"Who-who-who-effect." "Koleists" in urban space

/ Urbanism /

In the UAE pavilion designed by Norman Foster at EXPO-2015 in Milan, a video was shown: a venerable Dubai babushka was protecting a palm tree that was in the center of the construction site. She told her granddaughter a story about how many years ago she planted this tree in a place that meant a lot to her family. After listening to the story, the granddaughter enters into a dialogue with the developer. In the final frames of the video, a helicopter carefully transports the "family" palm tree to a new place. I dare to assume that a significant part of our Kyiv society would not have agreed to such a compromise for any reason, because this is "treason"!

Olga Chernova, chief project architect at ARCHIMATIKA

If you simulate a "victory" situation, then dubai palm tree should remain in place, the construction around it has been stopped, and instead of new buildings around the lone palm tree, a park of palm alleys named after the heroic grandmother has been built. In other words, "victory", according to the metropolitan public, is the uncompromising preservation of what was created in the past by nature or people and the consistent total rejection and prohibition of everything new.

Rejection of the new is by no means new: "the glorious, noble golden age dimly flickering in the past, the further away from it everything becomes more and more feeble, joyless and miserable" is an integral part of any collectivist agrarian epic, from what was said about Alesha Popovych to the annals of the Yangtze Valley.

"Yes, there were people in our time

Not the current tribe:

Heroes are not you!"

Over the years of litigation and bureaucratic delays, the building of the Guest House (until 2011, an architectural monument not subject to reconstruction) actually turned into a ruin and has not yet been transferred to state ownership. This means that no work can be done to save him.

When generation after generation rolls their lives along the same route, the "rut" gets trampled, and each succeeding one has to make less and less effort to continue rolling his karma. A peculiar projection of this "process of optimization of vital efforts" is the idea that the predecessors who paved the way were titans and those very "heroes, not the same as the current tribe." Consequently, nothing good can be expected from poor contemporaries, it is impossible to build anything better than in the heroic past, and there is no need to even ask! All that remains is to vigilantly preserve the heritage: in fact, mummified in architectural and town-planning forms, the same track of life's route. He zealously preserves it even where only ruins remain.

"Collectivists" are by no means embarrassed by the abandoned wastelands of unfinished buildings, fenced off by crooked faded-green fences, behind which anti-sociality is hidden: after all, wastelands best confirm the doctrine of the poverty of contemporaries (including the "collektivists" themselves, of course! After all, that is exactly why the citizen of the XNUMXst century and begins to reason like agrarian collectivists in order to have a "great and noble" explanation for his stupid inability to create anything).

"Kolektivists-collectivists" are not at all embarrassed by the abandoned wastelands of unbuilt buildings, fenced by crooked faded-green fences, behind which anti-sociality is hidden

Yes, for the fourth hour no one is embarrassed by the ruins of Gostiny Dvor in Podol! And remember what a storm raged around the ego reconstruction project! Or the scandal with the Theater on the Podol - for decades, the people of Kiev silently bypassed the undeveloped vacant lot and suddenly exploded with righteous anger, as soon as construction work began on the vacant lot. In Kyiv, there are hundreds of sites with dilapidated ruins or sad ruins that are not used in any way and that the citizens have not remembered for decades! And neither in social networks nor in the press does this bother anyone - the "collectivists-wheelers" who occupied the air remember these terrae incognita, only if someone dares to offer the use of any platform.

"Koleists" are not embarrassed by abandoned factories until someone starts building on their territory, for example, residential quarters. Before the construction of the Rybalsky residential complex, no one cared about the fate of "Leninskaya Forge". And suddenly - lawsuits for the destruction of a strategic enterprise!

Before the construction of the Rybalsky residential complex, no one cared about the fate of "Leninskaya Forge". And suddenly - lawsuits for the destruction of a strategic enterprise!

"Koleists" are not embarrassed by the empty spaces designated in the city master plan as "recreational zones", until someone intends to build something that can be used on this empty space. But let's remember that the land in the city cannot remain unused! These are not fields that, after several harvests, are left under steam to restore soil fertility. It doesn't work like that in the city! The empty territory is filled only with used syringes, broken glass and other garbage. The number of recreational areas in the city should be equal to the area that it can adequately support: beautify, illuminate, clean, and maintain security on it. All this is expressed in numbers in the city budget: "the city can afford so many hectares of parks and squares." Anything above these numbers has no chance of remaining a park and is doomed to slowly but surely turn into an abandoned wasteland.

Do you want to increase the number of parks and squares in the city? Excellent! Find out which article of the city budget you can save on or where the city can make extra money! Or help the parks to pay for themselves, because there are a lot of modern civilized forms of business, such as renting bicycles to attractions and street cafes, which do not interfere, but help the park to become attractive for citizens. But if you can't find the money, don't dispute the construction of the vacant lot: it will bring money to the city and allow the area of ​​recreational areas to be increased in the future.

