Globe Town, Glob-Taun, Glob Taun, colloq. Zhlob Taun, Blob Taun, Grob Taun, Globe City, also Russian Manhattan, Russian Manhattan — the single most important investment project that the Nizhny Novgorod Region takes around to assorted world salons and investors' shindigs. Implementation of the project is scheduled for 2030-2035.
Some observers hold that the project is nothing other than the most consistent implementation of Putin's Plan as applied to a single region.
The Globe Town project was presented at the MIPIM-2008 international property exhibition in Cannes on 12 March 2008.
The area of the land plot is 30 million sq m, of the built-up area about 20 million sq m.
The essence of the phenomenon
A fantastical Satellite City of Nizhny Novgorod filled with the future Nizhny Novgorod elite, regular visitors to the spherical opera house, and with labour migrants from other countries. A further development of the Strelka City project in the spirit of globalisation and neo-feudalism.
It is to stand on the marshes of the Borskaya Floodplain, in the breeding grounds of the midges.
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Today the Nizhny Novgorod Region has the chance to become a centre of trade, a distribution centre for a large group of goods.
We are working to make our region return to its golden age, when it was the centre of the economy. Nobody will come to us unless there is modern infrastructure, modern hotels, offices and so on. There is no need to be afraid of anything, one must dream |
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The original ideas
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The Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Valery Shantsev, commissioned the Italian architect Dante Benini to design a "Globe Town" that will rise next to Nizhny Novgorod. The architect has already presented the first sketches. According to the project, the city will be a metropolis the size of Manhattan, the business centre of New York. It is expected to be home to 500 thousand people, not so much Nizhny Novgorod residents as migrants from other regions of Russia. |
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We want this to be a symbol that would be recognised all over the world. Like the Opera House in Sydney. This will be a city that a great deal of work has gone into, a city that is being born from scratch and that will have everything necessary for life right away. It will be a real city of the future. |
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Zoning of the areas
- residential development – 9.5 thousand sq m (50%), of which 70% is economy class, 20% is * business class, 10% is "luxury" class;
- business centre – 3.8 thousand sq m (20%);
- shopping and entertainment centres – 2.85 thousand sq m (15%);
- recreational zone and administrative buildings – 2.85 thousand sq m (15%).
Main facilities
- a lake port for private boats;
- a huge entertainment centre of the "Disneyland" type;
- a water park;
- a health centre;
- a stadium;
- a botanical garden;
- artificial lakes (connected to the river by a network of canals);
- an international trade centre;
- park zones and 1 national park (a "park of the world" laid out in the form of a map of the earth);
- a metro network and 3 (4) road bridges;
- a golf club;
- an ice arena;
- a skating rink.
The architect's designs
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In the drawings showing the approximate appearance of the future city, presented by the eccentric (as the newspaper WSJ called him) architect Dante Oscar Benini, there appears a city that is either alien or futuristic, straight out of the novels of science fiction writers. In the middle is a huge sphere-shaped building with three skyscrapers around it. According to the architect's design, the city will resemble the modern business centre of New York, while the Volga will play the role of the Hudson.
The architect's fantasy will be brought to life by his own Anglo-Italian company Dante O. Benini & Architects together with OAO "Nizhegorodkapstroy". The total area of the land plot, according to the business portal of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, is 30 million sq m. Under the plan, 9.5 million sq m will be taken up by residential buildings, 3.8 million by facilities of the business centre, 2.85 million by shopping and entertainment centres, and approximately 2.85 million by the recreational zone and administrative buildings. The maximum height of the buildings will be 600 metres. The estimated number of residents is 500 thousand people. The Globe Town investment project will be presented at the stand of the Nizhny Novgorod Region at the MIPIM-2008 exhibition in Cannes from 11 to 14 March. |
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The city's symbol - a giant bubble sphere
The city's symbol is a giant sphere Globe of the Nizhny Novgorod Region 120 m in diameter, transparent and lit, perfectly smooth. Inside the sphere there will be (an area of 200 thousand sq m) an Arts Centre: an opera house, a library, cinemas and so on, as well as numerous shops that will occupy several floors.
Globe Town will house an international trade centre - three towers 600 m high each. At the same time, the height of the main buildings will be approximately 250 m.
The globe city as a new symbol of the Nizhny Novgorod region
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As reported earlier, according to Dante Benini, the chief architect of the project to build the city "Globe Town" in the Bor floodplain (Nizhny Novgorod Region), this project was conceived as a new symbol of the region.
