LEGAL VIOLATIONS OF SAINT PETERSBURG CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION

Abstract

The authors of the article are the original residents of Saint Petersburg, who believe that the city is not a'home-to-work' place, but a living organism, which can and should be protected. The history of confrontation between St. Petersburg and high-rise constructions lasts more than two hundred years, since Nicholas I had introduced the first height restriction in the history of Russia.

In part, this decision turned out to be a prologue to the future drama that was performed by the middle of XX century. The city was divided nominally into a 'center' and a 'periphery', with the latter used later more as an offensive term. Its architectural look was of no concern, as it is today. And this is the root of the problem. High-rise buildings are not scary on their own; vertical dominants does not destroy the city. The main problem is that it is trapped in the circle of dilapidated, thoughtless and soulless residential complexes.

Recently Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky introduced such an expression as “provincialization of St. Petersburg”. It is, perhaps, the most capacious description of the current urban policy. The absolute majority of developers cannot or do not want to understand that the construction methods applied in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Omsk or Tomsk should be completely different on the Neva lands.As a result, there is a conflict of interest – an ordering party wants a project to be “faster, higher, stronger” and with a minimum payback period. Meanwhile the ensembles of historic buildings in the city center are empty because they cannot fulfill the above-mentioned goals. A reasonable question arises – what do we need them for?

The article is meant to find answers to the most basic urbanism question, like where the borderline between the city preservation and museum-like view formation is, how to adapt (almost) medieval city to modern life without losing its unique view, and how the state, which computes preservation regulations, encourages developers who violate these regulations.