What Center Found on the Outskirts of Moscow: the Agency's Team Took the Second Place in the Competition of the Genplan Institute of Moscow

The team headed by the Agency for Strategic Development CENTER took the honorable second place in the competition “Explore the city” organized by the Genplan Institute of Moscow and the Moscow City Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning.

More than 200 teams of architects, urbanists and design institutes took part in the competition. According to the organizers, one of the tasks of the competition was “to find new vectors of urban development”. Participation in the event will allow the contestants to contribute to the strategic vision of the future of Moscow, the results of their work will form the basis of real urban construction projects.

Four teams competed in the final where they presented the results of their research on various processes proceeding in modern cities. The theme of the consortium headed by CENTER (which also included the CENTER Lab International Urban Laboratory and Synopsis Group research agency) was local community centers in the peripheral areas of the city. The purpose of the City in the City project was to develop a methodological approach to the development of such places, and the tasks included identification of the periphery, the prerequisites using the example of model territories, conducting desktop and field studies, and provision of recommendations for the development.

In most cases a local community center is a place of accumulation of flows, a service hub or a “place of power” urban residents associate themselves with. Its self-sufficiency depends on the presence of identity, spaces for various groups strengthening the social bonds of residents, the availability of commercial premises.

The study findings include the formula for the success of a local community center which depends on the stage of formation (from the growth point and subcenter to a full-fledged local center) and implementation of three basic needs: communication, joint activity, uniqueness and visual identity. Such centers contribute to building the image of the “people they know” among the residents and increase satisfaction with life in a particular district.

“We had an interdisciplinary team with an emphasis on the sociological block. We are interested in the nomination thread in the context of reloading existing territories or creating new creative, sports or educational clusters, especially in the framework of implementation of the polycentric scenario of Moscow development and post-pandemic trends. Despite the research on the periphery carried out in previous years, we still have the feeling that the periphery remains understudied and its role on the scale of the city should be actualized,” said Maria Sedletskaya, Head of the Analytical Department of the CENTER Lab International Urban Laboratory.

As part of the study, “…a metric of sociocultural measurements appeared and, apparently, this is the first step ahead. The parameters describing this metric can be expanded, they can be adjusted to unique territories, not only in Moscow, but also in other cities,” noticed Dmitry Nekrasov, curator of the project, the Moscow Genplan Institute, Advisor to the Director of the Institute.

The first place was awarded to “Team 12” which investigated the approaches to the living environment arrangement; the third – to “Urban Helper” bureau which researched the problem of the housing stock vacancy. The fourth place went to the Cian team which investigated the reasons for owning a car.