An interregional working group will be created to solve the problems of historical centers
This decision was made by the participants of the online session, which took place on March 15. The event was organized by the organizing committee of the International Forum "REBUS: Economics of Construction in the historical center" (the Office of the Head (Raisa) of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Investment Development Agency of the Republic of Tatarstan, the Ministry of Construction, Architecture and Housing of the Republic of Tatarstan) with the support of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation, the Union of Architects of Russia, the Head (Raisa) of the Republic of Tatarstan.
The online session has become a platform for preparing for the main part of the forum, which will be held in July this year in Kazan. The participants held several panel discussions in order to exchange experiences and form a common agenda for the summer event.
– We turned to the topic of historical cities based on the current problems of Russian municipalities, taking into account legislative changes that are taking place in the field of building regulation and in the Urban Planning Code. There are new challenges for architects, designers, developers, and regulators of this sphere," said Olesya Baltusova, Assistant to the Head (Raisa) of the Republic of Tatarstan, Program Director of the Forum. – For the March online session, we selected three of the six topics of the future event – investment, intangible heritage in the historical center and legal regulation in the historical center. For discussions, we invited leading experts who work with heritage, business, construction, and tourism.
More than twenty specialists from leading design organizations, development institutes, relevant departments and companies implementing projects in historical city centers spoke at the Forum.
The speakers of the session "Investment Tools for the development of Historical Territories", dedicated to investments and the development of the PPP mechanism in historical cities, were Andrey Tolmachev – General Director of the Kaliningrad Region Development Corporation JSC, Sergey Lutchenko – First Deputy Chairman of the Urban Planning Policy Committee – Chief Architect of the Leningrad Region, Oktay Usta – project Manager of the Turkish company Polystroykapital LLC, Konstantin Makarevich – Partner, Head of Infrastructure and PPP Practice of JSC "Best Choice" (Better Chance), Alexander Lunkin – Head of the PPP and Infrastructure direction of JSC Bank DOM.RF. The session was moderated by Egor Dontsov, Director of the OKN Sector of Spectrum Group, who shared his experience as a speaker, and Elina Zhiganova, Head of the Public-Private Partnership Development Department of the Investment Development Agency of the Republic of Tatarstan. The conditions for the involvement of cultural objects in economic turnover, problems and investment opportunities in historical territories, priority PPP models and key features of project financing in this area, experience in implementing projects in the Republic of Tatarstan and abroad were considered. The speakers presented proposals for the successful development of historical territories.
In the section where the involvement of cultural objects in economic turnover and intangible heritage as a factor of sustainable development was discussed, Dmitry Zabirov, head of the project work of the programs of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, Yuri Sheredega, architect, co–founder, managing partner of the design and consulting agency Sheredega Consulting, member of the expert councils for a comfortable urban environment and improvement of the polar cities under the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation, Tourism Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Alekseevsky – the head of the Center for Urban Anthropology KB Strelka, Marya Leontieva – sociologist, specialist in socio–cultural design of historical cities, founder of the Institute of Urban Studies "Tamga", expert of the Department of Sustainable Development of the Institute of Development of the City of Kazan, Rafael Valeev - Professor, head of the Department of World Heritage of KFU, and entrepreneur Eduard Koltun.
The speakers of the session devoted to legal instruments for the development of historical cities were Olesya Baltusova, Assistant to the Head (Raisa) of the Republic of Tatarstan, Alexey Mikhailov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of St. Petersburg, Eleonora Shevchenko, Full State Adviser of the Russian Federation, Adviser to the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, Dmitry Verkhovsky is the head of the Workshop of Planning and analysis of historical territories of the Institute of the General Plan of Moscow, and others.
The outcome of the event was the decision to form a working group to create a concept for the development of historical settlements based on the approach to sustainable development of territories. This initiative was announced by Dmitry Verkhovsky.
– I propose to develop such a methodology for the summer forum. We need to create a practical approach, applicable tools, and then governors and municipal authorities will be able to choose what is close to them," the expert says.
– The most "painful" places are marked on the Forum. On behalf of the organizing committee, I invite experts to contact us and share their suggestions. We will create a working group that will prepare speeches, topics, resolutions on all the proposed areas. The work continues," says Olesya Baltusova.
The Assistant to the Head (Raisa) of the Republic of Tatarstan noted that the participation of representatives of ministries and departments of the federal and regional levels plays an important role in the event.
– It is important for us that the Forum is supported by the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation and that it will be held with the assistance of the Union of Architects of Russia. We have invited the Department of Urban Planning Policy of Moscow, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, as well as other federal and regional departments and development institutions to participate," says Olesya Baltusova. – At the same time, we also plan to study the best practices of other countries in solving similar tasks. The results of the work will be presented at the plenary session of the REBUS Forum in July. Based on the results of the event, we will propose amendments to the legislation through ministries and departments that have already become our partners.
Taliya Minullina, Head of the Investment Development Agency of the Republic of Tatarstan, noted: "More than 1,500 specialists watched the online forum. This suggests that the site we have organized is in demand, and the summer construction forum in full-time format is already arousing the interest of the profile audience. Our ambitious idea is to create an annual platform for the development of the construction industry in Russia. We have grown an Islamic forum. Why not grow a good construction forum? We have high commissioning rates in the country, and several hundred companies producing building materials, and investors-developers of their own and attracted, and even personnel successes taking into account federal appointments. That is, all the conditions are there."
The international forum "REBUS: Economics of Construction in the historical center" will be held in the summer of 2023 in Kazan. It will become a large-scale platform for communication between specialized specialists, government officials, entrepreneurs, architects, urbanists, restorers, manufacturers of materials, developers and designers. The forum will allow you to find answers about what economic activity is in historical territories, what its limitations and opportunities are, what risks and what modern developers create in the historical center, what methods of designing and preserving identity regions use.