The most terrible areas of Moscow
Moscow has transformed, replenished with a large number of new metro stations and highways. New districts are growing in the territory of old industrial zones. Nevertheless, even now in the city there are places where you want to move faster. The article talks about the worst areas of the russian capital.
Golyanovo
Our rating begins with the "best of the worst" areas of Moscow - Golyanovo. Its main minus is the remoteness from the center, even the names of the streets - Ural, Altai, Ussuriysk, Sakhalin, Kamchatka - seem to hint at this.
The district was formed as part of the large-scale expansion of Moscow in 1960 on the site of the village located here. The area from the north is limited by the industrial zone and the Losiny Ostrov forest park, from the south by the Shchelkovo highway, and from the east by the Moscow ring road. Golyanovo is a typical Soviet district - it is almost completely built up by Soviet five and nine-floor buildings. There is a metro in the area - Schelkovskaya is located here - the terminal station of the Arbat (blue) line.
But together with Schelkovskaya in the area is the eponymous intercity bus station - the largest bus station in the capital. The station is actively attracting large transit flows of people, dust, dirt, and in the 90s it was the entry point to the city of many criminal persons. Given the transit traffic, only one station is not much for an almost 200,000th district. Another minus is the proximity to the Kaloshino industrial zone, which is small in size, but extremely toxic in terms of emissions. There is located, in particular, the large Moscow energy station #23.
The district has historically developed as socially disadvantaged. Cheap apartment rental prices attracted numerous migrants. Since the area is located near Cherkizon, once the largest Moscow market, migrant sellers from the market often settled there. In the 90s, the famous Golyano-Izmailovsky organized crime group took its roots here, which became the prototype of the heroes of the popular film "The Brigade". But Cherkizon is no longer there, the activity of organized crime groups has faded away - the social structure of the region is gradually leveling out and becoming typical for a remote Moscow sleeping district.
An unambiguous plus of the region is the large green zone - the area includes large-scale territories of Losiny Ostrov National Park, one of the largest forests in Moscow and the region. Therefore, living here, of course, is possible - there are both significant disadvantages and certain advantages.
Kuryanovo
If you look at the map, the location of the district (included in the Pechatniki area) may seem excellent. Not so far from the third transport ring, on the banks of the Moscow River, directly close to the Kolomensky park, the Maryino and Lublino districts. But the sharp bend of the Moscow River and the railway line in the east led to the natural isolation of the area. It seems to be close, but transport accessibility is depressing.
The history of the district began in the 1950s, simultaneously with the construction of the Kuryanovskaya aeration station. The station was intended for wastewater treatment, flowing here from a good half of the city districts located upstream of the river. Even now, the station remains the largest in Europe in terms of recycled water. Accordingly, the district itself was formed as a working village of employees of the aerostation.
Another local feature is the predominant two-floor buildings. This type of development was chosen in order to entice young specialists to work on a dirty industrial facility - according to Soviet rules, employees could count on getting an apartment. Surprisingly, the buildings of that period are well preserved in the area to this day. Small two-floor houses for 4 apartments, wooden fences, small front gardens and terraces for residents of the first floors - you can find similar areas on the outskirts of many Russian cities, but they are a museum rarity for high-rise Moscow. The isolation of the district, the lack of metro and the proximity to the vast industrial zone led to an amazing effect - Moscow developers deprived the district of their attention and kept authentic Soviet landscapes in relative proximity to the center.
Complement the picture of pre-trial detention center No. 6 - the only female pre-trial detention center in Moscow. Ekaterina Vasilyeva, Pussy Riot, sisters Khachaturian and other famous girls all over the country whiled away their days here awaiting a court verdict. For a long time, a hostel also functioned in Kuryanovo, which boasted the lowest prices for a bed in Moscow - 100 rubles per night. This massively attracted the appropriate audience to the district - 10 migrants settled in rooms designed for two people. Finally, just north of the district, there is the Pechatnikov industrial zone - earlier there was the Moskvich automobile plant (AZLK), and now there are many smaller industrial enterprises, as well as the largest illegal dump in Moscow.
