Our waterfront. Business card of the city and space for all

13 rules, 10 magnets

If in the suburbs or rural areas the shores and water areas of reservoirs are used mainly for recreation, swimming, fishing and boating, then in cities the scenarios of their use are much greater. Of course, Venice remains the quintessence of the "city on the water" typology. But today, many cities in Europe, the USA, Canada, and Australia focus on the development of territories facing the water. Historically, rivers and seas were used as transport highways for the delivery of goods, so industrial zones were concentrated along the water front, which since the end of the XNUMXth century. undergoing conversion into active residential, business and, according to the trends of the XNUMXst century, into mixed areas with well-developed public spaces by the water.

The search for win-win strategies for the transformation of coastal urban territories and the analysis of projects implemented around the world helped the organization Project for Public Spaces (PPS) to formulate the rules for the development of urban embankments.

1. Public goals are a priority

The best solutions for embankments prioritize public goals and improving the comfort of citizens' lives, not short-term financial expediency.

2. The concept of development should be developed together with residents

Even before the development of the master plan of the territory, it is necessary to create a general concept together with the local community. It is possible to start with the joint implementation of point projects in order to increase the enthusiasm of the community as the first results of the transformation appear and establish trust and partnership relationships between all stakeholders.

3. The power of ten: create points of attraction

The embankment should not become a continuous linear park. It is necessary to allocate 10 places of attraction around which activities will be concentrated. Cultural, commercial, office and residential buildings that people use as a destination can act as such a magnet. The main thing is to mix them together, preventing the emergence of a "sleeper" or a single business enclave. 10 magnets will ensure the circulation of currents in all directions, which will activate the entire territory and give it diversity. It would be great if these magnets themselves were multifunctional.

4. Create connections between points of attraction

10 magnets should be included in the embankment master plan in such a way as to ensure continuity of movement of pedestrians and cyclists from point to point. Their movement should be comfortable, safe and barrier-free.

A mixture of cultural, commercial, office and residential facilities gives the architectural landscape a variety

5. Optimization of public accessibility

It is important that the embankment is as accessible as possible for all categories of people, regardless of their physical capabilities, property rights, and age. It is ideal if people can directly contact the water - swimming, fishing, boating or feeding the ducks. If such an opportunity is not available (for example, too steep a descent or a high protective dam), provide alternative opportunities for contact with water - fountains, pools.

6. The concept must always meet the expectations of residents

Embankments are too valuable a city asset for any development or revitalization plans to be implemented without communication and contact with residents. The interests of developers and city officials are important, because the financing of development and improvement depends on them, but all interventions in the environment must be coordinated with the public and take into account feedback. 

7. Strive to make embankments active 24/7

Embankments are a place for festivals, markets, concerts and other public activities. It is necessary to observe a balance in which residential buildings should not dominate. This will avoid a conflict of interest.

8. Parks are not a magnet, but a connective tissue

The development of embankments as solid parks will lead to passive use of space, as happened in New York, Vancouver and Toronto. Green areas on embankments should play the role of connective tissue or be multifunctional, suitable for a wide variety of activities. However, recent developments, for example, by Swedish urban planners refute the opinion of the PPS authors. So, the Hornsbergs embankment in Stockholm, Sweden, was designed precisely as a linear park between the water and the new residential development.

Landscape architects Nyréns Arkitektkontor provided for the creation of three floating piers that people use for recreation and swimming, the installation of showers, many benches and places where you can rest in the shade of young trees. The budget for the implementation of the project, which received a series of awards for landscape design, amounted to $ 127 million. The customer was Stockholms stad Exploateringskontoret — the Stockholm Development Authority.

9. Buildings must stimulate activity

Any building on the embankment should enhance the activities of adjacent public spaces — for this, the first floors of buildings (or levels with public terraces) must be given over to a commercial or public function. Naberezhnaya is not a place for monofunctional towers - residential or office.

10. Maximizing the use of public transport or bicycles

Driving cars along embankments kills the concept of using public space. It is necessary to limit the access of motor vehicles, making an exception for public ones - and then only to stops on the adjacent territory. But ideally, movement on and along the embankment should be pedestrian and bicycle. Proximity to water allows you to use water routes.

Landmark buildings form the image of cities and contribute to the gentrification of districts

11. All-season infrastructure and architecture

Ideally, objects that work as points of attraction, and transit routes between them will be designed to protect against bad weather, minimizing its impact on activity, or adapt to the seasons. For example: an open area turns into a skating rink in winter. Landscape designers know how to create windbreaks from trees.

