Americans to Build Skyscrapers in Moscow

[donsu]

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/87/347/11980_luzhkov.html


The US Government, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in particular, will render expert assistance in skyscraper construction in Moscow. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov reported the information in Washington during his visit to the US, RIA Novosti informs.

On Tuesday, the head of the Moscow Government met with US Acting Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alfonso Jackson. According to Yury Luzhkov, the Moscow Government

plans to build 60 new skyscrapers of 47 to 60 stories in the Russian capital. At that, the Moscow authorities would like to make use of the US's experience in skyscraper construction and apply the most modern of skyscraper technologies.

-snip-

The Moscow mayor took part in presentation of the American issue of his book "Revival of History. Mankind in the 21st Century and Russia's Future". The ceremony took place at the US Congress Library Tuesday evening.
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can't think of a nice way of writing my not nice thoughts on this.

[Wonco_the_Sane]

1. What am I missing??

This seems pretty cool on the face of it. Russia needs help, America wants to help. We've come a long way since I was born. Is there an issue I'm not getting?

[John BigBootay]

2. All right-- I took the bait-- how is this bad???

With all the furor over outsourcing jobs overseas-- it seems to me a nice turn of events that another country is insourcing some American technology and jobs to do some pretty amazing things abroad.

[onethatcares]

18. who's going to pay for Halliburton to build these things?

is kbr gonna furnish the kitchens, It's all in the name of globalization and we're screwed.

[Cleita]

3. I guess I'm the only one who isn't thrilled.

It goes back to my general hatred of skyscrapers anyway. Every skyscraper built burdens the infrastructure of cities. They affect parking, electrical usuage, water consumption, sewer disposal and I could go on about many other things like air quality, flood control etc.

Also, from a practical business point of view, doesn't Moscow have a really short building season, like three months out of the year that they aren't up to their eyeballs in really cold weather? I can't see where this would create full time employment and profits.

[John BigBootay]

4. I was in Moscow in December 1984--

It was cold as hell.

But believe it or not there was a building going up right next to the hotel I was staying at. I went out into the snow and took a few pictures of these workers on a break huddled around a pile of burning scrap wood, trying to warm up.

Next thing I know, I was being arrested and marched through a subterranean police station. I was interrogated by a man who sat in a dark, cavernous office. The coup de grace was that he had a single desk lamp that he shined in my face while interrogating me.

He exposed my film to the light, told me not to take pictures of anything other than offical landmarks and sent me on my way.

Communism...

I guess I've wandered a bit from the point. But, yeah, they build in the winter too.

[tom_paine]

6. Scary...even scarier that it's coming to our shores

Read the PATRIOT Act? Reports of nonviolent, non-criminal peace activists denied the ability to fly and harassed by airport security?

How about "Protest Zones" for dissenters (owuld the next step be to move them pernanently out of sight to Gulags) where they acnnot be seen by the Imperial Media and the Imperial Entourage.

Using Iraq War funds to fund a police riot in Miami. Embedding reporters with police while they beat the crap out of the protestors and journalists who aren't with "State Sanctioned Media outlets"?

(I've got some links to this one, the others are all readily confirmable if you digf just a little-- a Google search away most of the time)

www.democracynow.org/static/miamimodel.shtml

http://www.wbai.org/artman/publish/printer_658.php

You may think you left the 1984 Soviet Union, but the 1984 Soviet Union is gradually coming into being here. It's early, and thus easy for you to dismiss my words out of hand.

Watch then. More shoes will be dropping, especially if Emperor Bush* is reappointed this year.

National ID Cards, anyone?

"Papers, please!"

[John BigBootay]

9. Have to remain vigilant--

There is no absolute guarantee that even America cannot lapse into a totalitarian police state.

But I STILL like the idea of sending our technology, our engineers and our knowhow to Russia.

We make GREAT buildings. Strong, reliable, durable and efficient. Why not share that with the rest of the world?

I'll be the people of Iran, Turkey Armenia etc. wished to God that they'd used American building standards when they suffered those massive quakes that killed hundreds of thousands.

[tom_paine]

14. I agree with you, John. Guess I got off topic...

:-)

[brainwashed_youth]

8. it is cold

I was there in november 2000 and i damn near froze my ass off

But, what is so bad about America building skycrapers over there? Is there some larger issue at stake here?

[Minstrel Boy]

11. "Communism..."