"Koleists" are not embarrassed by abandoned factories until someone starts building on their territory, for example, residential quarters

Discussion platforms for public petitions are overflowing with initiatives of active citizens to create new parks: "There is a vacant lot between two houses and the road, and let's give it the status of a park, and no one will ever be able to build on it"! But why is this wasteland still poorly developed? Is it because there was no money in the city for this money? Then the three newly acquired statuses will not change anything! How is an undeveloped wasteland with the status of a park better than a wasteland without it?

Rural traditionalists and "rail collectivists", who really live as their ancestors bequeathed, are quite rational: they try to live with minimal deviations from the way of life of their ancestors. And since they really like it - rolling on the track laid by their ancestors - it is quite natural to try to maintain it in the best condition and not allow innovative deviations.

Not far from Chernivtsi there is a village where the Amish live - representatives of an ultra-conservative religious movement that does not recognize the benefits of civilization. They are forever stuck in the XNUMXth century.

But collectivists-collegiates who live in our metropolis argue completely irrationally! After all, in the metropolis there is no collectivism at all - exclusive individualism! And there is no rut for a long time! The last great builders of the track — the Communists — are even banned as a political force. Only the ruins of the communist railroad built by them remained with the burnt-out slogans "Glory of Labor".

The real life of the urban "wheelers" takes place in an environment where a completely different logic reigns, which they are not quite able to understand. This means that they are not very successful in this environment, and, alas, instead of looking for a rational way out of all this hopelessness, they decadently hide in the cozy recess of the "ephemeral illusory rut", which, like any "object of faith", by no means can't get it out of your head with rational arguments. Try to explain to the decadent urban "railway driver" that instead of looking for a rational choice, he traces his life along a non-existent, essentially irrational and leading nowhere track, he will simply astound you with the answer that in fact only his track exists, and the whole ostensibly rational choice is an illusion imposed on him by freemasons through the media, the Internet and yourself.

Rural traditionalists and "rail collectivists" are quite rational: they try to live with minimal deviations from the way of life of their ancestors

It is almost impossible to explain to the "wheeler" that he does not live in the space of a diabolical world conspiracy, but in the theater of the absurd, which is a projection of his own irrationality.

The irrational space of choice, formed on the air by the "collectivists-wheelers" dominating it, makes direct rational success difficult to achieve: "invented - implemented - earned". Therefore, in our society, the easiest and, therefore, the most common way to success is the way of cunning: "invented - deceived - stole." In economics, trickery is all variations of corruption. Thus, the dominance in the city of "Koleists-Collectivists" forms a fertile environment for corruption!

Embankment of the Dnieper near Pochtova Square in the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXst centuries.

A non-corrupt society differs from a corrupt one primarily by the rationality of the choice: if a city employee works irrationally for a meager salary, then the rational choice is to raise the salary or reformat the municipal services in such a way as to give up what there is no money for. And here is the irrational choice: with the tacit consent of the "railway workers" they will keep a meager salary, for which a rich idealist-altruist (0,001% of those holding such positions) or a cunning corruptor who supplements his tiny salary with kickbacks and other "bonuses" (99,999% of those holding such positions) will go to work positions). Counting on a miracle is a completely irrational approach!

The rationality of hundreds and thousands of elections of citizens, authorities and architects is the foundation of every successful city!

I will give an example of a rational choice: when asked about a frankly ugly building in the photo of the central part of a small American city, a resident of this city answered that "although the building is indeed extremely ugly, the oil company that built it annually pays $638 to the city budget, which allows for the improvement of the city ". Thus, both the municipality and the citizens decided that they would suffer the "freak", but in return they would receive funds for the transformation of the urban environment.

The "who-who-who-who-who-discourse" that dominates Kyiv today is an irrational environment, where a rational choice is not a rule, but a feat

Personally, as an architect, I do not like such a choice - I am against architectural ugliness in any circumstances. If I were the mayor of this town, I would make every effort to find another source of attracting the necessary funds to the budget of the town. But I respect the choice of the citizens of this American town, who, not finding other sources, took such a step: improving the urban environment year after year, they will bring good businesses aimed at quality architecture and good architects to their city.

The "who-who-who-discourse" that dominates in Kyiv today, set by the judgments of the "Collectivists-Koleists" and which is used by the Corruptors to fix the status quo, is an irrational environment, where rational choice is not a rule, but a feat.

And while the people of Kiev who are capable of rational choice and rational action tolerate and listen to this "who-who-who" that filled the air, our beloved city is doomed.