At a round table in Irkutsk they discussed how the urban environment will change, from new approaches to urban planning policy to the development of built up areas and preservation of the historic look. Participants spoke about renovating 43 city sites, the need to move away from spot development, and the coexistence of wooden architecture and modern districts. Special attention was given to recreational areas, their area in the new standards has tripled, and green spaces are planned where wooden houses are demolished.

A round table under this title was held the day before at the press center of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda-Baikal. The event was attended by the Mayor of Irkutsk Viktor Kondrashov, Deputy Mayor and Chairman of the Committee on Urban Planning Policy of the Irkutsk Administration Evgeny Devochkin, Acting Chief Architect of the city Inna Kondratieva, Chairman of the Board of the Non-Profit Partnership Self-Regulatory Organization of Builders of the Baikal Region Sergey Brilka, Head of the Architecture Service of the Irkutsk Region and Chief Architect of the Irkutsk Region Ekaterina Protasova, and leading architects of Irkutsk.
How Irkutsk will develop in terms of construction and architecture, whether it needs new approaches to urban planning policy, which construction sites will be developed, what mass housing should be like, and how it should be built. These and other issues were raised at the round table.
“I came into government with a desire to change the appearance of Irkutsk,” said Irkutsk Mayor Viktor Kondrashov in his opening remarks. “The first thing we started with was urban planning documentation. Amendments to the city’s master plan have been approved, planning projects are being developed, and local urban planning standards are being adopted. The availability of urban planning documentation, which spells out all the rules of the game, allows the city to develop and move forward. In what direction? My view is this: Irkutsk should have different architectural zones - it must preserve its identity, and that means the city should include both corners of wooden architecture and modern districts.”
According to Deputy Mayor and Chairman of the Urban Planning Policy Committee Evgeny Devochkin, modernization is needed by any city. At present, the Committee on Urban Planning Policy is carrying out extensive work to identify the zones and their boundaries that will be subject to renovation. In total, there are 43 such areas in the city. Two of them have already been recognized by the Irkutsk City Duma as areas for development. At the beginning of September, an auction was held for the right to conclude an agreement on the development of the built-up area within the boundaries of Lytkina, Krasnokazachya, Zvereva, and Deputatskaya streets, covering 68,151 square meters. The auction for the second site within the boundaries of Sechenova, Zakharova, and Borodina streets, covering 3.5 hectares, will take place in the near future. After the winner of the competition - the Association of Developers of the City of Irkutsk - presents the planning project and land subdivision project for this site, it will be possible to imagine exactly what the renovated neighborhood will look like.
As Sergey Brilka, Chairman of the Board of the Non-Profit Partnership Self-Regulatory Organization of Builders of the Baikal Region, emphasized, the adoption of local urban planning standards is a very important step in the development of Irkutsk: it will help not only move away from piecemeal development, but also avoid ill-conceived urban planning decisions.
According to Ekaterina Protasova, Head of the Architecture Service of the Irkutsk Region and Chief Architect of the Irkutsk Region, Irkutsk has three strategic directions of development: agglomeration, which should be based not on administrative unification, but on the common development of infrastructure. The second vector is the preservation of the city’s heritage and identity. The third is urban improvement. This includes the development of built-up areas and the creation of recreational zones.
As Irkutsk Mayor Viktor Kondrashov clarified, 300-350 million rubles are allocated every year for intra-block landscaping. In place of demolished wooden houses, the mandatory creation of recreational zones is provided. According to Viktor Kondrashov, Irkutsk’s green zones need to be actively developed. Incidentally, in the local urban planning standards, the construction norms for the organization of recreational and leisure zones have been increased threefold. That is, if previously the area of a recreational zone was equal to the area of the building, now it has been increased three times.
As the participants of the round table noted, this is a distinctive feature of Irkutsk. The Urban Planning Code allows these zones to remain at the level of construction standards.
Based on materials from the Press Service of the Irkutsk City Administration