Not really. Authoritarianism. At least that's what your anecdote damns.

[John BigBootay]

12. I meant to say--

"That form of Communism that has killed tens of millions, enslaved millions more, falsley imprisoned still millions more in gulags, denied still millions more their basic rights and often denied them basic necessities for survival..."

[Wonco_the_Sane]

5. ???

People need to live and work somewhere. Are you a fan of Urban Sprawl? Modern skyscrapers are more efficient than 500 houses or 500 offices. Again, I might be the one who is missing something here, and I don't know if the original post is trying to say. I don't mean to offend.

[Cleita]

7. I lived in LA before skyscrapers were allowed.

Only thirteen stories maximum could be built and then I lived in in after the freeways were first built and then the skyscrapers. Trust me the urban sprawl and lack of freeways were preferable for quality of life. Also, you could go just about anywhere on the Red Line before the bureaucrats fixed what wasn't broken.

The only time there was traffic gridlock was during rush hour and that could have been avoided with sliding work times like was done during the Olympics.

The Santa Monica freeway and skyscrapers ruined Westwood Village a really nice college district and Santa Monica, my home town, which I found almost unlivable for the ordinary working person by the time I retired and got the hell out of there.

Yes, there are still livable green places in Los Angeles County for the well off and very rich. Working class need not expect decent housing ever. Give me urban sprawl with all those gardens in residential neighborhoods and parks and the sun shining in that aren't blocked by huge concrete and steel buildings anytime.

[John BigBootay]

10. I sympathize with this feeling--

but building taller buildings is simply inevitable as population grows, as industry and commerce expand, etc.

If done right, urban planning can create very efficient metropolitan areas.

[Cleita]

13. I suppose this would be great on the Moon or Mars.

While I am still on earth, I would rather live and work surrounded by a garden and not a high rise. Perhaps we should stop treating women like little children and allow them the means to control their fertility, so we don't have the population problems we do now.

Why do we have to concentrate huge populations in small areas anyway? Even the Romans, who were pretty good at urban planning for being pre-industrial peoples recognized that any city that had more than one hundred thousand people approached being unlivable for the majority of the residents.

Now I would go for a million tops per large urban center, with areas broken down into smaller hubs with residential areas surrounding central commercial areas well a lot like Los Angeles used to be.

[John BigBootay]

15. Ever play SimCity4?

You can plan and build your own Utopian city-state. It's a fascinating game (actually it's not a game, more of a mental excersize).

[Cleita]

16. I used to play SIM city. One of the older ones anyway.

I haven't done it in a long time. I don't find his models are entirely accurate, although I used to have a lot of fun unleashing a bunch of disasters on Las Vegas.

[Muddleoftheroad]

17. You have that choice

You can live in a more rural area if you so choose. Not everyone makes those same choices. Some like the urban landscape. Others prefer a viable mix. So, how would you enforce your limits on population?

[Cleita]

19. You must think I wear jackboots.

I wouldn't enforce anything. However, it has been proven many times that when women are given control over their fertility, the population goes down. When women are forced to have many kids because they don't have access to birth control or their religion and culture encourages it, they don't have the best climate to limit their families.

Also, educating women brings down the population. Educated women have fewer children and spend more time raising those fewer children. I'm talking in modern terms now. It used to be that plague, famine and war controlled the population but we don't have to do that anymore. Giving women control over their fertility does. Some women will still have large families and many more than you might think will chose to have no children.

Young people like the busy, busy of cafe's, shops and other recreations that are connected to the urban landscape and you don't have to have skyscrapers to achieve this. However, concrete screws the environment in big ways. Pick up a book on perma culture or Zeriscape some day and see how you can have your cake and keep mother nature happy too.

I also believe that cities cause crime. When you are out in the country enjoying a picnic next to a creek under shady trees full of chirping birds, you don't feel the anger that you do driving in rush hour or being pushed around by mobs of strangers trying to get ahead of you.

[no_arbusto]

21. City dwellers don't drive

Suburban folk cause traffic and road rage. I witness it every day. Unfortunately (due to monetary reasons), I'm now stuck in a sprawl area. Most of the people who pass me at 80-90 MPH on the way home from work are not in a hurry to get home to their rural enclaves to enjoy the nature. They are in a hurry because they live so far from the city and their commute is hell. They live where they do because it is cheap.

