This city which was made for another vision of life,
is now adapted to the needs of capitalism in its most unrestrained form. We
could even say “infected” with capitalism.
The grandest buildings in New York or Chicago are
symbols of business power as a rule, here they are not; in a city where
oligarchic capitalism runs untrammelled the grandest edifices belong to the
University, the railways ministry or the ministry of foreign affairs. This is
significant, particularly if you are looking to rent property to do something
commercial: your deal might well be with the 80 year old Dean of some research
institute who is looking to finish building his dacha, and will e back a week
after you have signed the contract coz he needs some extra for waterproofing.
The donutting has begun, whereby the big retail
monsters build outside of the city ring road to take advantage of cheap rent
and desperate local authorities who have never seen a planning regulation in
their lives. But here it will not do what it has done to English towns and
leave the centre as a post apocalyptic wasteland where the homeless wander
around charity shops until the library opens, for the power here is in the
centre and it is a foolish CEO who doesn’t keep a big office somewhere near
where the decision makers lurk in their labyrinthine office blocks with beige
interiors and pics of Putin or Medvedev on the walls. Like London Moscow is
immune from the centre scooping that makes Detroit look like a back lot from
Mad Max four. (Did I mention that if you view The Passion of The Christ as Mad
Max four it all makes perfect sense?)
So, as a result, shops and bars here are placed in the
ground floors of buildings that were made for residential purposes, or nearly
as often in the basements of the same buildings, or else in the incidental
buildings of universities or hospitals.
It changes but slowly.
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