UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 15, 2019. Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexander Vysokinsky presented Yekaterinburg’s development plan for 2020-2035 at the 4th Russian Cities 2030: Project Territory Forum. The event is taking place in Yekaterinburg for the fourth year in a row and has gathered together members of the Federation Council, State Duma deputies, and heads of Russian federal constituencies.

Alexander Vysokinsky said the strategic planning of urban development relies on the compartmentalization-by-branch principle: education, healthcare, culture, and so on. In terms of the living standards, however, the territorial aspect comes to the foreground. This means the territorial and the branch principles need to get combined, which is why Yekaterinburg’s development plan for 2020-2035 dwells upon growth aspects of 57 different parts of the city.

The Mayor referred to District Akademicheskiy Comprehensive Area Development Project as an example of one such urban location.

‘I suggest going there and taking a look: the district has some 1m m2 worth of housing and is home to 80,000 people (the target population count is 300,000). RUB 10,000 per every square meter of housing is expected to get allocated from the city’s budget to put up the social infrastructure in the area: kindergartens, schools, clinics, and so on,’ the Mayor said.

In addition to plentiful funding of new projects, strategic urban planning also covers renovation of old housing, Alexander Vysokinsky said, that is, pulling down dilapidated low-rise apartment buildings and private houses.