[Cleita]

24. Honey in California everyone drives except San Franciscoans.

I know what you are talking about, the dreary new developments. What if they worked closer to where they lived? If all commerce wasn't concentrated in behemouth skyscrapers,in someone's downtown, people wouldn't have to drive in, if you know what I mean.

Southern California is way overpopulated because of the infrastructure of going up and up makes the population get denser and denser. You can have it as far as I'm concerned. Probably the next big earthquake will take care of things anyway.

Southern Californias three big disaster problems: earthquake, fire and then flood and yet they keep on coming. Go figure. Southern California was a very nice place to live in the 1940's It wasn't even very smoggy then until a few after the war, then it got almost unbreathable. But other than that it wasn't unliveable.

[no_arbusto]

26. That's why SF is great.

There is no excuse for LA's inefficient downtown (ghost town at night and on weekends) and deplorable mass transit system (highways included). This is the result of developers buying the cheapest land available with no planning for the future. Sounds like the GOP.

[Muddleoftheroad]

23. You have control over your fertility in the U.S.

I don't see that stopping urban sprawl, but enjoy the theory.

Cities don't cause crime, they provide increased opportunity for both good and bad. I love nature, but it can get damn boring after a while. Cities provide culture -- art, music, museums, history, education, libraries, restaurants, nightclubs, and most of all, jobs.

But with great opportunity come some downsides of life. So, yes, if you kept us all down on the farm, we might not get into much trouble, but we'd all be uneducated as well.

[Cleita]

27. A lot of farmers are going to be upset with you about that

remark. Farmers have to go to college too you know to learn agri-businesses. I used to think oh, the museums, libraries, music blah, blah, blah. I seldom had the time or money to enjoy those things. I actually enjoyed them more once I got out of the city because trust me, small towns have culture too.

I live a hundred miles from Santa Barbara, two hundred from Los Angeles and a hundred miles from Monterrey and two hundred miles from San Francisco all within hours of driving distance. I can enjoy all those things those cities have to offer and I don't have to live in them.

[no_arbusto]

29. Two hundred miles?

I could access most of the mid-Atlantic in that radius. Where do you live, Fresno?

[Cleita]

31. I would commit suicide if I lived there. That's where Rimjob

Freeperville is, isn't it? No I live in San Luis Obispo County on the coast. I go north and south and NEVER east unless it's to Lake Tahoe or elsewhere in the Sierras.

[Muddleoftheroad]

39. They can get upset

Farming is hard work, but it ain't cultural.

[Cleita]

41. If there's nothing to eat then there won't be any culture anyway.

What makes you think farmers have no culture? My college roomate's family had 6,000 acres in Wyoming. She was studying to be a concert pianist. Her family had original works of art in their farmhouse and an extensive library. Both her parents were college grads. Geez, where do you guys get your ideas?

I live in a ranch area right now. These people breed horses and other livestock. All of my immediate neighbors either teach school as well or are retired teachers. One of my neighbors is a horse breeder and a popular novelist. My closest neighbor is a medical doctor and his wife has a phd. in French literature.

But according to you, I guess we all better start playing the banjo.

[Muddleoftheroad]

42. Farm communities

Farm communities. Hmmm. Live pretty much in one. We don't have tons of the cultural stuff. We have one noteworthy cultural item nearby. Other than that, it's off to the big city to see most of the things I listed. That doesn't mean it's banjo playin' time. Hell, I even LIKE some banjo playin'. But when I think high culture, I don't think the Statler Brothers. I think a little above that.

As for the wondrous Wyoming farmhouse, even if it were Monticello, it wouldn't have one thousandth the library that any normal community does. The same goes for its gallery.

I am not saying they are backward. I am saying that such cultural goodies are grouped in areas of the most people. That's just a fact.

[Cleita]

43. Well, the Wyoming family used to make four trips

a year, for a week at a time, to Denver to stock up on supplies and while they were there they caught up on cultural activities or seeing a movie first run. I think they appreciated it more too because it was special.

However, even in those days we had stereos to listen to music with and my roomate had a very nice classical collection of LP's on account of being a music major, but I used to enjoy going to the music rooms and listen to her practice the piano while I did my homework. She was very good.

Of course even most rural places that have a college have good libraries and cultural activities. When I lived in Idaho, it was close to a little place called Sandpoint. There were art galleries almost at every other door on the main street on account of the number of artists in the area.

