Perm is intent on playing in the same league as Skolkovo and Sochi

The third day of the forum is traditionally dedicated to ongoing events in Perm and the Perm Region. Since the 4th Perm Economic Forum, the region’s capital has presented its projects for transforming urban space. Today, the forum participants are discussing the Perm 3.0 Project in the context of Russian and foreign territorial development mega-projects. At the day’s first plenary session, Mikhail Antonov, the Chairman of the Government of the Perm Region, described the launch of a project to create a post-industrial urban space. It can be divided into three stages: Perm 1.0, a city for work; Perm 2.0, a city for comfort; and, finally, Perm 3.0, the creation of a city for communities, education and a creative economy.

“A city doesn’t need a theater if you can’t get there without getting your shoes dirty. The key thing is rebuilding the city’s infrastructure, without infrastructure, implementing other projects is pointless”, said Mikhail Antonov. Now strategic documents like a general plan and a master plan have been developed and introduced, and the first projects designed in accordance with these plans are already underway. The developer of the master plan, which covers 30 years, was the Dutch KCAP architectural bureau. Han van den Born, a partner at that company, explained its mission as follows: “We rebuild cities and make them more comfortable places to live”. According to Mikhail Antonov, the Perm 3.0 Project must affect every aspect of life in the city: infrastructure, culture, and education. This areas are handled by four sub-projects: “Perm: a Cultural Hub”, “The New Urban Design”, “Innovative/Educational Cluster”, and “Creative Industry”. The creators hold that the development of culture and the creation of infrastructure projects will lay the groundwork for the growth of a post-industrial economy. “We need to be playing in the same league as Skolkovo and Sochi”, said Mikhail Antonov. “We have to show the world, the country, and the region that we are capable of independent projects on that level. This will be a model for the entire country of how cities can be transformed”. According the experts’ predictions, with 345.5 billion rubles of investment the completion of the Perm 3.0 Project will produce the following synergetic effects: 50 thousand new jobs will be created a year, the annual gross regional project will reach 485.5 billion rubles, and tax income will rise to 300 billion rubles a year.

The participants in the discussion considered the main political, economic, social and technological risks associated with projects for transforming industrial cities into post-industrial ones. The question of how to bring average residents into the project was met with an active response from the audience. This topic overlapped with the discussions of the first two days of the 8th Perm Forum, dedicated to how society and the government interact in the contemporary world. Cees Donkers, an urban designer and the founder of the Architectural Centre of Eindhoven (Netherlands), noted that the transformation of Dutch cities, which began as early as the mid-20th century, involves that active participation of the local residents themselves.