12. Creation of iconic multifunctional objects

If the citizens decided that it is necessary to build a landmark building on the embankment, then it must be multifunctional and offer different scenarios of use in order to constantly support the flow of visitors - even if it is a specialized urban institution, such as, for example, the city hall in Stockholm.

13. Territory management

For the success of an active embankment, like any public space, competent and continuous management is necessary. It is not enough to simply maintain cleanliness and beautification, it is necessary that someone is engaged in programming events and new occasions for activity around the clock.

 

No "white elephants"

From the architect's point of view, the embankment is an ideal place for a building "with ambitions". The Sydney Opera House, the theater in Oslo, the Singapore Esplanade Theater and the Museum of Technology and Design on the Marina Bay embankment, MAAT museum in Lisbon, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, philharmonic hall in Hamburg — the proximity to the water allows architects to play with the reflection of surfaces and provides a panoramic view of the object, which is practically excluded in the conditions of dense construction, when the view of the accent building is blocked by neighboring buildings.

Oscar Niemeyer surrounded his modernist masterpieces with artificial reservoirs, but one should not forget that such luxury in handling space was available in a city that was built from scratch. And Santiago Calatrava, creating a water mirror for snow-white objects in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, catastrophically exceeded the budget.

Coastal landmarks often form the image of cities and contribute to the gentrification of districts. But when the economic and social success in the end does not justify the exorbitant sums spent on implementation, urbanists subject such projects to merciless criticism, calling them "white elephants." Only an ideal combination of commercial and public use, when a new magnet increases activity around itself, can be considered a success.

Criticism is often based on subjective evaluation opinions, but in reality it is very difficult to calculate what exactly attracts passers-by to the Oslo Fjord embankment - the "floating saunas" that arose as an initiative from below or the snow-white "iceberg" of the Norwegian National Opera building, designed by Snøhetta?

Only an ideal combination of commercial and public use can be considered a success

The best insurance against getting on the white elephant project lists is mixing functions. A mixed-use approach, both in the design of a separate object and in the development of the entire territory, is akin to the folk wisdom "not to put all your eggs in one basket." If a person who went to the embankment is offered several pastime scenarios at once, then with a high degree of probability he will not leave disappointed. Should you go to a cafe, take a swim, ride a boat, go for a bike ride, go to a museum, gallery or shop? Are your eyes racing? Well, it's great!

 

Alexander Popov

Co-founder and director of the archimatika company

PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: One of the undoubted trends in urban planning is the return of access to water to citizens. But what do we put in these words? What scenarios for the use of the coastal line of the Dnieper, in your opinion, can be launched in the place of post-industrial zones?

Alexander Popov: This should be a symbiotic relationship between the city and nature. Public access to water implies the creation of an open space, the use of which will be friendly to the river and water resources. The scenarios may be different, but they should not kill the river, turning it into a silty water area covered with a film of mud. The idealistic model is the preservation of the natural environment. Leave the ecosystem intact and admire it. If we are talking about the conversion of post-industrial zones, then the entire ecosystem has already been killed there, everything has been disturbed, and it must be restored and revitalized. Errors will be corrected.

And where the ecosystem is still preserved in a state close to its original state, we have the opportunity to use it using approaches and technologies not of the XX, but of the XXI century. And here the palette of solutions is wide.

That is, we have two different situations. But neither in the first, nor in the second case, we should entertain ourselves with an illusion and pretend that the city does not exist, and our main role is to preserve the natural landscape. A city is an artificial landscape, and its very existence is dictated by vital necessity. People cannot live without cities. And the overwhelming majority of critics of urbanization are the townspeople themselves. I don't know anyone who would write devastating articles from the backwoods. Yes, we try to be as environmentally friendly as possible and take into account the preservation of the natural environment as much as possible, but we still build an artificial environment. Natural in urban conditions does not survive. The forest does not survive in the city, but the park does. Because the forest is a naturally renewing ecosystem, and man pollutes nature with his activities, no matter how cultural he may be, and it is impossible to do without artificial measures for the permanent cleaning of spaces, including water, garbage removal. There are no paved paths in the forest, one person a day will walk along the path and not cause any harm. But in the park we need paths, paving, because no path can withstand this flow of pedestrians.

So it will not be possible to completely avoid human intervention in nature in the city. It should be thoughtful, careful, symbiotic and take into account both the interests of civilization and the interests of flora and fauna.

