An international design competition has given the world a look at how Moscow City may look in the future.

The competition's winning entry was supplied by the Capital Cities Planning Group and it foresees Russia's capital city expanding and becoming greenhouse gas emissions-free in years ahead.

The Capital Cities Planning Group is an international partnership involving US firms Urban Design Associates and Nelson/Nigaard and Canada's Beasley & Associates. Its winning design - a ‘City in a Forest' - sits on 155 square kilometres of earth and lakes and accommodates a population of 1.7 million.

Moscow City Design

In winning this Moscow city design challenge, the Capital Cities Planning Group beat a whole host of other groups and it was chosen after a selection process that lasted six months. The lakes element of the City in a Forest concept was drafted by Gillespies and, in a statement, representative Brian Evans referred to the current Moscow as ‘a dynamic city...that suffers from its structure...a soviet city superimposed onto an 18th and 19th century imperial city'.

He added: ‘It has suffered trauma since the 1990s in the shift from Soviet times and this is a genuine attempt by the Moscow and Russian governments to address traffic congestion, the housing market and environmental concerns to bring about some creative sustainable planning for the city's future.'

Future Moscow City

Specifically, here's what the future Moscow city vision covers. There's a total of four zones, all of them blended into existing wooded areas. The Innovation zone and the Federal zone are positioned close to Moscow's existing structures, while the Logistics and Science zones are placed further away.

The new layout also serves to ease the huge stress currently loaded onto Moscow's transport network and, according to a statement published by the Capital cities Planning Group: ‘The proposed physical form builds on the natural system of waterways, lakes, forests and meadows as the foundation for a green infrastructure network to support the development of a zero carbon city.'

Construction International will look again at this innovative vision for Moscow in future News Items.

Image copyright Urban Design Associates - reproduced with grateful thanks