Moscow does not believe in tears…
Everyone is rushing to Moscow as if it were made of rubber.
In Moscow, everyone is fussing, even those who have nothing to do.
Moscow charges you with the virus of indifference, and you yourself don’t notice it.
The people in Moscow are responsive and, if necessary, will come to the rescue (Source).
Moscow is the capital, and that says it all. The city is becoming more and more beautiful. This is truly one of the most beautiful and successful cities in the world.
Here are the bulk of government agencies and offices of the country's main companies. This is the territory of the ruling class, where there is everything: business, apartments, luxury and entertainment. But Moscow is also the spiritual center of Russia - there are about 1 Orthodox churches and chapels, as well as a center of cultural and scientific activity.
Will Moscow be able to beat traffic jams?
The average salary in Moscow at the beginning of 2023 is 113 rubles, but there are places where it is higher - the northern regions (Chukotka, Magadan, champion Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug - 671 rubles), St. Petersburg - 158, but in poorer regions regions: 333 (Chechnya) – 80 (Chuvashia).
The most active people go to the capital, escaping uselessness in disadvantaged regions of the country. Their destiny is mortgages, including preferential ones. Now the population of Moscow, according to official data, is 13 million people, having increased over the past 10 years by 1,5 million, i.e. on average by 150 thousand people. in year. But according to the Ministry of Communications, in 2020 there were 27 million (!) mobile Internet users in Moscow.
Among the achievements of the team of the new mayor of Moscow are reconstruction, construction of new roads and interchanges, new stations and metro lines, inclusion in a unified network of commuter trains, which together improves the transport situation. Successful examples of combating traffic jams include the reconstruction of the Kaluga Highway and the introduction of the Moscow High-Speed Diameter (MSD). But these efforts are doomed to be delayed with the increase in the commissioning of new housing, the increase in the number of residents and, as a consequence, with the rise in the number of personal transport in the capital.
At the end of 2020, the capital took 1st place among 416 cities in the world in terms of traffic jams in the TomTom rating, but in 2021 it is already the best - 2nd place (there is no data for 2022). According to the data center, traffic congestion in Moscow has fallen: in 2022 it was estimated at 8 points and above 78 days, which is 50 days less than in 2021.
According to the mayor's office, since the beginning of the year 2022, about 5 million square meters have been put into operation in the city. meters of housing, which almost repeats the record of 1965, when Khrushchev buildings were built in Moscow.
As deputy mayor of the city Maxim Liksutov said in an interview with Moscow-24, the number of personal vehicles of Muscovites has increased in the capital by 50% since 2010, reaching 8,5 million cars as of October 2022. Of these, 4,13 million are cars. According to the head of the traffic police, in 2010 - 3,89 million cars, in 2000 - 2,6 million. In 2022, a slight decrease in the passenger fleet was recorded in the capital for the first time.
So - we get the following graph (function - exponent!), which corresponds to the photo below.
Moscow is the largest transport hub, transporting from 40% to 80% of all cargo and passengers in the country. All this aggravates the transport situation.
Traffic jams in Moscow
Moscow and the regions: gap as a sign of crisis
Let's look at a rare graph: data on the concentration of money in the country (source: author's calculations based on data from the Bank of Russia). In first place is Moscow, where about 55% of all financial resources are concentrated, then St. Petersburg - 7%. Even the rich Tyumen region and Krasnodar region are only 3% and 2%, respectively, the Moscow region - 3%.
The wealth of the remaining regions (less than 1%) must be examined under a magnifying glass. However, as the mayor of the capital reported, in 2014, about 80% of all financial flows in Russia were concentrated in Moscow.
The unevenness is colossal, and this is a mirror of our problems. Raw materials semi-colonial capitalism led to the country being divided into two Russias and two peoples. Rich regions where there are raw materials and export goods - oil, gas, metals and, at worst, grain, and therefore currency and money, and the outback - abandoned and neglected.
Population concentration and military risks
Excessive concentration of population is a catastrophic factor of military risk. As military expert Yuri Lyamin told RBC, in the event of a nuclear war, Moscow will become the main target and will be subject to the most massive attack.
On the one hand, Moscow has powerful air defense and shelters in the metro. But air defense is not omnipotent, there may not be enough shelters, and the larger the city, the more difficult it will be to provide supplies for survivors after the strike due to destruction and broken transport lines.