PM: We have a law that prohibits the construction of buildings and structures in a 100-meter zone from the water. Isn't there a contradiction here - it is impossible to create an embankment, similar to those that we admire so much in European cities, without a construction process?

A.P.: The question should be asked more broadly. It is not a matter of whether buildings and structures are permissible in this zone, but of the type of construction and how they affect the river and what we get in return. If we end up with private property behind a fence interrupting the shoreline, that is too high a price for society and nature to pay. This is unacceptable, and we should only welcome the existence of such a law. That is, it is necessary to take into account the direct use of the territory that reaches the shore, and the circumstance - whether this development violates the continuity of the promenade, which in this case should be bypassed, and this worsens the quality of the environment of this lost space itself, and the surrounding area. And if this law is applied, then to demolish, for example, an incomprehensible pseudo-historical house to the right of the metro bridge in Hydropark, surrounded by a fence.

A city is an artificial landscape, and its very existence is dictated by vital necessity

There should be no areas with fences blocking the access to the water or the passage along the shore. And if this condition is met, it is possible to bring any functions to the river, including cultural, entertainment, offices, and housing. It is not necessary, of course, to build this housing right in the 25-meter, 50-meter zone. It is possible to move further, for housing, you still need a house space. But when we talk about a house on the river, this space should not be a gated community, but publicly accessible. There are a lot of examples, and in Singapore, high-rise residential construction was allowed along the river, but there is a landscaped and accessible embankment that is used by both tourists and local residents. It is possible to make a granite embankment - in the case of high traffic, this is optimal, since some natural, sandy landscape will simply be swept away by the flow of people. If we have a valuable natural landscape that we, the townspeople, decide to preserve, then minimal intervention is possible - wooden decks that can be installed even on stilts right on the river.

Decisions about how exactly we develop the embankment must be made at the city level. Residents of Kyiv are deprived of rivers. On the right bank is a track. Yes, there is a pedestrian promenade, but it is unpleasant to be here because of the noise and dust. The river is covered with muddy green mud, and the granite is covered with graffiti. That is, the Dnieper embankment today is an example of a formal solution. A public discussion is needed to develop a common vision. We need to ask for opinions and seek a compromise, because today there are several positions and they contradict each other. Someone needs a nature reserve, someone needs a public promenade, and someone else needs housing. One cannot prioritize one opinion, one must seek a compromise, strive for a balance of interests.

PM: The principles of placemaking, formulated decades ago, say that magnets are needed to activate the embankment, between which people will move. What can become similar magnets in Kyiv? Any outstanding architectural landmarks, cultural complexes?

A.P.: Of course, Kyiv needs it. The Dnieper is a luxurious, wide river, from its banks there is a stunning view with a distant perspective. And the embankment should be a space of beauty. There is beauty in the natural landscape and beauty created by man. One should not rule out the first or the second. It is necessary to integrate the work of a person into nature, and in some sense it is comparable to art. A lot of examples are in Hamburg, Oslo, Sydney. Their landmarks on the embankments appeared thanks to the fact that the townspeople realized the need for such iconic buildings, and the cities had the opportunity to implement them. No such object can pay off as part of a local commercial project, so it will not appear. Such objects are implemented as city-wide, so it is natural to choose the most profitable place for them. Frank Gehry chose the location for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which literally became a city-shaping megaproject, by exploring the locations from a helicopter. And I chose not somewhere in a residential area, but in a post-industrial area with access to the river.

 

Oslo: there are never too many landmarks

The phased implementation of the Fjordbyen municipal project has turned Oslo's Bjørvika embankment into a multicultural area with promenades, museums and a new opera house. Its roof is both a public square and an artificial slope on which you can sunbathe. And in the spring of 2020, a new point of attraction will appear here - the Munch Museum. This will be the main cultural event of the season, which the residents of the city are looking forward to.

7 of the 13 floors of the building are dedicated to the exhibition of the artist's collection of works: it includes 1 paintings, 150 drawings and 7 graphic works. The old museum was able to demonstrate only 500% of this heritage. The authors of the project, architects of the Spanish firm Estudio Herreros, withstood the barrage of criticism directed at them with dignity. They were scolded for the fact that the 18-meter-high building would contrast with the Bjørvika embankment (low- and medium-rise), and the project budget exceeded $000 million. The very design of the building, which resembles the Greek lambda, was also controversial. All this gave rise to heated discussions, due to which implementation was delayed for several years. What is remarkable is that mainly city politicians and public activists argued among themselves. But ordinary residents of Oslo consolidated and went to a demonstration, demanding to put aside disputes and activate construction. Despite the "stuck" status of a monomuseum, this cultural object cannot be called monofunctional - the spaces of the stylobate and upper floors are intended for public events, cafes and restaurants. It is planned that half a million people will visit the Munch Museum in the first year.

