On April 13-14, a landmark event took place in Kazan on the territory of the Kremlin Presences – the architectural and urban planning conference “Dialogues. Spring meetings. The key topic of the meeting is “The transport system as part of the urban development process.”
The official opening began with a welcoming speech by Ilsiyar Tukhvatullina, the chief architect of Kazan.
“One of the problems is public transport stops, which are not always convenient for users. A comfortable urban environment should work towards people who move either on foot, or on bicycles, or by public transport,” explained Ilsiyar Miskhatovna.
The event brought together architects, developers, developers, urbanists and students from different cities of Russia.
The agenda of the meeting was structured in such a way that the discussion began with major aspects of the transport sector: bridges, roads, improving the comfort of the daily movement of the population, the construction of transport hubs. Then they turned to the development of pedestrian and bicycle routes, parking spaces and landscaping.
Angelina Korshunova, a participant in the Dialogues, the architect of Spetsstroyservis, spoke in more detail: “The conference began with an experimental video offering solutions for reorganizing the urban environment. The City Development Institute, using the example of a specific route, demonstrated the shortcomings encountered on the pedestrian path and options for their transformation. The main idea that united all the lectures was the design with full integration of the object into the existing environment.”
According to a study on the state of the city’s transport system, conducted in preparation for the Dialogues, many residents use public transport, but consider the city more convenient for motorists.
Thus, especially lively discussions aroused the issues of developing public transport infrastructure, optimizing route networks, and improving pedestrian zones. Industry experts shared their experience of specific practical solutions.
“The only way out is to pay more attention to the comfort of public transport. For example, the case of creating transport interchange nodes and dividing traffic flows into different phases is interesting. Innovative proposal: instead of trying to reduce a person’s travel time, a scenario how to make this time more pleasant and interesting. At the end there was a workshop “Types of urban spaces”, which was attended by students-architects. In the presented projects, they talked about the historically established spaces that affect people and the environment, their proper use when creating objects in historical territories,” Korshunova summed up.
