Trutnev E. K. Territorial planning and the quality of urban environment

Abstract: This text attempts to answer the question of how legal support for the process of territorial planning affects the quality of urban environment. The only planning to be considered good is planning that involves a calculated projection for the future result – the quality of urban environment. Several professional technologies exist to generate such calculated projections. They include 3 components: (a) balancing between planned volume of construction and the relevant infrastructure (transport, social, engineering and technical); (b) evaluating the actual financial capabilities for step-by-step construction of this infrastructure, and (c), for maintenance of the said infrastructure on a required scale and quality levels, within the financial capabilities of the city budget and population. If any of those components is missing, a general plan may not be considered sound. It may become feasible on the minimal condition of any lack of legal obstacles for conducting the actions that constitute its territorial planning. This text names several of those obstacles and justifies the importance of their elimination. The author speaks of three areas of meaning: 1) universal logic of territorial planning and general plan preparations; 2) of the Federal Act’s anti-logic, which nominally eliminated the universal logic of territorial planning; 3) of the practical consequences which are the result of the implementation of the Federal Act’s errors.

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