Expressed his resolute "yes!" Munch Museum, the residents of Oslo decided that now the iconic building on Bjørvika is enough. Recent plans for the construction of the Fotografihuset photo center on the Sukkerbiten island have been shelved. The townspeople needed a new park or, if the park was too expensive, a wooden shipyard for repairing boats. And the city took their opinion into account. The ecosystem of partnership is primarily dialogue and mutual compromises.

 

Coastal law

In the world marathon-competition for the title of the best "city by the water", the capital of Ukraine, alas, is "rearing". Having a powerful resource — the full-water and wide Dnieper with a 30-kilometer coastline within the city limits — Kyiv remains a city "without embankments" as a whole. Perhaps only the Obolonskaya and Rusanovskaya embankments can be considered comfortable promenades, and the Naberezhnoe Shosse blocks and cuts off the most important, central promenade in the Pochtova Square area from the city. A quick correction of the town-planning mistakes of the past is impossible, but even the evolutionary processes of the development of territories along the Dnieper today are limited, including by legal contradictions.

Every country in the world today has its own "coastal law" that regulates the actions of developers

Every country in the world today has its own "coastal law", which clearly defines the opportunities and responsibilities of developers. In Ukraine, regulatory documents governing economic activity and construction in coastal areas often contradict each other, which creates opportunities for corruption and misuse.

Because of this, many projects hang in the air. Despite the fact that the city has promised to start traffic on the Podolsko-Voskresensky bridge by the end of 2020, there is still no specific and approved infrastructure development project around the congress on the Left Bank. However, this is not the only example.

In 2010, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law dated 02.12.2010 No. 2740 VI "On Amendments to the Water and Land Codes of Ukraine Regarding Coastal Protection Zones", which established the rule of a 100-meter protection zone along large rivers and reservoirs. It is impossible to build a built and built structure.

This protective norm comes from the deep past, almost 100 years ago, when it was important to protect the coastal line from agricultural development, including preventing pesticides from entering the water. It is obvious that today no one conducts such activities within the limits of large cities.

The same law determines that within the limits of populated areas the coastal protection zone is established taking into account town planning documentation. But, as detailed in interview by PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA, authors of the new draft law "On Capital" Anna Bondar and Dmitry Guryn, today it is necessary to honestly admit that there is a crisis in the field of urban documentation in Kyiv. The new General Plan has not been adopted, there is no zoning, district development concepts and detailed plans of territories. That is, the city has the right to authorize the implementation of projects that involve the construction of embankments and buildings on the banks of the Dnieper River, including those that could become landmarks of the capital.

But... where are our plans?

When we talk about flexible and adaptive urban policy, we mean that the city should have opportunities for updating, including the regulatory framework, taking into account new strategies and new opportunities.

A city is a dynamically developing organism, and if its nature requires changes, then there is no need to endure 5 years

It is necessary to revise the General Plan in Kyiv every five years, but this rule is traditionally violated. As Ukrainian People's Deputy Anna Bondar said in an interview with PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: "The master plan must be revised every 5 years based on the results of urban planning monitoring." There are also problems with this, since urban planning monitoring has never been ordered from us. The Kyiv Council has never allocated funding for these purposes. This is very bad, because we do not have data on the city. Europeans believe that there is no need to prescribe a deadline for the adoption of changes, because the city is a dynamically developing organism, and if its nature requires changes, then there is no need to endure 5 years."

There is nothing seditious in regulating legislative norms that restrain development. For example, the renovation of the port area in Hamburg (Hafencity project) required a departure from city regulations.

 

Hafensites, Hamburg

Europe's largest project to convert an industrial zone into a mixed-use district on a 155-hectare territory with the Elbe Philharmonic and Zaha Hadid embankment would have been impossible if the city had not approved a special urban planning regime. On the one hand, the investors were granted benefits and preferences, and on the other, they were limited by strict conditions, obliged to hold a tender for architectural design and place an order for design work within a year. In this case, the investor received the right to purchase the plot. A similar model made it possible to attract many architects to the design of buildings in Hafensity, which made the architecture of the new district extremely diverse. A popular joke: "Whoever finds two identical buildings in Hafensity will get an apartment for free!". Allegedly, such a promise was given in the municipality.

