HSE to Participate in Moscow Urban Forum

Zaryadye Park, Moscow. © Essentials/ iStock collection

The Moscow Urban Forum will take place from July 17 to 22 at Zaryadye Park. This year’s topic is ‘Megacity of the Future: New Space for Living’. HSE representatives will participate in the forum’s expert discussions.

What can the city offer its residents and who should manage it?

Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE Rector, will speak at three forum sessions. The session ‘Renovation and Environment. How Major Redevelopment Projects Influence on Cities?’ will look at issues related to major urban development projects. What should be the objectives of large urban development projects, in addition to the improvement of living conditions? What parameters need to be monitored? How can a major urban project propel the development of the urban environment on a higher level? 

The talk show ‘Master of Urban Management. Education for Urban Leaders’ will discuss requirements of leaders as determined by modern cities, and the responsibilities of the educators who teach such leaders.

Yaroslav Kuzminov will also moderate the strategic session ‘Urban Social Packages. Social Infrastructure of Modern City’. Moscow and other megacities have faced challenges such as a growing population, increasing life expectancy, and technological change. The session participants will discuss what the new standard of social services offered by the city should look like, and how the urban social systems may change in the coming years.

How big can cities get?

Some researchers believe that in the next 30 to 40 years, Earth will have megacities with populations of 50 to 100 million. This will require completely different approaches to management and infrastructure. Participants in the panel discussion ‘The 100 Million City. Anti-Utopia or Management Reality’ will debate various approaches and whether it is possible to implement them. The panel will include Mikhail Blinkin, Director of the HSE Institute for Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies.

However, much smaller cities are already facing transportation problems. They have to balance private and public interests, and implement new information and power technology related to transportation. Participants in the strategic session ‘Public vs Personal. Chronicle of the Transportation Revolution’ will talk about how it used to be done and how it is done today, in Moscow and in other cities. Mikhail Blinkin will also be one of the key speakers.

Is the city a place for experiments?

New forms of urban planning are being trialed as interventions or pilot studies, and then are scaled to whole cities. But can such experiments be a foundation for a city’s long-term strategy? And what should be done if the experiment fails? These issues will be discussed at the panel session ‘Exception as a Rule. How the Approach to Urban Planning Is Changing’. Participants include Vicente Guallart, Academic Supervisor at the HSE Laboratory for Experimental Urban Design. He will also participate in a discussion on whether mass housing can be an innovation driver, and what tools, apart from mortgage, can make housing affordable for residents.

Paris and Moscow  will be discussed at the session ‘Grand Paris - Big Moscow. The Outcomes of the Urban Development Megaprojects’, with a focus on the development of new spaces. Among the participants will be Irina Ilina, Director of the HSE Institute of Regional Studies and Urban Planning.

How do urban residents feel?

‘No Stress City. Is There a Way to Reach Phsycological Comfort in a City?’ – this session will be moderated by Vasily Klucharev, Director of the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience. People living in megacities face not only ecological, but also psychological, triggers, from visual and auditory, and the necessity to interact with a lot of strangers. Session participants will discuss how to create an urban environment that would ensure the psychological well-being of its residents.

Two more sessions, led by Alexey Ivanov, Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, will discuss similar issues. One of them – ‘Full Security vs Total Control. Ethical Issues of Tech City’ – will look at how modern technology encroaches on residents’ personal space. The topic of the second discussion will be ‘Memory Space. Who and What Should the City Remember?’

The full programme of events is available on the forum website.