Transcript of the April 15, 2006 broadcast Hello, today we’ll be talking about the following: A protest every day. Spring flare-ups at construction sites. A marvelous invention by the Krasnopresnensky District Administration. And the Mayor of Moscow has decided to support the legal services business. Spring has arrived. The birds have returned. And on the streets, there are now couples in love and people with placards. In fact, it feels as though there are even more people with placards. The past two weeks have been marked by unprecedented protest activity from citizen initiative groups opposing illegal construction. Khoroshyovo-Mnevniki, Butyrsky Val, Maryina Roshcha, Chaplygin Street, today on Angarskaya Street, on Pushkin Square several groups stood there for several evenings in a row, and so on and so on. And those are only the cases covered by the media. So what happened? Perhaps the reason is that, thanks to hormonal activity, some people join the couples in love, while others go to a protest. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. We decided to ask for the opinion of Mikhail Berkovich, press secretary of the Central Administrative District prefecture, where protest activity is traditionally the highest. M. Berkovich: There have been no decisions lately that could have influenced this in any way, this kind of activity, nor have there been any general resolutions, yes. In terms of any new regulations or anything of the sort, there has been nothing in this area lately. Aha, so neither the government nor the Moscow City Duma has put forward any malicious initiatives. We ask further. Mr. Berkovich suggests that one possible reason may be competition. Berkovich: We have examples of very prolonged conflict situations, including at approved sites—precisely because they were approved. That is, conflict, publicity—but I can tell you, yes, that sometimes certain actions by some residents were, generally speaking, provoked by people who were themselves interested in taking over the site. A company that had wanted the plot, lost the tender, and accordingly encouraged certain actions, even violent ones—this is, in fact, a known practice. And of course the authorities’ favorite conspiracy theory was not left aside either: extortion, with Muscovites supposedly tormenting developers. M. Berkovich: In a number of cases, well, we simply have written statements, yes: for such-and-such a sum, I renounce all claims. So that, too, is a motive behind certain actions. As for the rest, who the hell knows—but Mikhail Berkovich says the authorities will sort out all those who are dissatisfied. M. Berkovich: You understand, no one is going to look at this in general terms. If there is a specific address, then we will deal with that specific address. We probably won’t generalize—definitely not. There you have it. Too bad we didn’t hear one more theory about a political order; it was very popular over the past year and a half. The authorities explained protests of this kind solely as the political activity of the opposition. Supposedly, once the elections to the Moscow City Duma were over, it would all stop. But the elections took place five months ago, and things have only gotten worse, so it’s already rather awkward to talk about the machinations of political opponents. And most importantly, as usual, the government representative is in no way inclined to explain the protest activity the way most Muscovites do, naively assuming that if Moscow’s construction complex spent less time looking for enemies, handled construction paperwork more properly, complied more carefully with all regulations, and were less obsessed with infill development, then perhaps some of the people with placards would retrain as couples in love. To the delight of those worried about the demographic situation. interlude Everything ingenious is simple. A meeting was held at the Krasnopresnensky District Administration with local residents regarding the construction of a garage complex in the courtyard of the buildings at 23 Krasnaya Presnya. Fifty-three residents attended and demanded that minutes of the meeting be kept and later provided to them. That was in case someone wanted to falsify the discussion’s outcome. Unfortunately, that is not uncommon in Moscow. As a result, all 53 people spoke out sharply against the construction and asked that the minutes record the fact that the developer refused to produce the required documentation. But the next day, the residents were not given the meeting minutes. Nor the day after that. Nor three days later. In fact, they were told that the district administration was unhappy with the results of the meeting, and therefore there would be no minutes at all. And indeed, we can barely remember any such meeting. Perhaps it never happened. All the residents can do is throw up their hands. Congratulations to the Krasnopresnensky District Administration on inventing a new and effective method of working with the public. interlude On Tuesday, at a government meeting, our mayor lashed out at the plans of the federal authorities. Those evil villains have decided to abolish licensing for construction activity. And that, we are told, threatens us with terrible disasters. If any of our listeners have the chance, please pass some newspaper classifieds along to Yuri Mikhailovich (Yuri Luzhkov, then mayor of Moscow). There will be no fewer than a hundred ads promising, for $500 to $2,000, to arrange a construction license of any complexity for any company. It creates the impression that abolishing licenses threatens terrible disaster only for law firms and the crooks in the ministries who process those licenses. interlude That was Alexei Navalny, Executive Secretary of the Defense of Muscovites movement, denouncing excesses on the ground. The program was prepared with the help of Yevgenia Ten. If you have something to say to the Urban Planning Chronicle program, write to us at echo@echo.msk.ru, marked for Navalny. Until next Saturday!