According to the master plan of Hafensity, the total building area was 1,5 million square meters. m. 30% is housing (5,5 thousand apartments). 50% was allocated for commercial real estate. The rest of the area, which is about 17%, is set aside for parks, squares, landscaped embankments, as well as museums, exhibition grounds, and educational institutions. Such distribution made it possible to quickly attract investments, including for infrastructure and improvement. And the very first bike path was built in Hafensity, along which it was possible to go around the entire territory. Then there were observation towers and information pavilions, where models of future buildings were displayed.

Thanks to Hafensita, Hamburg "turned to face the Elbe". The total length of promenades along the river is more than 10 km. The development of the district is still ongoing and will be completed no earlier than 2025.

Closer and closer

In the cities of Europe, where land resources are extremely limited, and every square meter of residential and commercial space is expensive and even more expensive, there are no norms similar to the Ukrainian 100-meter one. No wastelands. Even highways along the river are already considered an unacceptable waste of resources. Motorways and parking lots are lowered underground, despite the multi-million budgets of such events, and buildings and promenades appear above them.

Having mastered all the free territories, the cities move closer to the water and even go out onto it

Sometimes new districts are built not just close to the water's edge, but right on the water. In Amsterdam, the construction of 2009 residential floating residences was completed in 55. And although the territory of the floating village of Waterbuurt West is publicly accessible, there is no continuous embankment along the water. The entire water front is privately owned by the owners of the houses. A more modern example is the still-under-construction Kolkajen-Ropsten eco-district in Stockholm, where houses on the water are designed as low-budget and student housing. Sometimes designers form artificial peninsulas from houses on platforms, designing a general promenade on the one hand, and moorings for private boats on the other.

 

Maxim Kotsyuba

Landscape architect, founder of the KOTSIUBA landscape architecture studio

PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: Landscape design involves the creation of several scenarios for the use of the territory. How, in your opinion, can the currently inaccessible territory along the Dnipro in Kyiv be optimally used — for a promenade, parks, housing, fishing spots?

Maxim Kotsyuba: To get an answer to this question, it is necessary to find out the opinions and needs of stakeholders - citizens, communities, authorities, businesses. For example, if we are talking about the Embankment Highway, which cuts off the city from the water, then this is a very big, global problem. Such large projects, I believe, can be implemented only in the context of developing the strategy of the district or city itself. This is exactly what is happening in Podil — the concept of integrated development has been developed there for a year now. Inaccessibility of embankments is a complex problem. The global strategy is designed to determine where and how the city is moving. Having determined the vector of movement and studied the context, we will be able to understand what resources we have at our disposal, what our embankments should become, how they can function. And how the former industrial zones in Podil will develop. Some of them are privately owned, maybe there are territories in state or communal ownership.

We have to define this context first of all. Yes, the townspeople really lack access to water, I mean daily access. On the right bank, there are not many places where you can approach the water, except for Obolon. But in everyday life, in the scenario of daily use of the city, this is not provided for. Literally: not only visual contact is necessary, but also tactile contact. The Dnipro can be seen, but it is impossible to touch it.

Today, to feel that you live in a city on a river, you need to go somewhere to Trukhaniv Island or Hydropark. This also applies to access to lakes, small rivers that run through the city, and they are almost inaccessible, hidden in collectors.

Grassroots initiatives, when the community gathers and organizes some activity, can provide a clue as to how exactly we would like to use the river. For example, there was the initiative "Lybid Ye!", which showed that the river bank can become a place of rest literally two steps from the offices in the city center. Such local, point projects work well.

Our context is still Soviet, people have been completely deprived of the right to influence the city in any way

PM: The principles of placemaking, formulated by the Project for Public Spaces, assign green zones the role of connective tissue between "magnets", points of attraction — cultural or commercial objects. In your opinion, can green areas and parks be such magnets?

M.K.: We have a completely different context. Decentralization took place in Germany 40 years ago, in Poland - 20 years ago. Residents were involved, so new approaches appeared - this is how a city should work. There was nothing like that in Kyiv, but we always had master plans developed by the authorities, and after gaining independence, business joined this process. And the residents still haven't joined. Our context is still Soviet, people have been completely deprived of the right to influence the city in any way. How should parks and streets be developed, how to organize traffic, public spaces — the residents themselves should have been involved in this process. And it is precisely with them that we need to start deciding the fate of parks and embankments as a whole. We are just beginning to take the first steps towards this.

PM: Is it possible to revitalize Kyiv embankments at the expense of the city budget? Or, in our case, can we rely only on a private investor?

