On Friday the public hearings on the Sochi development plan were finished. Over 4 days the members of the Planning Town Council, architects, ecologists and the inhabitants debated the proposed project, developed by the two leading design institutes from St Petersburg and Moscow.   

Finally, everyone remained dissatisfied with the outcomes. The general opinion was unanimous that the design must be returned as requiring improvement. Sochi development plan is a perspective of the territory with an area bigger than that of Moscow. According to the Sochi’s architect Olga Kozinskaya, elaboration of such a plan must take over two years. As for the project in question, it was made by developers in less than a year. The Planning Town Council members consider it that the document cannot even be called an apology for a development plan.  

According to the designers, today’s plan will promote to holding the 22nd Olympic Games, development of science, tourism, business and investment potential of the city of Sochi. The Planning Town Council’s response was “one gets an impression that a decision was taken first, and then the rest was simply adjusted to it”.   

However, the locals were keen on other kind of problems. They had prepared for hearings in their own way. Many dwellers from Imeretinskaya Plain wore T-shirts to the event, bearing signs like “Development plan + Psou the port = asthma, leukemia, tuberculosis” and “Sochi is a resort, not a cargo port”.   

The chief complaint by ecologists about the document was inclusion of Olympic facilities in the plan, while none of them has passed ecological expertise, and the Federation Island (an artificial island in the Black sea water) is not even provided with a complete construction project.  

The ecologists also were astonished with the fact that the project did not reflect the changes made in the layout of Olympic facilities in the mountainous part of the Adler district. “They still have a bobsleigh track and the mountain Olympic village on the Grushevy ridge” said indignantly Dmitry Kaptsov, the representative of Ecological Watch for the North Caucasus. “Moreover, they have added a transformer substation, despite the fact that on 3 July a decision was taken by Prime Minister Putin that those facilities would be moved to other place”.   

“That has been profanation instead of hearings” considers Valery Suchkov, the member of the Planning Town Council. “Our opinion is recommendatory and practically no one takes it into account”. According to the Russian Architectural Code, after the public hearings taken the head of the city must make a single-handed decision about the development plan saying whether it will be approved of or sent to improvement. However, Valery Suchkov is sure the plan will be passed anyway. “Vladimir Afanasenkov (Sochi’s head) is commissioned clearly to have this development plan. When there is an order from the top to have such a paper, such a paper will be accepted, no matter good or bad. The Olympiad is pressing them in time.”