PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: To what extent will the pandemic slow down vertical progress and how will new waves and mutations of the virus affect the perspective of high-rise construction?
Kate Ro (Babushkina): If one progress slows down, another progress always begins to develop. New waves of pandemics and mutations of any virus are likely to affect functional solutions in construction (office functions, for example, may disappear). High-rise construction will always be if it is economically beneficial.
PM: How justified is high-rise construction in the center of the city? Is it permissible to "stand up for the blue line", and if so, in what cases?
CR: And again, it all depends on how commercially profitable it is. "Blue lines" appeared with the purpose of "regulating building height restrictions in populated areas to avoid chaotic height building and to harmonize urban space." Accordingly, in some cases it is possible to exceed the height, but it is necessary to do it with arguments.
PM: Can the vertical growth of cities solve such urgent problems as heavy traffic, shortage of affordable housing, deterioration of the ecological situation? Or, on the contrary, will it aggravate them?
CR: If globally everything is compacted, verticalized, then the traffic will increase inside the building and slightly decrease outside. The deficit of affordable housing can be solved by passing laws that 25% of apartments in a residential building under construction are intended for transfer to the social fund (this is one of the types of inclusion that is already used in practice in France, for example). Deterioration of the ecological situation today occurs due to methods of consumption and processing, as well as movement in private transport. But let's recall the modern theory of the development of cities "Post-oil city", which illustrates the history of new cities and how the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources will take place. And how will it affect urban metabolism, policy of sustainability and mobility. Environmental changes necessarily imply social changes.
Utopian art project Manhattan-farms-III by digital artist Jean-Francois Rauzier
PM: Why didn't the predictions of the futurists of the early 2th century, who predicted that the second industrial revolution would lead to the emergence of multi-level cities, come true? What will be the skyscrapers of the future in 5-XNUMX decades?
CR: Let's assume that the forecasts did not come true due to the advent of the Internet and social networks (he smiles). And future high-rise buildings, I am sure, will become more "green".