"When we first visited Nizhny Novgorod and saw the completely empty spaces on the bank of the Volga opposite the Kremlin, we immediately thought of Australia and America. The symbol of the city that we have conceived will be a giant sphere, just like the Opera House in Sydney or the Statue of Liberty in Manhattan", said D. Benini. |
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Progressive solutions
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According to architect Luca Gonzo, the design of Globe Town used development of mixed height and density. In the very centre, next to the "Globe" cultural and leisure facility, there will be no buildings, so that it can be seen in a magnificent view from every point of the new city and from the opposite bank of the Volga.
L. Gonzo also said that a transport system had been developed both within the new city and linking Globe Town with Bor and Nizhny Novgorod. In particular, it is planned to build an underground tunnel beneath the river for the metro and cars. In order to avoid flooding of the new city when the river overflows in spring, it is planned to build an embankment using technologies that are successfully applied in various countries of Europe. |
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Extraordinary appeal
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In addition to dense residential development and numerous office buildings, the city will have a port, a water park, a large health centre, a stadium and one of the largest botanical gardens in Europe. Furthermore, it is planned to build a huge entertainment centre of the "Disneyland" type.
Meanwhile, a number of Japanese companies have expressed their interest in implementing the "Globe Town" project. According to the Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Valery Shantsev, the pool of investors for the project will be formed only after a detailed layout plan for the territory has been developed. |
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Building on the experience
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"This is our first experience of building a modern district, a micro-district. If it is successful, then the technology will be transferred to other districts of the Nizhny Novgorod region as well", said Dmitry Svatkovsky. |
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Unfortunately, the amount of experience gained turned out to be minimal because of the forced development of the Cheboksary Catastrophe).
Criticism
Overall, the Nizhny Novgorod region presented five of its largest real estate projects to the international community: a city within a city – Globe Town, the Nizhny Novgorod Technopark, the "Ostrov" sports and entertainment complex, the modern "Bolshiye Ovragi" business centre and the "Rezidentsiya" premium-comfort residential quarter. The stand of the Nizhny Novgorod region enjoyed heightened interest and popularity. During the opening of MIPIM-2008, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region Valery Shantsev said that participation in such exhibitions gives the region an opportunity to find investors and to implement the boldest plans, and that a niche will be found for "sponsors" of the most varied specialisations – in housing construction, the hotel business, the entertainment sector, roads, nanotechnology.
However, by no means everyone approves of the Globe Town project and, accordingly, of building on the Borskaya floodplain - writes the magazine "Poleznaya Ploshchad". Professor, Honoured Architect of the RSFSR, honorary member of the Russian Academy of Architecture, one of the authors of the First and Second general plans of Nizhny Novgorod Vadim Vasilyevich Voronkov named at least five reasons why the Borskaya floodplain must not be built up.
- Reason number one – karst sinkholes. The Borskaya floodplain is very similar to the Sormovskaya one, only that one is on the right bank of the Volga and the other on the left. They have the same geological structure. But the city at one time refused to build on the Sormovskaya floodplain for a very weighty reason – continuous holes underground. The soft rock at depth (mainly gypsum) is washed out by groundwater, and voids are formed. The Borskaya floodplain is exactly the same kind of karst terrain. It is worth listening to the hydrogeologists, who say that building here is impossible. Of course, modern technologies make it possible to avoid karst collapses: a special grout can be pumped into the voids. But tonnes of it are needed, and that is very expensive. The game is not worth the candle.
- Reason number two – a floodplain is called a floodplain precisely because during high water the river floods it. It happens (rarely, of course, but it does happen) that the peaks of the floods on the Oka and the Volga coincide, and that is already a catastrophe. Usually the water rises by 8–9 metres, but when the floods merge, as happened in 1926, when people went about Mayakovka in boats, the water rose by almost 13 metres. What is more, there is also the Gorky Reservoir, where the difference in levels is 18 metres. All this is held back by a dam and a dyke. Back in the 1970s specialists thought about the question of what to do in the event of a dam break. If that happens, because of the difference in levels the wave will reach a height of 9–10 metres and will sweep away everything in its path. This emergency situation was taken into account when the Zarechnaya part of the city was built, in particular the Meshcherskoye Ozero micro-district. The low ground here was raised to a safe level (An opinion from the series of urban legends. In the event of the destruction of the dam of the Gorky Sea the wave will be much lower. In fact the embankment of Meshcherka and Kanavino was built taking into account the maximum Raising the Water Level in the Cheboksary Hydroelectric Power Plant Reservoir from the 63 to the 68 metre mark. With that, in the area of Nizhny it will rise by about 4 metres, and at the dam of the Nizhny Novgorod hydroelectric station - by 2 metres). And the floodplain will also have to be raised. Which will again require titanic efforts, and everything around will be dug up.