If New Moscow someday in the distant future will accept another 10 million people, it will be only at the expense of Russia. But there is no such thing as unnecessary land - and this is shown by both successful farmers and Chinese “vegetable growers”. Everywhere, except rocks and permafrost, you can grow something, build something and produce something.
Do we want our lands to be settled with great pleasure by the Chinese or migrants from Asia? As P. Stolypin warned us:
“People sometimes forget about their national tasks, but such peoples perish - they turn into fertilizer on which other, stronger nations grow and grow stronger.”
New developments: why does Moscow need “human buildings”?
New building area in Lyublino
In Moscow there are areas of different beauty and comfort. Now developers have a significant range of quite beautiful projects.
In the capital, there are projects of “economy class” houses that can architecturally fit into the landscape on a limited scale, but when they turn into skyscrapers or occupy neighborhoods, they create the impression of squalor and facelessness.
So, is it possible for Muscovites to be provided with normal and comfortable housing developments, so that neighborhoods that have already been dubbed “new ghettos” or “humanitarian areas” do not appear there?
The answer is simple - you can: but not everyone can afford it, the invisible hand of the market comes into play - read: the interests of big capital, which, striving for a long ruble, does not take into account the “non-financial” interests of Muscovites.
Comfortable conditions are building standards. But they were recently canceled as an anti-sanction measure, making them advisory. Wouldn't it be better to create new building codes that limit the number of storeys and introduce spacious standards for streets and parking spaces, and immediately build normal exit roads?
Why build buildings higher than 14 floors? Of course, the views from there are excellent, but... The more floors, the greater the profit, the greater the income of the developer, the greater the benefit of the management company - the more apartments, the better. No one asks if these houses are good for living in, not everyone understands what they are “signing up for” - a small discount and everything is sold! But at the same time, the risks are higher: elevator breakdown, fire, disaster.
Will a fire truck get there when the street is lined with cars and will there be enough high-rise stairs for it? Research shows that more than 30% of people experience dizziness and a feeling of danger when viewing panoramas above the 15th floor.
Why build housing in close proximity to railway lines, where trains and trains are noisy? This is a dubious place, especially in the summer when the windows are wide open.
Wouldn't it be better to build high-tech and environmentally friendly enterprises there - producing electronics, microelectronics, and computers? Or is it easier for us to buy everything now from China, supporting their workers, but not the Russians?
If you are cool, buy yourself an apartment in the “comfort” class, and if you don’t have enough money, your destiny is just a “humane” one. And this housing attracts visitors, who often buy small studio apartments with a kitchen extension right in the room. According to BFM, the most purchased housing in Moscow at the beginning of 2023 were studio apartments on the secondary market. So what kind of families and children can there be here?
About comfortable and spacious development
In 2021, analysts from one well-known real estate portal compiled ratings of Moscow districts by attractiveness. Muscovites chose Strogino as the best place to live: the area scored 8,9 points. The top 10 included the districts of Golovinsky, Academichesky, Yuzhnoye Butovo, Lomonosovsky, Mitino and Troparevo-Nikulino. The anti-rating was topped by the metropolitan district of Lyublino – it received the minimum overall score.
We can build beautifully and comfortably. An example is the development in Ostafyevo.
New development in Ostafyevo
The Yuzhnoye Butovo district entered the top ten best metropolitan areas for living and occupies sixth position in the top. Not so long ago, the late Yu. M. Luzhkov built it up - and the main part of the area is still of a good standard compared to densely built areas.
South Butovo, beginning of the street. Admiral Lazarev
In the central part of South Butovo (except for the area from the forest to Skobelevskaya metro station) there is no dense development; almost every house, with rare exceptions, has somewhere in the courtyard of the house to park a car and drive around. Here, in many places between the houses, there are extensive internal microparks, as well as a huge park area from the B. Ushakov metro station to the pond at the Buninskaya Alley metro station and there is a large park near the pond. There are also few tall buildings here, ranging from 14 to 22 floors and higher. But even here, passage of a garbage truck and, therefore, a fire truck is not always an easy matter.
Park in South Butovo
What prevents people from creating good and comfortable living conditions in new development areas without turning Moscow into China? After all, even in the capital of the land (at least in New Moscow) there is enough.
Problems of Moscow: look for the “invisible hand of the market”
The answer is simple - the pursuit of profit by developers who design projects with minimal living space between houses. For the same reason, multi-storey business centers and shopping centers are being built on every piece of land.
