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]
Showing posts with label Gazprom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gazprom. Show all posts
Monday, June 08, 2009
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
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).
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).
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