens – this allows both Russian and Western observers to conclude that the demonstrations are just the last gasp of a generation that was used to the paternalism of the Soviet regime, and just can’t handle capitalism.

In fact there are many young people involved, and middle-aged people as well – if you measure the validity of a civil society movement by age, then activism in St. Petersburg qualifies. It is also quite hard-working, creative, and pragmatic in many cases. The Gazprom issue is a sexy stand-in for more prosaic challenges faced by residents of the city in numerous neighborhoods – the most notable being what they call “in-fill,” or construction that attempts to take advantage of existing (and overstressed) service infrastructure in spite of city regulations to the contrary. Residents of many neighborhoods have lost their parks, or part of a park, or the green space that they came to use as a park, or a multi-story building is projected in a place where it would block any sunlight from falling on a school (which is measured by city regulations).

Some Background on Urban Politics in Petersburg

On March 3, 2007, a major street demonstration took place in St. Petersburg. As the business magazine Ekspert implied afterward in its commentary, observers from the middle-class and the West might rather be associated with the visually attractive and familiar Russian cultural elite than with the elderly pensioners and dissatisfied poor who often have been the ones desperate enough to show up to demonstrations (Ekspert 2007 no. 10, 12-18 March, p.80). However, as the same Ekspert article asserted, the number of people who showed up to the “March of the Dissidents” in St. Petersburg indicated that dissatisfaction with the government “was the position not merely of a handful of marginals, and to ignore it completely was now impossible… The photos that showed bedraggled retirees with wrinkled faces and absurd posters, not to mention nationalist bands, do little to show the real composition of the crowds” (p. 78, 79). Indeed, the article’s authors added, “the majority of the demonstrators were made up of the most average of Petersburgers” (p. 81).

In fact “dissidents” --the word used most often in the Western press to translate "nesoglasnye" -- was a mistranslation in some ways. That word links the new movement with cultural and social figures who opposed Soviet-era communist bureaucrats; it has a specific historical context. The word “dissident” exists in Russian, but was not used in this case. The most literal translation of “Marsh nesoglasnykh,” the March 2007 demonstration (and others) is “March of Those-who-don’t-agree”; it has also been translated as "March of the Dissenters."

While Western media coverage focused on the Yabloko party, on Gary Kasparov and on other prominent political figures, the real spark behind the spontaneous participation of average Petersburgers in the demonstration on 3 March 2007 was the frustration with the lack of transparency in the city government’s handling of urban development. In particular, the plan to build a 300-meter skyscraper directly across the river from Smolny Cathedral had been rankling since the announcement in December 2006 of the winner of a competition to design this tower for the Gazprom corporation, Russia’s natural gas giant. Beneath the frustration with Gazprom was also a growing network of what we would call grassroots activists—active citizens in neighborhoods across the city who had been developing civic skills for months in the struggle to prevent various urban development projects in their districts. Over time, these groups began to find out about each other and cooperate in order to gather information, prepare legal documents, and engage in community outreach.

A crucial common factor in this developing network was the legal consulting organization ECOM, or St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. ECOM has provided ample proof that those who “do not agree” are not just romantic dissidents but also smart, resourceful pragmatists; that Russian activists can have a decided impact on government decisions; and that Russians are not apathetic and doomed to have an authoritarian government. This blog will be continued in their honor, with a major goal being to provide information in English about their activities.

New focus for the blog

I wanted to continue this blog in order to cover issues in Russian cultural, social and political development that warrant more attention.
As a focal point, I will start with the efforts of an NGO in St. Petersburg that has taken an active role in empowering city residents to question and/or prevent urban development projects that affect neighborhoods and social uses of space. The most famous case they have worked on over the past two years is the fight to prevent construction of Okhta-Center, a nearly 400-meter-high skyscraper across the river from the baroque 18th-century Smolny Cathedral at the eastern edge of the historic preservation zone.

Consider this: the fight to keep neighborhoods and land use under a certain arrangement is not mere nostalgia or resistance to modernization, but a means to develop political participation. While to Western eyes the fight to prevent a skyscraper or a mall might look simply reactionary or “backwards,” in the contemporary Russian context we have to see the active elements of civil society which are working through architecture and land use against government policies that are non-transparent, with the goal not only of preserving certain buildings or uses but of creating that desired governmental transparency. Their efforts to sustain a particular arrangement of space are not just NIMBY (‘not in my backyard’) or anti-modernism. We observers have to reorganize our analysis: do we evaluate others’ actions based on loyalty to a particular architecture and a particular urban appearance, or to people who are trying to enact particular political values?
While some elements of the development community and municipal government have made honest efforts to address new economic realities and urgent needs for new infrastructure, the desires of residents have not been evenly taken into account. In the West we are used to approving the ‘highest economic use’ and basing our evaluations on that principle; in Russia many people still have an idea, roughly speaking, of ‘highest social use’ of space.