STG Group attends seminar “Infrastructure of the Future”

A seminar “Infrastructure of the Future” arranged by the Higher School of Economics (HSE) and Volga Group was held on 18^th March. The topic offered to experts for discussion was “Roads We Take: Conflicts and Compromises in Construction”.

Quite a few transport projects, whatever their positive effect is, have recently triggered an upsurge of public discontent and resulted in emerging local civic movements seeking to block construction.

How to minimize social conflicts arising during construction of new transport infrastructure facilities? When will the authorities, business and residents of construction areas learn to build an effective dialogue? These and other issues were discussed by the experts during a round table meeting.

The discussion featured STG Group’s representatives – Andrey Egorov, Adviser for Transport Construction, STG LLC; Vasily Mitko, Director for Special Construction, STG LLC; and Vladislav Pototsky, Director for Implementation of Infrastructure Construction Projects, STG LLC.

HSE Professor Mikhail Blinkin, permanent moderator of the event, characterised the seminar’s theme as “acute, but standard for the whole world”. Vladislav Pototsky noted that local authorities tend to inform the public about a construction project when they feel like that and whether or not this process is a success still largely depends on officials’ level of personal responsibility. The problem can be dealt with by developing a regulatory/legal control mechanism for community awareness that should take place as early as the project approval stage. There is a need for unified regulations and regulatory documents about when and what authorities should do to inform the public and how presented project materials should look like. Then community outreach will rise to a new effective level.

Konstantin Trofimenko, Director of the HSE Centre for Urban Transportation Studies, gave an example of two major road projects implemented in Podmoskovye, which prompted quite opposite reactions fr om the public. “An apparently negative example in terms of interaction with the public is the M-11 Moscow – Saint Petersburg highway section running through Khimki Forest. An opposite example is the recently opened motor road “Bypass Odintsovo”, where all the environmental and PR arrangements were exemplary and there was not a single newsworthy event suggesting public discontent.”

Sergey Kostin, Vice Chairman of the Moscow Committee for Architecture and Urban Development, spoke about the experience of holding public consultations on urban development projects gained by the Moscow City Council. “We have already held more than two hundred such consultations,” said Kostin and concluded that basic discussions should be held and decisions made at the land use planning stage, because the project alteration mechanism is problematic. “The problem is also how exactly information should be presented to residents. They have difficulty reading the drawings that must be provided under the Urban Development Code,” said Kostin. “We should encourage residents to hire experts for review of projects,” suggested Mikhail Blinkin appealing to the experience of London, wh ere it is standard practice for stakeholder groups to call and pay experts.

Oleg Baevsky, Deputy Director of SUE “Research and Design Institute of the Moscow Master Plan”, spoke on niceties of applying urban development laws. Apart from professional issues, he also touched on conceptual ones. “We have all the tools to make balanced urban development decisions”, he said. “To prevent public consultations from turning into scandal, the parties should be as honest as possible and consultations should become commonplace.”