Urban planner drafts perfect Moscow landscape

Moscow’s expansion will not hamper the city’s development if a multi-polar system is applied, urban planning specialist Edward Blakely told RT.

The City Hall has approved extending the capital's borders to the south-west by 2014. According to the plan, the city territory will more than double.

Professor Edward Blakely, an urban policy and disaster recovery expert, told RT that in order to avoid complications, Moscow should adopt a multi-centered composition.

“There’s no reason why almost 50 per cent of Moscow’s population has to come into the city center,” the professor told RT. “Big cities, like Tokyo, are moving away from that. We have to think about a city of cities, each part of which is self-sufficient.”

Speaking about Moscow’s initiative to move the government out of the capital, Blakely recalled the experience of the Australian city of Melbourne.

“It had to be completely reconstructed after the government was taken out, so I wouldn’t recommend that,” Blakely said. “I recommend having parts of the government in different cities – that’s what the US has very successfully done.”

Another variant is magnet infrastructure – when the best specialists in the field are attracted to one center, like mathematicians are to the University of California at Berkeley.

“It’s very important for Moscow to be the capital, but it’s not necessarily for Moscow to be a technology center or the arts center,” Blakely told RT. “Silicon Valley is not in New York. It’s not even in San Francisco, though it’s close by.”