Позитивные изменения. Города будущего. Тематический выпуск, 2022 / Positive changes. The cities of the future. Special issue, 2022

Environment and sustainable development are becoming the key topics affecting the full range of design solutions; they are present in brand new concepts of the city of the future, as well as in those that follow up on the development of well-known approaches.

The model of an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable city most often acts as the foundation for designing the cities of the future (Malyshev, Korobkova & Solodkov, 2021). This model is directly related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The bare-bones agenda for a sustainable city is the "smart city" model: efficient use of resources through the introduction of technological systems, a better quality of life through improved services, transport and information accessibility. It is worth noting that this model generally does not take into account the social component of the city, while focusing mainly on the infrastructure and technological aspects.

In 2022, Norman Foster is launching a UN declaration of the principles for sustainable and inclusive urban design and architecture, that would be the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath for architects. The document called the San Marino Declaration includes the following principles of urban planning:

• people-centrality, social responsibility and inclusivity;

• cultural identity, values, and heritage;

• resource efficiency and circularity;

• safety and health;

• respect for nature and natural systems and processes;

• people-smartness;

• inter-disciplinary cooperation and networking, engagement[26].

THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE FROM THE FUTURE ITSELF

Going beyond the boundaries of urban planning concepts, it is important to note at least two other authors — Benjamin H. Bratton, head of his own Terraforming research program, and Nick Srnicek, political philosopher of the accelerationist movement.

Bratton’s book includes a quote by writer and director Chris Marker: "The naive American contemplates the sky; the Russian … settles in the sky and contemplates the earth." According to Benjamin H. Bratton, it suggests an analogy about the need to think about the future from the future itself rather than the present. This book focuses on the millennial event horizon, and it also addresses themes echoing the motif of non-extractive architecture: how to terraform[27] the Earth so that it becomes habitable for human life and remains so for as long as possible, while avoiding projects with a negative effect.

Nick Srnicek describes the future as a radical acceleration of technological labor substitution through innovation and the introduction of an unconditional basic income. The humans are seen as creative individuals, and the cities as a platform for innovation.

THE RUSSIAN APPROACHES TO INTEGRATED TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT

The pioneers of integrated territorial development in Russia were Territorial Development Agencies (TDA) — the first wave of the ITD boom began with them in 2001–2005. According to the government’s plan, the TDAs were to take on the most difficult work of coordinating the activities of landlords and tenants in large areas. It was, first of all, the coordination of urban planning issues and engineering support. As a result, each territory would have a single management, transport, engineering and architectural concept.

The reason why the TDAs failed was that they were too far ahead of their time: neither the legislation, nor the resource base or the financial system were prepared for their successful implementation — the real estate market was yet to reach a new quality level. The main problem was that, in fact, the TDAs never received any effective leverage over the owners of land plots or any real authority. The city administration at the time also did not have the resources or the desire to deal with these clearly challenging tasks.

Integrated territorial development projects of the second wave (2005–2008) were often announced on agricultural land purchased by developers (greenfield development). The scale of hundreds of hectares and several million square meters of residential and commercial real estate was astounding. Even in a growing market, many of these projects looked overly optimistic in terms of timing and opportunities for the market to absorb such volumes. The issues of utilities and infrastructure were barely sketched out in such projects.

By 2008, literally every Russian region felt obliged to present an integrated territorial development project. Most of these were announced by private developers or partnerships. As part of these projects, the developer was to prepare urban planning documents, prepare the territory from the engineering point of view, to provide road infrastructure, and then build up on its own or invite other investors to build.