All summer there were music concerts of various kinds, classical, jazz and modern in parks, in parking lots that were free and others in auditoriums or theaters that you paid for. Also, when I lived there I could afford to go to the gym and workout, which I can't afford now. So I never felt culturally deprived out in the boonies.

[Muddleoftheroad]

46. Wow, four whole weeks

I'm sorry, but this is a silly argument. I live in a rural Virginia area right now. I like it because it safe with good schools and neighbors who, by and large leave me alone. I don't have the stupidity of D.C. government to deal with and I can and do own a gun for self defense.

In short, I have made a life choice for a more rural lifestyle.

However, that doesn't mean I will defend my area as a cultural bulwark because that isn't the case. Yes, theater, art and even sports can be found anywhere in the U.S. However, just as smaller cities attract minor league sports, they attract minor league culture. The theater is not Broadway or even off Broadway. The art is of local artists and not national or internationl artists. The sports are of high school or, perhaps, college level, not professional.

In short, it's comparing nice ripe, fresh, homegrown apples with apples seeds.

[no_arbusto]

20. Every point you make goes against progressive city planning

If I remember correctly from my college courses, Moscow is a "hub and spoke" type of city. Most of the high intensity development occurs in the central part of the metro area and then thins out evenly from the center towards the outer ring. This is actually a very efficient form of city planning. Compare this to cities such as LA where suburbs, fringe cities, and even other metropolises (Riverside/San Bernardino, Orange County) all merge into one. The only constraints to growth are geographic (oceans and mountains). It's a very inefficient form of development. I lived there, it sucks.

Building out, not up, is the type of development that contributes to traffic, pollution, expensive infrastructure, and even Walmart. Sprawl is, by far, worse than urban development. That's why urban infill and brownfield redevelopment is such a popular (affordable, eco-friendly, etc.) trend in city planning.

As for flood control, even if a skyscraper had a 500 x 500 foot base, it would still have less impervious surface than a Walmart parking lot. There were 50,000 workers in the World Trade Center. Do you know how large of a suburban office park it would take to accomodate all of those people? Parking lots? Miles upon miles of roads, sewage, water lines, fiber optics, sidewalks, etc.? Also, don't forget how many farms, parks, and otherwise green spaces would have to be swallowed up in the process.

There are so many progressive planning initiatives out there, the problem is that most communities bow down to the Walmarts of the world and provide incentives for irresponsible growth in exchange for a small increase in their tax base. Ideas such as urban growth boundaries, Transfer of Developable Rights, and brownfield development are all progressive planning measures that you might want to research.

On edit: LOL "skysraper" sounds like I'm a proponent of sprawl.

[Cleita]

22. So did I.

It started to suck when the freeways and high rises were built. I have to agree with the spoke model of city planning. San Antonio, Texas is built on that plan. It has about a million residents and I really like that city. But again there were hardly any high rises when I was there and more parkways rather than freeways connected different areas. But the Riverfront Park is what makes San Antonio charming. Of course the Spanish heritage allows for fountains and parks or plazas.

[no_arbusto]

25. Moscow

[Cleita]

28. The only problem with spokes is that it requires fairly flat

terrain. It doesn't work in a mountainous and hilly area like where I live.

[no_arbusto]

30. I agree

I'm originally from the Pittsburgh area which is very difficult to navigate and has poor planning.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

32. I love cities and high rises and sky scrapers

I'm only in a four story building, but I'd love to live in one of the towers with a balcony. I haven't owned a car in years and frankly I'm all the happier for it - much less stressed when I had two drive an hour and a half in heavy traffic to work every day.

I love the idea of "progressive urbanism" or whatever you call it :) How high can they stack the modular apartments now? (I've heard of quick inexpensive developments going up in Central America using these).

[Cleita]

33. That's really awful.

Where are they going to flush all that sewage and garbage. It seems like a terrible environmental disaster to me.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

34. same place they do for the sprawling suburbs

Cars are the terrible environmental disasters. Do you drive? Garbage isn't a product of cities, suburbs and rural areas make garbage too.

[Cleita]

35. My garbage goes into a composter, but you have to have

a yard to do that. Also, I am really looking into a composting toilet, which also would fertilize my ornamentals. I have to drive a car but I think my next car will be a hybrid electric car. I hope to invest in solar panels for my electricity. You can't do any of this in a high rise.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

47. wrong

Plenty of people in cities can and do compost. Solar panels are used on buildlings in the SW now. Your car pollutes more in a day than I do in a week.