- Reason number three – under all the general plans for the development of the city, including the one currently in force, the Borskaya floodplain was envisaged as a place for laying out a water park. That is, a zone of everyday active recreation for the townspeople was supposed to appear here. Not far from the city centre, on the river. This place was planned along the lines of Kiev, where a magnificent water park was built on the Dnieper. After such improvement it will be possible on the Borskaya floodplain to fish, to relax with families, and in the winter time to go skiing. Of course, certain engineering work will have to be carried out: some places raised, others lowered. Besides, a floodplain is a breeding ground for midges, so the sanitary condition of the area should be dealt with separately. However, as of today the Borskaya floodplain is practically the only potential place of recreation for the central district of the city that can be excellently developed.
- Reason number four – the historical plan of Nizhny Novgorod. Our city is unique in that its historical part – the kremlin – opens onto the natural environment. Almost nowhere else has such a thing survived, it is a most rare phenomenon. Building up the Borskaya floodplain will lead to the destruction of the unique ensemble of architecture and nature. The perception of the city from the river, from the ships sailing past, will also be spoiled. If a mass of skyscrapers appears, it will ruin the whole magnificent view of the so-called Bolshaya Volga, and Nizhny Novgorod will become as faceless as a mass of other cities.
- Reason number five – development will pull along with it the merging of Bor and Nizhny Novgorod, and the latter will turn into a megalopolis. Vadim Vasilyevich Voronkov believes that such globalisation is not only unnecessary but harmful. All over the world people are fighting the sprawl of cities. Science has proved that megalopolises are unmanageable. In Russia there is already Moscow, where multi-level interchanges, new metro lines and new bypass roads are being built, yet the traffic jams do not become fewer. The growth of a city's population "drags" behind it problems that grow in geometric progression. While some are being solved, others become many times more numerous. That is why the world trend is towards the de-consolidation of cities.
As for the originality of the project, there are no creative flourishes in it at all, asserts V.V. Voronkov, the world has seen far more than that. It will not be possible to surprise anyone, but everything will be finally disfigured, and we will leave our descendants a bad legacy. The question of building and expanding the city is a very difficult one, it must be considered globally. But that is exactly what nobody is doing. There is no town-planning sense in building up the Borskaya floodplain, V.V. Voronkov emphasises.
Interesting facts
- Globe Town will consist of five districts.
- To avoid flooding of the city it is proposed to make an embankment using technologies that are successfully applied in various countries of Europe, in particular for saving Venice.
- The maximum height of the buildings of Globe Town is 600 m. The height of the main buildings is 250 m.
- Landscaping of the territory – 50%, about 40% of the area will retain its landscape (marshes).
- Approximate number of residents – 500 thousand people.
- Total volume of investment – 750 - 800 billion roubles.
- Implementation of the construction project - 2030-2035.
Zhlob-Town: no place here for the people of Bor?
http://www.aif-nn.ru/society/society_details/508633
The other day I had to plunge with all my might (one could say, in the literal sense) into the typical life of an ordinary settlement some 80 kilometres from Nizhny in the Borsky district. Having driven through an uninhabited, deserted village of dacha owners, a handsome black jeep found itself in solid Russian mud. When it got dark, and the only neighbours were a host of indifferent stars, along with the last broken feeble contrivances all hope of anyone's speedy help broke off too. For objective reasons nobody could come with the right kind of transport, or only closer to 8 in the morning.
If anyone has not been in such a situation, believe me: the pitch darkness, the cold, the hopelessness and the desolation (against the background of an expensive car standing nearby) are stressful. It is about 5 km on foot to the nearest village with inhabitants, through rubbish dumps, bushes and forest. After some three hours we managed to find a "bukhanka". Having torn the straps, and having gone off again, this time for a tow rope, it managed with the greatest difficulty to drag out two tonnes of tinted beauty which was already sitting on its "belly". Dirty clothes and wet feet at " minus 2" do not count.
Why am I telling this in such detail about what was, on the whole, an unremarkable adventure?
Precisely because it is unremarkable. UAZs are the only vehicle for ALL settlements not designated on the map as a town or a workers' settlement. To many places in the region now only a KamAZ and a tractor can get through, to some - only a tractor.
And now to the actual subject. There, in the back of beyond, one longed to be closer to bright and populous Bor. And by contrast, struck by the difference that had really shown itself, I recalled the grandiose projects. I am speaking of the much-publicised Glob Town...
The blue of the trans-Volga skyscrapers?
"A quiet, evening weariness
Calls me out of the hum of voices -
To the Nizhny Novgorod province
And into the blue of the Semyonov forests..."
