Perm’s general plan must be implemented in a way that focuses on winning the support of the city’s residents

The moderator of the section, Alexander Epstein, the Director of the Institute for Regional Studies and Urban Planning at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, invited the audience to consider the implementation of Perm’s general plan, identify the relevant problems and minimize the risks associated with that process.

“The key is daily, consistent work on completing a large number of small projects”, said Andrey Golovin, the director of the autonomous municipal institution “Bureau of Urban Projects”.

However, it is precisely this consistency that presents the primary problems, according to his colleague at the Bureau and professor of the Moscow International Academy of Architecture Alexander Lozhkin. “The existing mechanisms for carrying out decisions once they have been made are ineffective”, he explained. In his opinion, however, many of the problems associated with the implementation of Perm’s general plan could be solved by taking more active steps to involve representatives of the local communities in the process.

Han van den Born, a Partner at KCAP, was in agreement: “the support of the urban community is essential. All of the ideas in the general plan look indisputably advanced and forward thinking. However, it will be impossible to achieve 100% success if the residents do not understand and support the document”.

Although the residents of the city must be the subject of administration, rather than its object, the experts argued that it is not worth initiating widespread discussions about urban planning rules; they will not produce results. According to Arkadiy Kats, the First Deputy Chairman of the Perm City Duma, the ideas of the general plan are valuable in their own right: “the general plan does not require economic incentives; it offers the community new opportunities”.