Aleksey RASKHODCHIKOV, Chairman of Moscow Urban Centre “City”
Not only will the new stations make remote districts of Moscow much more accessible, they will also make traveling around the city easier and more convenient. Each new station changes the perception of urban space, the future of the district and sometimes even life strategies of its citizens.
Since the very beginning, the Moscow metro development program had been the subject of much controversy. Was it advisable to build standard 1960s-1980s-style stations, which are less costly? Or would it be better to resume the tradition of the 1930s-1950s and pay more attention to the unique appearance of each station? Fortunately, the latter sentiment won out. Moscow did not just get a new transportation facility, but dozens of new public spaces, meaningful, aesthetically pleasing and architecturally rich.
It matters a lot, because Moscow has long become one of the largest European metropolitans, in which it is easier to navigate by metro stations than by districts. This phenomenon can be described as “metropatriotism”. The metro became a center of everyday life, a symbol, a part of the citizens’ identity. The architectural concepts that people see every day when they descend to the metro shape the images of their lives.
It is an endless creative process, looped in space and time. Today’s architects invoke the names of districts and features of landscape or local architecture when they design the stations. The architects of tomorrow will base on the visual identity and style of local metro stations.
Opinion surveys show that Muscovites give a high rating to the architectural and space-planning design as well as to the usability of the new stations. See the graphic for the rating of operational characteristics of Nizhegorodskaya. Ratings of other stations are generally similar.
Subsequently, some of the new stations will become underground museums, tourist attractions and selfie sites. Others will serve as gathering places for young people and new public spaces. Others still will be nice additions to the old scenery. Surely, Universitet Druzhby Narodov, located near the Peoples’ Friendship University, to the students, will become part of their educational environment. Years later, reminiscing of their university days, they will also think of the station, and in their minds, it will be an integral part of the lives they had, rich with new impressions and memorable events.
The construction of the Big Circle Line will greatly impact transportation habits of citizens. According to sociological surveys, over 30% of Muscovites intend to use it in their daily commuting. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that one cannot reliably predict what routs citizen would take if they have a choice. The same effect can be observed in any courtyard, where paths covered with asphalt are not always the ones that the locals prefer to use. So, it will probably be in 20 to 30 years that we will be able to give a realistic estimate of the impact of the new line on the transportation system of Moscow.
Perhaps it will not be only the economic potential of the new line that we will see unlocking. Before the construction of the Big Circle Line and the Moscow Central Circle, the only way to get from the western part of the city to, say, the southeastern was through the central stations or the Koltsevaya Line, and it took a good hour, sometimes even more. The new line will make neighboring districts better accessible by metro, which would give their citizens new opportunities for finding jobs not far away from their homes, for meeting friends and taking trips around the city. The same is true for smaller towns just outside Moscow, now connected to the capital by the Moscow Central Diameters.
It is safe to say that after a new station is opened for passengers, the construction is finished and urban planning in the true sense of that word can begin. The citizens familiarize themselves with the new space, adjusting it to their needs. Local authorities and businesses also start to get interested in that transformative process. Deprived areas and districts that seemed to be unprofitable due to the lack of transportation suddenly start to look promising and commercially viable.
At that point, it is essential to reimagine those districts as little cities within the huge Moscow agglomeration rather than as nondescript territorial units, especially since each and every one of them have their own unique history and potential for growth.