Boris Kornilov
"Europe's sensational construction project starts on the bank of the Volga", "Nizhny Novgorod projects were snapped up at the MIPIM exhibition in Cannes" - thus, or approximately thus, the news feeds began to sparkle. The media, especially the online ones, love it when something is "grandiose", "large-scale", "the biggest" and so on.
That is simply the work of the media. Which, as is well known, both officials and politicians know perfectly well and know how to use.
However, the reality is that fierce arguments began not only on the forums. Their competent opinion about the wonder-city costing 100 billion dollars (and most likely more) on the Borskaya floodplain with a projected population of 500,000 people was immediately expressed by scholars - professors of architecture and town planning, engineers, hydrologists and ecologists.
Despite the refined style, the same thing still comes through in their statements: "This is madness!".
Simpler citizens, assuming that the project is not at all intended for the ordinary working people of Nizhny and the region, have already nicknamed it Zhlob Town.
It seems that mere words about the fact that a legendary natural ensemble, one of Russia's sights, the pride of the residents and a "lure" for tourists, will be destroyed are "not quite enough". That, apparently, is not an argument. But even the questions about the fact that:
· skyscrapers will be built on a marshy plain that in especially high-water years is flooded almost up to the central Lenin street in Bor (and the dam, accordingly, will lead to the water flooding the other side - the lower part of Nizhny Novgorod),
· that the only "lungs" of overcrowded and gas-polluted Nizhny will be destroyed,
· that the forests and lakes along the Bor dyke will be destroyed, where, despite the irony of Mr. Svatkovsky, the minister for investment policy of the regional government, an excellent sportsman, a Muscovite who has never lived in Nizhny (he said in an interview with "MK": "As for relict trees and unique wildlife, so far I have not seen a single relict animal, either in any document or with my own eyes. Well, if the Loch Ness monster lives there, then bring me a photograph of the Loch Ness monster"), so then, where, despite his irony, there are nightingales - not relict ones, granted, but ordinary ones, which in May do something inconceivable along the whole Bor dyke - there were and still are larks in the meadows, hares and foxes in the forests, fish in the forest lakes. None of this WILL BE THERE.
· and how will 500 thousand people (half of Nizhny Novgorod) feel on a small plot of land? This, it seems, will also become the main city, skyscrapers and glass, and somewhere down below - a battered little slope with a little kremlin. By the way, a scholar rightly noted: where will these 500 thousand come from? Clearly not from Lukoyanov and Perevoz. Of course, if one takes into account the crowding of the capital, and if Shantsev also builds a high-speed train to Moscow...
Even all these dubious prospects do not dissuade the authors of the project either.
How much is all this needed?
Let me return to the story of the adventure. So then. If a third of the region simply has no roads - they are not even bad, they simply do not exist - is it reasonable, is it adequate to invest efforts in artificially raising a territory of 20 million square metres by 5-10 m? To build a hi-tech wonder, an apotheosis of gigantomania and urbanism, creating an even greater congestion of a megalopolis instead of developing territories and preserving a normal possibility to live and breathe, to cultivate spirituality and patriotism in children through love for the beauty of the Volga rather than for glass giants? Is it reasonable?
Bor will be demolished. And where do the people of Bor go?
And finally, one more question, probably unnoticed by the press and not advertised by the authors of the project. Take a close look at the model.
It was more often shown from an angle closer to the "skyscrapers". However, according to the existing natural landscape, the "skyscrapers" are placed on the bank of the Vezloma River. The Volga "flows" in the lower right corner. What does this tell us? That right now, on the site of the model's "skyscrapers", the town of Bor is in fact located — not all of it, but a huge area. So where will 100 thousand residents be put in an era of building skyscrapers for 500 thousand residents that are clearly beyond their means?! Perhaps they will first build these small houses closer to the Volga? But who said those are houses? And all the more, who said that such a good spot would be given to the working people of Bor?
Although there is hope that all this is, after all, more of the good old PR. For if we again look at the model and imagine the real proportions, it is clear that the Volga and the Vezloma are ve-e-ery wide compared with the skyscrapers. One skyscraper turns out to be not much larger than an OM boat running the "Nizhny Novgorod - Bor" route. No one is speaking of precision, it is clear that this is only a layout model, but it is obvious that in the place of the cluster of "skyscrapers" only some 8-10 of them would actually fit — unless, of course, the project really does envisage seizing territory as far as the village of Pikino on one side and Neklyudovo on the other.
Maybe there will simply be a recreational zone here after all, and a little sensibly built housing? Developing the territory of the present-day Krasnaya Gorka microdistrict at the entrance to Bor is quite sensible. In a normal way and without skyscrapers. And are there really not enough territories for construction around Nizhny?
So let it rather be in the PR way: more words, less action.
Author Natalya Rezontova 2 April 2008