The southern port will become a new “growth point”

The territory of the Southern Port, which historically developed as a huge industrial zone, will soon turn into a high-rise multifunctional area with an embankment, the likes of which have never been built in Moscow.

Sergey Kuznetsov, chief architect of the city of Moscow, announced this during a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya MIA. According to him, this huge industrial area in the south-east of Moscow began to develop in a new direction a long time ago:

“For example, the ZIL peninsula development project was the first major project that arose in this zone. He gave a start to the development of this large cluster of industrial zones, because historically the southeast direction is mainly industrial development. And in the course of the transformation of these industrial zones into territories that would be very different from their original purpose, a request arose to revise the general concept for the development of this rather large piece of the city: you can’t even call it a district, it’s a whole territory. The territory of the Southern Port has become the next big stage of this development, and the city is investing heavily in the infrastructure of this place (the MCC passed there, roads and bridges are being built, this territory will be included in regular water transport routes). All this is done with an eye on attracting serious investments. There are already projects, the documentation is at a high stage of readiness.”

According to Sergey Kuznetsov, two project competitions have already been held:

“The foreign winners of the first competition have now dropped out, now there are new concepts developed by the Russian team. From my point of view, as a result, the quality of the competition entries even increased due to these several iterations. There is an embankment of such a level and quality that we have not yet built in Moscow, although we do a lot on the river. There will be very interesting forms of building. This new high-rise multifunctional district will become a full-fledged counterbalance to the northwestern center of development (where Moscow City is now). Different parts of the city will pull each other forward. On the main city “ridge” – the planning axis of the Moskva River – two powerful counterweights appear in the northwest and southeast, balancing each other: “Big City” in the northwest and a large conglomerate of ZIL territories and the South Port in the southeast . At the same time, the South Port is not only along the river, but also inland (to the territory of the Moskvich plant, to Volgogradsky Prospekt). This is a huge cluster of industrial areas that are gradually developing into a large multifunctional urban area with a modern level of promotion, with multifunctional buildings, with a large number of public spaces, with new transport infrastructure.”

As another participant in the press conference, the historian of architecture and urban planning Alexander Zmeul, noted, if 10 years ago everyone said that ZIL was a grandiose project, now, compared to the South Port of ZIL, the territory is already quite modest in scale:

“The trend towards polycentricity that we are witnessing in Moscow was laid down decades ago, literally in the sixties, when Moscow expanded to the Moscow Ring Road and the understanding came that a monocentric model was impossible for the development of such a huge city. But, unfortunately, for decades the ideas of polycentricity (the creation of centers in different parts of the city) have not been implemented. It is clear that in order to implement them, it is necessary to create a transport framework, and now we see that this trend is being implemented (for example, the already mentioned City, ZIL, Yuzhny Port): indeed, these centers are emerging, and the transport infrastructure necessary for their development is also growing at a tremendous pace.

The second important story is the trend towards the reconstruction of industrial areas, and if compared with international experience, then the southeast of Moscow is such a huge East End of London, where huge industrial areas are included in the canvas, in life, in the fabric of the city.”

Taking into account all this, as Sergey Kuznetsov, the chief architect of the city of Moscow, summed up, the development of the territory of the South Port should become a big new stage in the development of the whole city.

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo by Sergey Kiselyov / Moskva agency