- City-scale private “Megaprojects”: real estate manipulations or way to planned development    click here to open paper content762 kb
by    Kudryavtsev, Fedor | ulab@marhi.ru   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
New scales of private housing projects that are under development in Russia will be presented as both a threat and an opportunity for the quality of the country’s metropolitan areas.
Abstract
“Megaprojects” refers in Russia to city-scale private housing projects with one and more million square meters of housing stock (so at least 50 000 inhabitants). They were provoked by three factors:
-concentration of ownership on agricultural lands of former collective farms;
-booming housing market;
-state so-called “national project”, stimulating housing supply through promoting large housing projects and co-investing engineering and social infrastructure.
More than 20 projects were announced with three in Moscow region with expected total population about 700 000 inh.
The projects have many features that proved to enhance sprawl:
-none of them initially was in line with local structural plans:
-transformation of agricultural land will hurt environmental quality;
-weak correspondence with infrastructure development and road network modernization.
-unclear social consequences: “new cities” may foster concentration of diminishing population in several metropolitan areas (i.e., since 90s Moscow has grown from 8,5 to 10,5 mln. inhabitants and Moscow region from 5 to 7 mln), increase commuting floors, etc.
Nevertheless large scale provides incentives for cooperation between private and public sectors that allows to identify grounds for future PPP for planning tasks:
-to reach highest market value investors need to plan larger development in longer terms thus allow state better control and time to react.
-predicted growth of built-up area push state to speed up development of infrastructure that otherwise was postponed.
-large scale projects attract more public attention thus stimulating discussions on quality of housing areas instead of quantity of units provided all over the region.
-combinations of large scale projects may contribute to better milieu surrounding large cities and provide new sustainable urban territories instead of degrading periphery.
Thus large scale private projects may provide some hope for more planned development in current chaos of Russian metropolitan areas.
Keywords
metropolitan areas, megaprojects, public-private partnership, real estate market
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2008: Urban Growth without Sprawl
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