Plan without a Plan The Greater Moscow Project

Moscow is growing. In July 2012, the city's area was doubled to 250,000 hectares at the expense of the Moscow region. President Dmitry Medvedev set this in motion a year earlier. He announced that many of Russia's government agencies would be moved beyond the gates of Moscow, where an international financial centre would be developed. He did not reveal how this was supposed to solve the Moscow metropolitan area's main problem: the collapse of the city's transport system. At least an international competition is now supposed to provide ideas. But there is a risk that there will be no spatial development plan, and that, instead, the construction lobby will press for uncontrolled growth of the city.