The company presented an updated New City 2025 concept – a governmental, administrative and commercial center of the microregion near Vladivostok.
The New City project (New City 2025 since January 2020) has been developed by HC Russtroyconsulting by request of the Government of Primorsky Krai since September 2019. On 19 December, the concept was presented at the final Investment Council of Primorsky Krai under the chairmanship of the Governor of Primorsky Krai, Oleg Kozhemyako. The project aroused much interest among the Council members; in the course of the discussion, the main vectors of the concept’s further development were determined. In January 2020, the project was shaped in a more contemporary manner. Currently, the concept is detailed enough, is familiar at the level of federal authorities and is developing steadily.
New City 2025 project is presented by Alexandra Maksimets, CEO of HC Russtroyconsulting:
The development of the Strategy for Socioeconomic Development of Primorsky Krai till 2030 approved in December 2018 began long before the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District was relocated to Vladivostok, and of course the strategy in no way considered this fact.
Meanwhile, the move of the macroregion’s government authorities alone will inevitably affect the already overloaded infrastructure of the Primorye capital – transport, service, etc. (up to the current deficiency of office and administrative spaces). A quite natural result of Vladivostok’s new status will become headquarters of leading regional companies and representative offices of some of the biggest federal companies established in the city. Besides, plans of improving the region’s investment attractiveness involve a considerable increase in foreign capital footprint, which, in turn, will also have an effect on lots of related aspects, from the principal revision of requirements to the quality of office spaces to the lack of hotel rooms that is already evident. All of this is quite obvious and will hardly come as surprise for the experts.
In this connection, Russtroyconsulting offered the concept of New City. In a nutshell, we want to build a “smart city” for foreign investors (outside the city limit) and relocate relevant state and commercial services there, adding of course touristic offers, hotels, shopping, entertainment, etc.
In fact, this involves establishment of a dedicated site combining smart business environment and contemporary state and administrative center. Such site will be brough outside the existing city infrastructure and will represent a compact hub combining a number of key facilities within a small microdistrict. Such approach will allow us to achieve several crucial goals at once.
- This is an investment intensive project, which means not only new jobs, but also the synergetic effect created by the construction of a literally new city for many related areas. Actual opportunities for direct investments are so great that they will require a separate big presentation; fortunately, these opportunities are also quite obvious, so we can skip them for now.
- The implementation of the project will unload the city’s infrastructure to a considerable extent, thus clearing wiggle room for the city authorities. This is essential. It is not a secret that any renovation projects in Vladivostok are held up by the lack of backup systems. Bluntly, even regular road repair (not to mention reconstruction) can result in gridlock just because there is no bypass road that has sufficiently high capacity. Therefore, the move of even a small portion of city processes outside the overstretched infrastructure allows the system to work with a considerably higher safety margin and to finally carry out necessary improvements.
- The New City creates a completely new environment for investors – our concept can be described as the “showcase city”. All state services an investor requires are in one place. Plus, there are multiple commercial services – business and event centers, hotels and apartments, recreation and shopping.
- T This is one of the anchor facilities of the New City that combines a powerful datacenter of the macroregional level (including systems of potential Regional Financial Center) and scientific and industrial cluster focused on innovations and production of high technology products. The necessity of such facility is out of question, since the existing data processing facilities are obviously insufficient. However, organization of such facility within the city limits raises doubts, from the standpoint of both the above-mentioned insufficient infrastructure and the economic plan (lack of areas, expensive electric power, etc.). But, because the New City is intended as the “smart city”, organization of the technopolis on this site helps to solve the problem of both providing the “brain” for the city infrastructure and filling the site with residents, as well as the economic component of the project.
- Lastly, we have always considered the New City as part of inevitable implementation of “Big Vladivostok” plan – in any of its versions, this plan provides for integration of Artyom and Vladivostok, which means natural location of the new geographic center of this conglomeration in relative vicinity of the New City’s sites.
I would also like to note that our concept excellently fits in with other announced projects of “something new”. One way or another, all such local hubs turn out to be focused on solving one particular task – residential district, recreation, major trading hub or let’s say out-of-town representative office of the biggest company of its kind with relative infrastructure. The “specialty” of the New City project is unique. We are focused on establishing a site for comfortable public-private partnership, and we consider the project, first of all as B2G (even the other way round, G2B) and B2B-oriented, but we also take into account the essential “guest” target audience – active and potential foreign investors arriving in Vladivostok for tourism and business. Definitely, the New City will make it possible to partly solve the problem of attracting high-quality human capital to the region.
On September 11, 2020, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS) and HC Russtroyconsulting signed an important document – Cooperation Agreement for Purposes of Developing and Implementing Organization of Advanced Socioeconomic and Innovation Facility within Vladivostok Agglomeration – New City 2025. According to the agreement, FEB RAS participates in the development of the concept, identifies top-priority innovation proposals and high technologies for realization under the project, as well as organizes project evaluation. Thus, the New City initiative is supported by the scientific and expert communities, which not only contributes to further development of the project, but also allows to ensure high-quality feedback on all project aspects, which quite fulfills the state objectives, such as those set in the Strategy of Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation.
