Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative

The success of the program has led to its adoption in other cities and it was included in the updated edition of the Town Planning Code of the Russian Federation.

[5] The issue of continuing the demolition of the deteriorating panel housing stock was again raised in February 2017 at a meeting of the Council of Moscow Municipalities with the participation of Sergei Sobyanin.

At a meeting with Sergei Sobyanin on February 21, 2017, Vladimir Putin instructed the Moscow mayor to continue the resettlement of five-story buildings.

The mayor noted that the current civil and urban planning legislation limited the possibility of resettlement of structures not at urgent risk of collapse and asked the president to assist in changing the regulatory framework.

[7][8] Several sources connected with the mayor's office told Forbes magazine that the prerequisite for the rapid start of the renovation program was the desire of the city administration to avoid the redistribution of Moscow budget revenues in favor of regions with higher debt loads.

While talking to journalists, Natalya Zubarevich, Chief Researcher at the Institute for Social Policy of the Higher School of Economics, noted the feasibility of this scenario, since only in 2016 did the income of the consolidated budget of Moscow increase by 188 billion rubles.

[5] The interlocutors of the publication also noted that a large-scale renovation program will allow Moscow to attract investment in the construction and related industries.

[9] Among the critics of the document was the Public Advisory Council under the Moscow City Duma, which noted in an official report that the bill was contrary to the Constitution and other laws, was potentially economically inexpedient, and fraught with negative social consequences.

[12] The list of houses to be included in the renovation program was compiled with the participation of a scientific council under the Department of Cultural Heritage of the City of Moscow and the social movement Archnadzor.

Between May and June 2017, the mayor's office held a vote for the inclusion of houses from the preliminary list in the renovation program among owners and tenants of apartments.

After studying the voting results, RBC journalists concluded that the choice of Muscovites was practically not affected by the proximity of their structures to Moscow Metro stations and political preferences in the 2013 mayoral elections.

Prior to the adoption of the law on renovation, residents of structures not included in the preliminary voting list were allowed to hold meetings of owners and submit applications for participation in the program to district councils.

[15] In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda on May 4, Sergei Sobyanin noted that the mayor's office would consider the possibility of their demolition with the consent of the residents if the houses were included in quarterly development and dilapidated.

The provisions of the bill guaranteed owners of apartments in buildings included in the renovation program to receive "equivalent" housing upon resettlement.

If the apartment is not inhabited by minors, persons with limited legal capacity or incompetent citizens, the owner has the right to choose to receive equivalent housing or monetary compensation.

[19] Each of the houses built under the renovation program, according to the capital's department of urban planning policy, goes through six stages of quality control.

[21] The projects had to be delicately integrated into the existing urban environment, have an integral architectural image, optimize the use of the territory, create high-quality open spaces, include a well-developed landscaping strategy, offer a barrier-free environment with convenient access to social and transport infrastructure and commercial premises on the ground floors.

These amendments increased the expenditure side of the city budget by 96.5 billion rubles, which the mayor's office plans to spend on preparatory measures for the renovation program: the formation of land plots for new construction, the preparation of infill sites for wave resettlement in the renovation quarters and adjacent territories, the implementation pre-project and design work.

The city plans to independently determine the parameters and volumes of new construction, select contractors through competitive procedures and control the process through a specially created state renovation fund.

On March 28, 2019, the first planning projects for renovated quarters in the Solntsevo, Ochakovo-Matveyevskoye, Ivanovskoye, Metrogorodok, Severnoye Tushino, and Mitino districts were submitted for public hearings.

In addition to opponents of the renovation, a representative of the city hall tried to make her arguments at the rally, but the crowd booed her, and the organizers turned off the microphone.

120505-7, the abolition of voting in Active Citizen, the expansion of the powers of landowners and a broad discussion of the future master plan of Moscow.

After the event, Sergei Sobyanin promised to take into account the opinions of Muscovites and pay close attention to the meaningful statements made at the rally.

[32] In June 2017, the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarch, Metropolitan Hilarion, spoke in support of the renovation program, noting that the authorities offer favorable conditions to the residents of the five-story buildings being settled and take care of people's safety.

[35] The reason for this may be the desire to receive material benefits from the compaction of residential areas through the construction of multi-storey buildings and the sale of apartments in them.

Taking into account isolated cases of demolitions of Khrushchev districts by private developers and the construction of new buildings, on average, the density of the population increased 3.3 times.

According to Konstantin Jankauskas, deputy mayor of Zyuzino District, mass densification is highly undesirable in already overpopulated Moscow.

He argued that it will create an even greater burden on social and transport infrastructure and lead, for example, to emergency power outages, queues for spaces in kindergartens, schools and additional hours spent in traffic jams.

Galina Khovanskaya, State Duma deputy from A Just Russia, noted the opacity of the bill and fears that it will leave the owners completely unprotected against forced eviction and relocation to less comfortable housing.