Really, instead of building a few extra houses, it was impossible to make the roads wider and leave space for people? Why hide the sun from people and deprive them of greenery?
“Russia is wide, but there is nowhere to park the car...”
In one of the outskirts you can see such a picture. There seems to be enough parking space. The parking lot (between a row of houses) is long and wide, there are even road signs showing the passage through the parking area in one direction and here in the other. Even there you can circle around for about 20 minutes to settle down somewhere - there really aren’t any places. It turns out that the designers were wrong again.
According to the famous architect, honorary builder of Moscow, member of the Union of Architects Alexey Krotov:
“...it seems that no one is interested in comfortable living conditions for people. Business needs super-profits, but what the Moscow authorities need is anyone’s guess.”
Such issues should be resolved by the state. But our state is a “night watchman” in relation to its citizens (not in general to all). It sleeps when it comes to the “invisible hand of the market” - that is, the interests of big capital.
Business development concept: does Moscow need so many business and shopping centers?
Does the capital need so many shopping and business centers, and such a quantity of low-quality housing, which is constantly rising in price, despite the excess supply. Are there signs of a bubble in all this?
According to RBC estimates, the volume of unsold housing in new buildings in Moscow has grown sharply and it takes about 3 years to sell it (provided there is no new one - read: overstocking), among the business class and elite segment the share of unsold housing is 47%, and for the comfort class - 42%. According to the Dom.RF analytical center, at the beginning of April the volume of housing under construction in Moscow amounted to 16,2 million square meters. m, of which about 10 million sq. m were unsold.
Let's compare prices for similar apartments in Moscow and the regions. According to realtymag.ru, the average price of a three-room apartment in Moscow is 25 rubles (price per square meter is 019 rubles). In St. Petersburg – 950 rubles (320 rubles), while in many quite decent cities (Vladimir, Kaluga, Vologda) – 841–13 million rubles. (sq. m – 817 ₽). Feel the difference! Salaries in the capital are higher, but so are expenses.
After popular Western brands left the Russian market, traffic to shopping centers in Moscow fell by 39%. Although the picture is normal in popular shopping centers, according to RG, on average 12–15% of the space is empty.
As RBC writes, at the end of 2022, the total area of offices in Moscow, leased and purchased for their own, according to the consulting company CORE.XP, amounted to 1,2 million square meters. m, which is 20,6% less than the results of 2021.
The share of vacant space in Moscow business centers increased by 2,7 percentage points. compared to the end of 2021 and amounted to 10,3%, including in more expensive offices, which are classified as class A, 13,4% of the space was empty, in class B - 7,4% of the space.
Where is the money?
Money is important, but even more important is where to invest it. Our elites, in fact, cannot (and, in principle, do not really want) to produce high-tech products and for them real estate, along with trading in raw materials, is the main way (far from the best) of multiplying capital. Isn't it time to build factories, gentlemen? As it goes: “let’s beat swords into ploughshares.”
Dambissa Moyo, in her book “How the West Died,” analyzes in detail the mistakes the West and the United States made in the era of liberalism. In her opinion, in a liberal economy the effect of “improper distribution of capital” occurs. She also includes among these phenomena investments in mortgages, which used a significant part of US national savings, which did not generate any income streams. During the bubble inflation stage, the real estate market temporarily creates the illusion of growth for “non-productive” investments. Does this remind you of anything?
The current business elite does not have much incentive or need to develop the country, which Peter I or Stalin had, for example, as long as there are raw materials and their price remains at the same level. For what? There is wealth even without production, this is ours historical trouble, unlike Europe; and you can buy almost everything over the hill. And industrial development is dangerous for them, as it can deprive them of power.
Imports to Russia for 2022 are a whopping $259,1 billion. It is not difficult to calculate that this amount displaces about 25 million jobs across the country, precisely those that the president set the task of creating by 2020. This was recently, but the problem was not resolved. The simple answer to why the country is dying out is that its population is not in demand in the raw materials economy. Gaidar’s concept still rules the country - only since the 90s, prices for raw materials have increased many times over.
Why are the authorities building housing, but not building new businesses nearby?
In Moscow itself, industry, including innovation, is developing quite dynamically. In 2023, Moscow will prepare for implementation 77 projects for the integrated development of areas of former industrial zones with a total area of about 1 thousand hectares. In April 2021, Moscow launched the Industrial Quarters program.
