Anna Fenko stated that Moscow reacted on 70 years of Communist repression in an extravagant way. On the one hand the city center has become a consumer paradise for the very rich (cup of coffee: $10), and on the other the outskirts of Moscow turned into a theater of street vendors, which have no legal permission and due to the lack of regulation attract all sorts of criminal activities.

Anna Fenko considered several problems that are occuring throughout the city:

Public transport:
Moscow is stuffed with traffic jams every day from 6.30 in the morning througout the evening, even at night in the historical center traffic jams are not uncommon. One of the causes of this phenomenon is that large parts of the residential areas of Moscow are not connected to any form of public transport. Moscow inhabitants are therefore more likely to travel by car, even in inner-city journeys.

Parking spaces:
Because of the abundance of cars in Moscow, parking spaces are very rare. Next to that the climate conditions in winter led to a development of parking sheds, a primitive form of a parking garage. Basically just a steel shed, made out of poor quality metal, that protects the car from large amounts of snow.

(Illegal) Street Markets:
As a result of the overpriced shops in the center and the mega-stores outside the city, spontaneous street markets arose where people sell goods and food in limited amounts and without any regulation. These temporary markets are non cohesive and turned out to be an easy target for corrupt police-officers. the lack of regulation also causes that a certain amount of criminal activity surrounds street vendors.

Waste and Garbage
The unregulated street markets cause not only low quality goods and in some cases criminal activities, but also a large amount of waste. This waste is not distributed or cleaned because the infrastructure for cleaning of those street markets obviously does not exist. Apart from the city centre, the suburban areas are therefore wastelands of trash and garbage.

These problems occur on different scales in the city of Moscow. From citywide transport problems and traffic jams to local problems with illegal street markets and parking troubles. One of the questions was: How can architects, sociologists, or industrial designers help to solve these problems? Anna Fenko began the discussion in reaction to some questions that marketing and commercial consumption might be involved as a leading instrument in human behaviour, to say that the foremost reason for this ’shopping-mania’ was the 70 year long repression of consumer needs.

The discussion continued with several examples from the homework assignments and some ideas on what the Future Faculty team could actually do in Russia. It seems that the next step at this moment is to define a specific location or neighbourhood in Moscow where Future Faculty could do research or something else. If we have a location, we have people, possible participants and a concrete setting for any activity.

Next to the location it is important to collect all concrete ideas, wheter they are design proposals, art installations, street furniture, video-documentaries that are interesting in the context of this project. After collecting these ideas a decision should be made to choose either one of those ideas or several that the team could work on.

Alternatively/additionally please give some examples of good and bad design interventions.

Reading

Boym, Svetlana. “Nostalgia, Moscow Style”. Harvard Design Magazine, 2001.

Geraci, John. “The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory“, April 6th, 2009.

Related Links

Putting People First, Daily insights on user experience, experience design and people-centered innovation.

Some questions to think about:
- is a neighborhood necessary?
- how are neighborhoods different in urban and rural settings?
- what is the ideal neighborhood (please bring some pictures of ideal neighborhoods)?

Also, please read the Communist Manifesto in preparation for our discussion.

International participants who can’t join the round table discussion, you can join the project by sending your thoughts and images via the mail!