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Theoretical component

Essay: Explaining the spatial structure of Moscow

Nina Korkach

1 MA Arch Sint-Lucas Architectuur – Campus Brussel

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Introduction

In this essay I took the opportunity to discuss one of my favorite cities – Moscow. While it

is not my home town, nor is it usually considered architecturally significant, I find that it

has a rich history as an ancient capital, which went through feudalism, monarchy,

socialism, and, correspondingly, several governments, with sometimes radically different

agendas.

Modern day Moscow is a megapolis of sorts, and its history is written on its streets –

disposed to the eyes of the keen. I will try to elaborate on how the city became what it is

today, starting at the point of its very first mentions.

http://moskowall.ru/photo/foto_moskvy/1

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Explaining the spatial structure of Moscow

The first mention of Moscow dates back to 1147. In 1156 Moscow gained city status and

became one of the Vladimir principality boundary defensive points. However, due to the

favorable geographical position, Moscow's influence was growing rapidly, and since

1271 it became the capital of the independent Moscow principality.

The organic shape of the historical compact radial plan of Moscow is a classic example

of a naturally developing city structure.

Natural conditions and topography determined the location and primary plan of the city.

Among the most important natural factors, as for any historic city, is a river. (At least, this

is a common case for cities that have been built in the hilly plains of Central Russia.)

http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000170/st023.shtml

The well protected elevated shore in the bend of the river, and the hilly triangle between

the river and its tributaries, are often the prime choice for a construction site, when

planning city construction. Watersheds, steep slopes of the coastal line, lowlands and

small tributaries all form the street network.

Expanding on the plain, the city strives to maintain a compact shape - this allows for the

shortest length of the perimeter walls, and the shortest internal communications.

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Inflows and bends of the river form a natural barrier for territorial growth. Overcoming a

barrier and moving to the opposite bank of the river or tributary usually means entering a

new phase of for the city, which is, of course, reflected in its layout. Thus, the river and

streams (even if they eventually disappear from the surface) record, not unlike rings on a

cut tree, initial stages of city plan evolution. Asymmetry of the initial plan largely

determined specific construction of the city and the unique identity of its appearance.

As with most historically important cities, the ancient plans of Moscow were defined by

considerations of versatile defense and easiest access to market exchange centers.

However, even with such a stereotypical structure, Moscow’s plan reacted with amazing

accuracy and versatility when situation demanded. The eastern areas, not separated

from the Kremlin by waterways, develop in an outstripping way. The western areas,

beyond the Neglinka, have the most dense street network and house the most

prestigious buildings. In the south, cut off from the Kremlin by the river, development is

delayed, and the provincial character of the building was preserved until the XIX century.

In the north (Neglinka), and the south-east (Yauza) floodplains, the plan loses its

centripetal character and creates a notable anomaly in the overall city plan.

Moscow was always characterized by a picturesque irregularity of its plan, and its

symmetry has always been relative. At least in comparison with the radial symmetry of an

ideally circular plan, which has since been attributed to Moscow. As soon as the need for

the construction of defensive walls was eliminated, the contours of the urban plan clearly

manifested asymmetry.

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The scheme of development radial-ring structure in Moscow in 15-19 centuries

a – plan of the city in 15 century b – plan of the city in 18 century c – plan of the city in 1917

http://kannelura.info/?p=2947

Moscow presents a similar case to the development of St. Petersburg-Leningrad. Many of

the specific features and anomalies of modern Moscow find unexpected, but but quite

natural explanations in the history of the formation of the urban plan. The threads of

causality stretch from present day to the embryonic stage of the city’s existence, when

the initial, historically fundamental, characteristics of the urban fabric that make up a

sort of genetic "code" of the spatial organization of the city.

The Eastern part of the historic core of Moscow (along Pokrovka street) was formed

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before the fan of radial streets spanning out from the Kremlin determined the structure

of the Moscow stereotyped plan. The principle of linear development, originally founded

in the planning of the oldest part of Moscow, was not able to get a complete embodiment

within a compact city, due to considernations of defense. However, in the XVII century, it

reappears - there is a strong "outburst" of the city towards Lefortovo, which determined

the peculiar asymmetry of Moscow's plan until the XX century.

This asymmetry has significantly influenced the character of the Moscow railway junction.

The main directions of the railway (Leningrad, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Kursk, Gorky), came to

the historic core of the city from the east, perpendicular to the axis of planning, which

was oriented towards the north-east. Stations were shifted to the "load center" - the

geometric center of the elongated urban plan.

At the same time, the territory of the southwestern plateau, hanging directly over the old

Moscow, and for a long time separated from it only by a bend in the river, remain "in the

shadow" of the eastward oriented development.