The bridge across the Moscow River, which is planned to be built as part of the Southeast Chord project, should give the neighborhood the coveted access to the Kashirskoye Highway and improve its relationship with the rest of Moscow. Therefore, after some time, developers can be expected here as well - the sanitary zone around the aeration station was reduced back in 2008.
Biryulyovo
If you suddenly find yourself in Biryulyovo, you will never think that you are in the ghetto. Accurate building with Soviet panel high-rise buildings (such buildings built up three quarters of Moscow), clean and neat streets, lots of greenery - a sort of standard sleeping district. But the isolation of the area here has done its job.
From the west, Biryulyovo is limited by the Kursk railway, from the east by Biryulyovo forest park, and from the south it directly runs into the Moscow Ring Road. The nearest metro station - Tsaritsyno - must be reached by bus for at least 15 minutes. In addition, the area itself is cut in half by another railway line - Paveletskaya. This is not one, but two districts - West Biryulyovo and East Biryulyovo - and the railroad tracks, built up on the sides with garage tracts, form another natural barrier to the movement of people.
Even at the end of the 19th century in these places there were continuous forests and swamps. But soon, after the construction of the railway, Biryulyovo began to gradually grow as a village at the railway station of the same name, later other industrial enterprises appeared. In 1960, with the large-scale expansion of the Moscow, Biryulyovo became part of Moscow - at the same time, active construction began in the area. The area was inhabited by people, evicted from the surrounding villages of Saburovo, Orekhovo, Lenino-Dachnoe, as well as some central areas. Their houses became victims of an expanding Moscow - new apartments could be given outside the native district. A separate category was made up of the so-called limiters - visitors from the provinces who did not have the right to permanent residence and residence in the city. They were supposed to make up for the shortage of labor at Moscow factories. The limiters worked in the most difficult industries, which the natives refused to work at.
Even then, the district acquired the unfavorable glory of the rural, provincial.
Already after the restructuring, attracted by relatively low real estate prices and the proximity of numerous warehouses (and therefore jobs), the area began to attract migrants. The russian native population, on the contrary, when they have necessary money, tried to move to another district.
Biryulyovo is an excellent illustration of the shortcomings of the radial-ring metro planning scheme. The density of stations in the center is high, but closer to the Moscow Ring Road the gray and green lines diverge in different directions, bypassing Biryulyovo. To begin construction of a metro line in Biryulyovo plan only after 2023 - later, for example, than the metro to Vnukovo airport. According to the official version, it is advisable to build a metro in Biryulyovo only after the construction of the Big Ring Line is completed in order to evenly distribute passengers between several metro lines. According to skeptics, the metro in Moscow is built only where there is a enough place to build and sell new real estate. Since Biryulyovo was completely built up in the Soviet years, developer companies is not interested in it, which means inhabitants can wait the metro.
Kapotnya
If each of the above-described disctricts is bad for one reason, but has certain advantages, Kapotnya is bad district from all points of view. In USSR where people were prohibited to buy or sell apartments and only exchange was permitted, Kapotnya residents dreamed to exchange its three-room apartment in Kapotnya - for a room or one-room appartment in any other district in Moscow.
Kapotnya was formed as a district near the Moscow Oil Refinery (now it is owned by Gazprom). Kapotny got its name in honor of the village, whose residents smoked fish caught in the Moscow River. Now it’s not only fish to smoke here, but the air is terrible - the refinery is one of the most dirty enterprises in the capital. But its importance for the capital's economy is great - the plant provides half the fuel consumption of a huge megapolis - and so far it has not been possible to realize all plans to move the plant abroad to Moscow. Only recently, torchlight was put out - it was designed to burn gas arising in the process of production of oil products.
Previously, the torchlight was the main attraction of the area - and illuminated the night Kapotnya.