M.K.: The more stakeholders are involved in the process, the better, the more chances there will be that the project will be implemented. It is optimal when both state funds and money from private investors, and people, and public organizations are involved. It is unlikely that NGOs will help with funding, but they can take over discussions and communications. A mechanism for such interaction is needed.

Yes, there is an example of Post Office Square, which clearly shows us what happens if residents are excluded from the design process.

The parties to the project were the government and business — an investor who planned to build a shopping center there. But in the end, the project was not completed. There is no exit from the metro station to the embankment. Because of this, the city loses political points, because the improvement of the territory did not take place to the end. The investor who invested did not get what he wanted, although he believed that he had already agreed with the city council, so he invested in infrastructure. Residents are also not satisfied with the attitude to historical heritage.

That is, the old mechanisms no longer work. And the residents, although they have not yet learned to be included in the city planning process, already know what they definitely do not want. And they are able to block processes that were not involved from the beginning. Now it is very difficult to decide how this territory should work.

PM: Is it possible to implement residential projects near the water or should the coastline be used exclusively as a recreational area? If the second, is it not a risk that the revitalization will not take place at all?

M.K.: Living near water, especially in a city, is very good for residents, but only if access to water is not exclusive to the residents of the buildings. I like Rusanivka, it's very good there - there is an embankment, there is a park next to residential buildings. You can leave the house and find yourself in nature, go straight to the water. I am sure that this opportunity should be used.

 

At whose expense?

Let's return to the experience of Oslo and find out at whose expense the improvement of the Bjørvika embankment took place. Two large construction companies HAV Eiendom and Oslo S Utvikling, which respectively owned 66% and 34% of the real estate in the area, created the company Bjørvika Utvikling, which is responsible for the planning, construction and improvement of all public spaces between the buildings and the three-kilometer section of the embankment.

As soon as the works are fully completed, the public spaces will be handed over to the city's balance sheet free of charge, and city companies will be responsible for their further maintenance. In particular, the Municipal Administration for Real Estate and Urban Development will now be the manager of urban property, and the Urban Development Agency will be responsible for maintenance.

This is a good example of how developers in practice managed to combine efforts to improve public areas, distribute expenses, and then share responsibility for maintaining the environment with the city. A great approach — for cities whose budgets can afford it.

In the November volume of PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA (article "How much does a green garden cost?») we calculated the cost of maintaining city parks in Kyiv and came to the conclusion that today the city treasury critically lacks funds for the maintenance and improvement of already existing recreational areas. At the same time, the oases in the new comfort-level residential complexes are kept in perfect condition.

In London, Seoul, Oakland, Toronto, and New York, city parks, including those on waterfronts, are maintained either at the expense of donated citizens, or have the status of Privately owned public spaces (POPS), that is, places intended for public use, but remaining in the property of private owners and supported by them. Even the famous Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, created for the 2012 Olympic Games, with embankments along the Ly River, is not owned by the city, but by POPS.

Landscaping and maintenance of public embankments at the expense of the budget is an expensive pleasure

There are only two answers to the question, at whose expense will the new embankments be built, beautified and maintained. This is possible either at the expense of taxes and donations from citizens, or at the expense of private investors.

Ukrainians continue to live in a socialist paradigm, when any information about attracting private investors to the development of valuable urban areas causes a storm of indignation, and sometimes mass protests. In part, this is due to adherence to the ideals of the communist past, and in part, it is the result of the land and construction chaos of the 90s and 2000s, which gave rise to a painful mistrust of the residents towards developers. To a greater extent, this is the effect of insufficient awareness of citizens about modern urban planning approaches. But sometimes it is outright fraud on the part of those who call themselves civil activists, but in fact act to the detriment of public interests, blocking development strategies and repelling potential investors from any interest in getting involved in scandals and suffering reputational losses. Confirmation that banal organized crime groups sometimes hide behind the banner of "civic activism" can be found on the website of the National Police of Ukraine.

Such a situation, together with the above-mentioned crisis of urban documentation, scares off, first of all, foreign investors who could pour millions into the development of Kyiv public buildings, but consider the specific business climate of Ukraine extremely uncomfortable. Ukrainian development companies are also very rarely and with a high degree of caution involved in projects related to the development of coastal territories.

What can fix this situation? Information and participation. Informing residents, engaging them in an open dialogue will ultimately lead to transparency of city processes and greater mutual tolerance of all stakeholders — investors, citizens, and officials. All of them are equally responsible and have rights as members of the same community. After all, the waterfront is ours.