Therefore, when Moscow came much later to the next (the most significant) stage of its

territorial expansion, new construction surged to the southwest. The ancient

northeastern axis of the layout gained a powerful development in the opposite direction.

This development, however, was not a simple movement outward from the center,

following the historical build-up plan. T was rather a natural consequence of the prior

processes – having to do with the development of the historic city.

For example, the north-western, western and south-western parts of the greater Moscow,

which developed relatively recently, are distinguished by the clarity of their planning,

compared to other territories of Moscow’s peripheral belt. In this regard, it is striking that

the same parts of the historic core of Moscow are the most regular parts of its old plan.

Today it is impossible to decipher the complex chain of interactions and processes, the

inheritance of which we can witness in the modern day.

Be that as it may, the organic symmetry of Moscow’s plan, the picturesque irregularity of

its buildings, have been imprinted in its story, thus predetermining the architectural

uniqueness of the city. It so happened that Moscow was not much affected by even the

most prestigious symbols of the classical European tradition of urban planning. The

magnificence of the giant spaces, the parkland esplanades, the architectural splendor of

scenery - all fell to St. Petersburg. Moscow for years to come retains originally inherent

natural features of an established urban organism. However, a sharp turn in history led

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Moscow to a new, extremely responsible stage of development.

A new wave of urban activity came to Moscow with its conversion to a capital of the

world's first socialist state. The spirit of revolutionary transformation of society

demanded the construction of prestigious buildings, symbolically backing the new social

values, punching broad avenues, finally destroying, demolishing all that personified the

dark side of the capitalist past. In the 30s the reconstruction of Moscow became a

socially conscious necessity.

Right about that time, the concepts of "modern" urbanism finally emerged, imbued with

faith in the omnipotence of technology and the rational organization of space. Rapid

development of transportation, mass housing construction, the use of new, efficient

designs and materials – all promised city planners limitless prospects. The innovative

spirit of modern urban development and unprecedented in their scope demands of the

Soviet state came together in a historic contest in the General Plan of Moscow of 1932.

Not surprisingly, many Soviet and foreign participants proposed radical reconstruction,

some up to complete destruction of old Moscow.

The famous Soviet urban planner Nikolai Ladovsky proposed to develop Moscow in the

form of a steep arc deployed in the north-westerly direction - towards Leningrad. Of

course, such a one-way city-parabola went in contradiction to the longstanding tradition

of a more or less uniform concentric growth of Moscow.

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Strategy plan of further development of Moscow by Ladovsky, 1932 http://www.retromap.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=407

A group of young Soviet urbanists - a team of the All-Russian Society of Proletarian

Architects - tried in their project to "build" the radial plan of Moscow into a giant

rectangular grid of new highways.

A special guest of the contest, Frenchman Le Corbusier proposed to break the

orthogonal plan of the new city, completely disregarding the old city, with all the

"irregularities" of its historic layout.

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Reconstruction proposal of Moscow by Le Corbusier, 1932 http://kannelura.info/?p=2947

In 1935 Moscow has dressed the quays, the updated metropolitan Gorky Street, a wide,

transport-friendly Garden Ring. Downtown received a new metropolitan scale. True, there

were losses. Arc de Triomphe, the Red Gate, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour - only the

most notable of the buildings demolished. In 1935 general structure of the city

foresought the expansion, in favor of regular planning and traffic, of Petrovka and the

Pushkin street, the Stoleshnikov alley and the Kuznetsk bridge - in fact, almost all of the

old streets of central Moscow. But the war interrupted the start of an ambitious urban

development work.

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The scheme of Moscow, 1935

http://mka.mos.ru/mka/mka.nsf/va_WebPages/GenplanHistory2Rus

In the mid-50s, the dramatically increased place of construction, has led to the building a

new skyscrapers along the main radial directions. It was a period of important town-

planning that defined the overall strategy for urban development, taking into account

socio-economic solutions, engineering, environmental and other problems.

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The scheme of the new skyscrapers, 1948

http://kannelura.info/?p=2947

1971. It was a first step of division of a relatively isolated part of the city center and the

development of several peripheral areas, which created a system of green wedges,

dissecting urban development and linking it with the suburban forests, punching

highways for transit traffic, the reconstruction of industrial enterprises, the creation of

landscaped industrial zones and many others. It revived the idea of a "proper" radial-

circular plan, planned before the war. But now its appearance was hypertrophied,

magnified many times. The boundary of the city was now a ring road - thus it was given a

clear geometric form of the form of an oval, which is close to a circle. This form of

predetermined a uniformly concentric arrangement of new areas throughout the

peripheral zone of Moscow, regardless of their differences.