[no_arbusto]

36. My experience with Central America

is limited to Costa Rica. Most people think of rainforest preservation when they think of Costa Rica. Unfortunately, Costa Rica is a poor example of urban planning. San Jose is a sprawling mess with mostly single family homes and squatter settlements on its outskirts. Most of the farmers are selling their farms and moving to the big city. The infrastructure is also in bad shape. On my last trip to Costa Rica it took me about 2 hours in a taxi to get from the airport to my hotel 10 miles away. He wasn't ripping me off either as the price was negotiated beforehand.

[Cleita]

37. This is the problem with third world countries is

a crumby infrastructure. Any building density doesn't take any account of how they are going to deal with the garbage and sewage a dense population creates, not to mention the need for water and ways to get goods to market. In other words it creates a mess and a recipe not only for environmental disaster but for disease. Even large cities in the US don't deal with this that well.

I stopped swimming in the ocean near LA a long time ago because of the dirty water from the sewage and other wastes that were emptied into the ocean.

[no_arbusto]

38. Southern CA is the 3rd world of the US as far as I'm concerned!

Just kidding. Seriously though, California has some severe population, pollution, and water issues not experienced anywhere else in this country aside from the booming regions of Phoenix and Vegas. When I lived in CA, I couldn't drink the water because it made me sick. I would hike up mountains 3 times a week only to look down at smog filled valleys. You already mentioned the oceans. This is not the result of skyscrapers. It's the result of suburban sprawl. California is the most auto-centric (is there a pun there?) place in the world.

In Costa Rica, I drank the water everywhere I went with no problems whatsoever. By Latin American standards, Costa Rica is the crown jewel. I've got some facts and opinions on why this is the case, but it is true.

[Cleita]

40. So you hit the nail on the head about too many people.

We didn't have the sprawl over the hill until we got the upward sprawl in the high rises and the freeways to get to them. All those people working in them need a place to live. When buildings weren't over thirteen stories there was no huge development in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys. They were fairly rural and much of it still wild.

Blame Mulholland. He brought the water to southern California. You know Southern California is really desert mostly, what they call oak tree savannahs. The pueblo of Los Angeles should never have gotten that big because the natural resources can't sustain a large population.

Maybe I'll do a SIM on it one day and see what it could have been. The only people who lead a good life in LA are the Westsiders with money or those in Pasadena and surrounding hills with money. Everyone else is a drone who struggles to make ends meet and who doesn't have much time to enjoy stuff and who lives in crowded apartment complexes.

My own family used to spend horrible amounts of time on the road going to and from work. They finally got smart and moved to less populated Central California, which is why we are here, although if I had my druthers, I'd still be living up in the Idaho wilderness. It too crowded for me even here.

[Kickin_Donkey]

44. I'm not thrilled by this news, either.

I think "exporting" skyscrapers is like exporting one of America's other great cultural icons, McDonald's.

I went to Moscow in the early 1990s, a year after the failed putsch against Yeltsin, after which communism was officially declared dead. Moscow was totally cool. The city center consisted of 18th- and 19th-century buildings, all only four or five stories high (I'm talking in generalities, and from memory). It was a really low skyline, low in profile – like I'd imagine the Paris skyline to be.

But this low skyline of old, beautiful buildings was punctuated by the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters were seven identical-looking buildings in a gothic/Stalinist/early 20th-century style (I'm not an architectural history expert, so I'm probably not describing it properly) that SOARED above everything else with spires and a communist star at the top). One of them housed Moscow State University and another, the Foreign Ministry.

This low-slung skyline punctuated by the eerie Seven Sisters placed strategically around the city created a really neat atmosphere (to me). Now, if a bunch of modern boxy glass-and-aluminum skyscrapers were constructed in the middle of Moscow, destroying this architectural and urban treasure, that would be a tragedy.

I hope they build the skyscrapers in a subcity outside central Mosccow. The French had the good sense to locate the modern skyscrapers away from the center of Paris, at La Defense.

[donsu]

45. well the first thought I had when reading this was:

"hope they don't fall down as easily as our two did"

and then I thought:

"but our skyscrapers had help" and I wasn't thinking of the planes.