Moscow to develop recommendations on accessible environment solutions
The recommendations will be aimed at supplementing and systematizing the standards and norms for designing an accessible environment. On November 30, the Blagosfera Center in Moscow hosted the annual conference of the Moscow Committee for Architecture "Comfortable City", the purpose of which is to identify current problems and trends in urban planning.
The theme of this year s event was "Culture of Accessibility", the participants discussed relevant urban development opportunities and solutions for the accessible environment that contribute to increasing inclusion.
In total, more than 350 people took part in the conference, including representatives of city departments and services, development companies and NPOs, cultural institutions, architects, designers and active citizens. 35 experts from various industries spoke to the audience and told them about public and private initiatives and projects in the field of accessibility and inclusion.
During the plenary session, Sergey Kuznetsov, Chief Architect of Moscow, launched the development of recommendations on solutions for an accessible urban environment:
“Now we have decided to start working on recommendations for standards dedicated to integrated solutions for increasing urban accessibility and inclusion. Of course, in many previously adopted standards there are references to this topic and it seems, at first glance, that a lot has been done. But now we are faced with the task of collecting all the developments, collecting all the comments received in recent years, updating the database and developing a set of adaptive urban planning and architectural solutions for years to come. To do this, we are holding the Comfortable City conference in order to find answers to all our questions as much as possible and start a dialogue with all categories of citizens.”
The conference and the study that was conducted as part of it should be the first step towards the development of additional recommendations for standards and existing regulations on urban accessibility solutions. Subsequently, they will affect both the construction of new buildings and public spaces, and capital repair projects of a wide variety of objects.
“Without the participation of active communities, positive changes in the city are impossible. Therefore, this year, at the Moskomarkhitektura conference, Citymakers, as a program directorate, invited experts from very different fields in order to discuss the topic of inclusion in urban environment solutions from different angles: from the city and relevant departments, from NPOs, from architects and designers , from big business,” commented Petr Kudryavtsev, founder of Citymakers.
The Comfortable City conference is organized by the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of Moscow on the initiative of Chief Architect of Moscow, Sergey Kuznetsov. The Program Directorate of Comfortable City: A Culture of Accessibility” Conference is Citymakers. The official partner of the conference is Mosinzhproekt.