The unique and geographical location of the district - the district is located in the southeast of the capital. The Moscow River surrounds it from the west - it flows from west to east and by this time manages to absorb all the sewage and emissions of the entire capital. In the east is the industrial zone of the oil refinery and the huge Sadovod market, where many migrants from Cherkizon market moved. Finally, from the south, the area rests on the Moscow Ring Road. There is no bridge across the Moskva River - as a result, you can leave the district towards the center of Moscow only by one single road - the bus route to the nearest metro station Bratislavskaya is about half an hour.
Sometimes it seems that the Moscow authorities have come to terms with the fact that nothing can be done with Kapotnya. At one time, it was in Kapotnya that communal villains from all over Moscow were offered to evict malicious defaulters (according to the law, people cannot be evicted to anywhere and housing must be provided in the same city) - in a residence near an oil refinery. In Kapotnya, even the streets do not have a name, but only serial numbers - the 1st street of Kapotnya, the 2nd street of Kapotnya, etc. Therefore, one should not be surprised that today only 30 thousand people live in Kapotna - for Moscow, which during the administrative reform of 1992 was purposefully cut into approximately equal areas of 100 thousand people each, this is a rather unusual situation.
Prospects for the appearance of the metro in Kapotnya, sorry for the pun, covered in dense fog. The most obvious option is to build a metro bridge across the Moskva River and extend the green branch from Alma-Ata metro station here because of the high construction costs, low expected passenger flows and technological costs. Therefore, the metro in these places is not planned even in the long term. But the planned construction of the South Rokada may become a salvation for the region - a large highway with the philosophical name "Rublevo-Kapotnya" involves the construction of an automobile bridge over the Moscow River, which will finally connect Kapotnya to the right-bank district of Brateevo. This will significantly reduce the travel time to the Alma-Ata metro station of the green branch. If plans to move the Moscow refinery beyond the Moscow Ring Road are also being implemented, this could mean a new life for one of the most depressed places on the map of the russian capital.
Nekrasovka
If Kapotnya is the worst district within the Moscow Ring Road, then Nekrasovka is, in principle, one of the worst areas in Moscow in general. Awful ecology and development with high-rise buildings - the district has chance to go the path described by blogger Ilya Varlamov - five steps from the new district to ghetto.
Nekrasovka is often called the last district of "old" Moscow - it was included in the capital in 2011, shortly before the large-scale accession of new territories (New Moscow). Nekrasovka is located east of the Lyubertsy city near Moscow (the border between Lyubertsy and Nekrasovka is very arbitrary), and consists of two parts - the Old (in the south) and New (in the north) Nekrasovka, interconnected by a narrow isthmus.
New Nekrasovka (includes the two largest districts - Nekrasovka Park and Nekrasovka) began to be built up after 2011 on the site of the former Lyubertsy aeration fields. These fields were built at the beginning of the 20th century for the treatment of Moscow sewer drains using primitive technology. With the growth of Moscow and an increase in the volume of sewage, this technology required the involvement of more and more expensive lands into circulation, was recognized as not modern, as a result of which instead of aeration fields the Lyubertsy aeration station was built, and next to it a village station workers. This territory was called Nekrasovka (Old Nekrasovka). The Lyubertsy aeration fields (now New Nekrasovka) have been mothballed for a long time.
However, as mentioned above, in 2011 the lands of the former fecal fields were included in Moscow, reclaimed, and in their place the construction of multi-storey residential districts began.
By the way, a similar story happened with the Lublin aeration fields located on the territory of the current Moscow districts of Maryino and Lublino. With the commissioning of the Kuryanovskaya aeration station, the need for them disappeared, and parks and housing were built on the reclaimed territory. In memory of the accumulation of sewage here, only the name of the streets remains - Upper and Lower Fields. New generations of residents of these areas think that the streets got their names in honor of the once existing farmland. Although in fact, there were previously slightly different fields.
But life on the territory of reclaimed aeration fields is not the only minus of the ecology of the region. To the north-west of the district in the Rudnevo industrial zone is located the incinerator #4. Only relatively recently was the Ecolog Sanitary Recycling Plant closed, where biological waste was burnt - in other words, animal corpses and amputated human limbs. Old Nekrasovka Lyubertsy aeration station continues to operate. Finally, right next to the residential buildings of the residential complex Nekrasovka Park, there is the mothballed landfill. Simply put, this is a former landfill littered with land. Now it looks like a huge hill, the height of a multi-floor building, overgrown with trees and other vegetation. "Mountain" comes right up close to residential buildings, and many locals have already trodden trails there and use it as an improvised park for organizing picnics.