However, in practice, practically no enterprises are built in residential areas, although the creation of jobs could relieve congestion and redirect traffic flows towards rationality. Of course, we are talking about environmentally friendly production.
Where will newcomers who have taken out preferential mortgages work? Maybe build technology parks and high-tech production facilities there? But the owners of the center hardly want the flow of people to go to New Moscow.
Expansion of New Moscow: why does the capital need new territories?
It is easier for large businesses to operate in Moscow and large cities, which concentrate the main financial resources and jobs. What is easier, to invest money in the development of emptying regions of Russia or to develop Moscow and St. Petersburg? It’s easier where there is money and people, which means Moscow needs to be expanded.
On July 1, 2012, the boundaries of Moscow officially changed. The area of the metropolis has more than doubled from 1,1 thousand square kilometers to 2,6 thousand square kilometers. The new territories were divided into two administrative districts - Novomoskovsky and Troitsky, which became the eleventh and twelfth for Moscow.
Again architect A. Krotov:
“Urban planners have repeatedly warned the authorities that the limit of Moscow’s territorial development is the Moscow Ring Road, and the maximum population that it can accommodate, I repeat, is 7–8 million people. Otherwise, life will be uncomfortable for everyone: both old Muscovites and new ones. Answers to warnings from experts - New Moscow and the renovation program..."
Transport problem: excess movements
Well, let’s assume we bought an apartment outside the Moscow Ring Road. Cheap and cheerful. Nowadays the metro is becoming more and more dense, and you can often see people “just flying” on autopilot. Nowadays it is difficult to meet a pregnant woman on the metro for several days, although in Soviet times there were plenty of them - they always gave up their seats, remember.
Why is that? Because, having spent about an hour on the subway for a trip, they still need to then get into the car at an intercept parking lot and drive from there to their mortgage dream outside the Moscow Ring Road. And here a new ambush awaits Muscovites - ridiculous traffic jams on the road to their home. Who are these people turning into?
In general, the situation in the metro is still normal. But everyone knows perfectly well what problems Muscovites encounter, for example, in the Vykhino metro station. But housing is being built further and further in this direction - in the Moscow region. And Mytishi, Odintsovo, Podolsk - and other satellite cities de facto become part of Moscow.
Subway at rush hour
Moscow, Russia and our future
Moscow will remain one of the best cities, and life there will improve. They will continue to go to Moscow. But it is in the interests of the entire country to overcome, within reasonable limits, the gap in wages and economic activity throughout the country and slow down the endless growth of the metropolis so that the bulk of citizens can realize themselves in their place of birth.
And the absolute key to solving the problem is import substitution, new industrialization and the technical revolution, which have no place in a resource-based economy. Otherwise, in the liberal model, our state may first become depopulated and then split.
It is not for nothing that in 2016, the American research center Stratfor, associated with the CIA, accurately described the problem:
“...we do not think that the Russian Federation is capable of existing in its current form for another ten years. The overwhelming dependence on hydrocarbon exports and the unpredictability of oil prices do not allow Moscow to support state institutions throughout the vast territory of the Russian Federation. We expect a noticeable weakening of Moscow’s power, which will lead to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia..."
That is, the raw materials model imposed on us in 1991 is an instrument for the depopulation of Russia in the trend of the plans of the world government.
Both internal migration and depopulation, as a process of degradation of regions and the country as a whole, are evidence of the deadlock and crisis of the current liberal model.
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska wrote in his Telegram channel that the Central Bank is to blame for the poverty of Russians and the lack of economic growth. S. Glazyev, V. Kasatonov and many left-wing politicians and economists testify to this. There is simply no money in the country as a whole and especially in the regions, which means there can be no investment, when in Moscow, on the contrary, there is an overabundance of it.
But contrary to these plans, the country’s key task is to ensure population growth and development of our territory. Tectonic signs of the times: Northeast Military District, conflict with the West, a new “Iron Curtain”, sanctions, import substitution, restoration of the status of our Army and the military-industrial complex, a turn to the East, the exodus of liberal figures from the country, growing sympathy among the population for the USSR, Stalin, catastrophic depopulation - cardinals predict changes in Russia.
The cycles of Russian history indicate that the current liberal cycle is coming to an end, and will be replaced by an illiberal one. Nothing can be eternal, and everything that hinders development, from a historical perspective, is relegated to the dustbin of history. And the denouement, according to various forecasts, may come before 2025: it is impossible to avoid it.