The generation of the circle’s geometry does not allow for differences between the

territories of the peripheral zone of the city, which lie on continuations of the old radial

roads, and most of the newly developed areas that have never had a structure-planning

links with the historic core of Moscow. Realizing the inexorable logic of geometric

thinking, the capital's avenues reached out to peripheral areas, branching from the

center.

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General Plan of Moscow, 1971

http://mka.mos.ru/mka/mka.nsf/va_WebPages/GenplanHistory2Rus

Naturally, despite the links to successive development of the historic structure, every

step of the artificial geometrical scheme runs into obstacles to overcome, which involves

material costs. Excessive amounts of earthworks, viaducts and tunnels, without which we

could have done, the centers that you can not even build – all a high price paid for "the

love of geometry", or more precisely, the symmetry of the regular city plan in the spirit of

Paris and St. Petersburg.

In addition to time, distances also change. In the XVII century the length of the radial

axes of the Moscow plan did not exceed 2-3 kilometers; at the beginning of the XX

century - 5-6; in 1935 – 10; now it has reached 20 kilometers. It is hard to imagine that

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such significant quantitative changes do not require a qualitative restructuring - this

would contradict the fundamental laws of the Marxist dialectic. Indeed, perhaps the

same principle of structural organization of the territory can be endlessly stretched

outwards like a rubber ball. Uniform concentric build-up of Moscow along the radial

directions of the plan has already exhausted its functional planning and compositional

possibilities, even taking into account the fact that such features have been repeatedly

reinforced by the radial structure of the Moscow Metro.

The 90s with their fundamental political and economic changes have given new impetus

to the implementation of urban policy in Moscow, have created entirely new conditions

for further development and improvement of the capital city, to meet modern standards.

Moscow City Government in 1999 approved General Plan of Moscow Development up to

2020. First, they want to create a comfortable and safe urban environment for the life

and work. Therefore, General Plan provides for a range of activities to form a system of

specially protected areas of the city, improving the quality and effectiveness of the

landscaping of the recreational use of the existing green areas and create new green

areas of common use, including reorganized in the production areas, preserving the

continuity of the natural landscape of Moscow and Moscow region on the border of the

city. Scheduled work to preserve and restore topsoil, landscaping ponds of Moscow, to

reorganize the industrial areas, installation of noise-reducing devices.

Another important thing is to ensure the preservation of cultural heritage and historic

environment of the city. At the same time zones in areas of cultural heritage a special

regime and urban planning regulations as a condition of the historical and cultural

continuity of the planning organization, the artistic image and high-rise skyline of

Moscow.

Further development of transport infrastructure of the city provides as activities for the

integrated development of all types of passenger and freight transport, as well as

measures to develop the road network of the city, however, as a priority area, considers

the master plan in the first place, the development of high-speed public transport,

including the existing subway system, and new modes of transport. A special role in

ensuring the priority of public transport must play a massive formation of transport hubs

from individual to public transport, combined with intercepting parking.

The attitude of the city to the inner areas of railways. It is planned to create additional

main track with the organization of passenger traffic on them. In the first place on the

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small ring of the Moscow railway, which according to the plan is actively involved in the

transport system of the city.

Unique objects are concentrated in urban areas and the best transport accessibility:

community centers, on near to highways territories, as well as multipurpose and

specialized public areas.

In order to develop the road network will be interconnected development of roads and

highways of Moscow, Moscow region.

So it seems that Moscow shows us its obstinate character – as it has always been

cautious of innovation, especially of a foreign origin. And now it is cannot cope with the

elegant, but tight outfit of the regular uniform plan. You cannot even drive the

picturesque confusion of the Moscow buildings into a geometric order, so pleasing to a

city planner’s soul.

In this complex, conflicting situation Moscow is getting ready for the next move - it is

preparing to go in the new directions.

http://avto3plus.ru/about/news/news_1.html

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References

1. http://www.retromap.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=407

2. http://townevolution.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000016/st065.shtml

3. http://moya-moskva.livejournal.com/3301141.html

4. http://www.ivrome.ru/2010/04/o-koncepcii-genplana-moskvy-mgo-voopiik/

5. http://archi.ru/lib/publication.html?id=1850569828&fl=5&sl=1

6. http://www.kuluar.ru/Moscow/MosAr/MosAr20.htm

7. http://historic.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000171/st025.shtml

8. http://archi.ru/lib/publication.html?id=1850569828&fl=5&sl=1

9. http://www.archnadzor.ru/2008/02/24/kontseptsiya-sohraneniya/

10. http://nashenasledie.livejournal.com/304442.html

11. http://kannelura.info/?p=2947

12. http://mka.mos.ru/mka/mka.nsf/va_WebPages/GenplanHistory2Rus