To all local environmental troubles it is worth adding the location of the area in the industrial southeast of Moscow and the unfavorable wind rose - summer winds in Moscow usually blow from the northwest to the southeast, and winter ones from the southwest to the north -East.
As a result, all southeastern regions collect the vital products of a huge megapolis. Among the main “investors” is the oil refinery in Kapotnya, already familiar to us. In the fall of 2014, clouds of caustic smoke covered the entire southeast of Moscow - it was assumed that the source was located in Vidnoye Moscow Coke and Gas Plant. Now the plant is already closed, but no one has canceled other unfavorable enterprises and the wind rose.
Nekrasovka today is one of the most actively developing areas of Moscow. The district accounts for up to 7% of the supply of all Moscow real estate. Economy-class housing is being built here, including by state order, Moscow waiting rooms are getting apartments here. For this, the metro is being actively pulled here - the Nekrasovskaya line is about to open, which should dramatically improve the transport situation in the area. But the line will not have direct intersections with the Circle Line and central stations - you can transfer from it either to the Big Circle Line (Nizhny Novgorod station), or to the very busy purple line (station Lermontovsky Prospekt). It is not yet completely clear how the flows will be distributed - it is likely that the bulk of people will continue to use the faster option with the purple line, the most congested metro section in Moscow. That is, nothing will change with the opening of the metro for the residents of Nekrasovka - if earlier they traveled to Lermontovsky Prospekt by bus, then now - on their own metro line. But there is another danger - the new metro station will become the closest not only for Nekrasovka, but also for residents of some neighboring cities. And these cities have recently also been actively built up by humane people. And this means that all these people who previously traveled through different stations and metro lines will begin to form a spontaneous transportation hub in Nekrasovka itself.
Difficult transport situation, environmental problems, one of the cheapest real estate prices in the "old" Moscow. And most importantly - a large number of high-rise panel houses of economy class. And although the standards for insolation and the distances between the new buildings are observed, the social infrastructure is also gradually being built, anyway the district has every chance to turn into a classic multi-floor ghetto on the outskirts of a large city. Theory of this process is well described by Ilya Varlamov. Now we can say that there are quite a lot of investment apartments in the area - many people originally bought apartments here, not planning to live in them. And this means that the district will gradually be filled with migrants, forming not the most favorable social environment. In general, the district is very peculiar, but its administrative status as a district of Moscow allows it to count on appropriate financing and infrastructure, which means that it will definitely win against neighboring regions, which are territories of the Moscow region.
Other areas
A short line should mention the other enclaves of Moscow outside the Moscow Ring Road - the village of Severny, Molzhaninovsky district. But they, as well as Zelenograd and the New Moscow territories, were initially perceived by everyone as territories separate from Moscow - therefore, in our opinion, it is inappropriate to include them in this rating.
Sometimes Pechatniki is included to the list of unfavorable territories of Moscow. From the one side, Pechatnikov there is a large industrial zone (the main assembly facilities of the AZLK automobile plant used to be located here), from the other, proximity to the center and good prospects for the restoration of the industrial zone. Another potentially problematic area is Lublino with its foundry-mechanical plant and loaded traffic arteries. In general, the entire southeast of Moscow is considered industrial, environmentally disadvantaged and with limited transport accessibility.
Not very good with transport accessibility in the Dmitrovsky, Western and Eastern Degunino areas in the north-west of Moscow - you need to take a bus to the nearest metro stations. Finally, not everyone likes the Chertanovo area - huge territories completely built up with typical Soviet housing.
Why do some countries, cities or companies achieve economic success, while others are in poverty? Why is economic growth so weak and income inequality constantly increasing? How can new technologies change the global economic landscape? On this site we look at the most important global trends from the perspective of an economist.
