No 2 (64) (2024)

Among Russia’s metropolices Moscow tops the list in what concerns comfort of urban environment. The status of the leader is the result of good old hard work that the Head of the City of Moscow Department of Housing and Utilities V. Yu. Torsunov dwelled upon in his interview to the Herald. The Capital is actively engaging resource-saving technologies in every process within its essential services. Power saving is secured through the use of modern energy saving equipment and smart appliances. Moscow is actively dealing with all the Earth’s metropolices’ most acute problem – handling solid household waste through getting ever greater numbers of its citizens involved in separate waste collection program. The Department’s field of special focus is preservation and delicate improvement of the areas with natural urban environment for the Muscovites to enjoy comfortable recreation times. But clearly the city’s main focus is the citizen, his interests and needs. User-friendly online services have been put in place in order that the Department to have direct feedback and to cater to the arising needs in a timely fashion. Specialists in most diverse fields of communal services work for the city, whose sole professional reference point is to make the city ever more comfortable and secure for the citizens.

The state plays a central role in attaining ecological goals of sustainable development of Russia’s economy in both institutional efforts of creating the legal foundations for the development of new financial instruments, and in direct involvement as issuer of subfederal green bonds. The City of Moscow is so far the only Russia’s issuer of such bonds. Attractiveness of personal participation in ecological projects for the people could be an important factor in the growth of the green bonds market. The article features results of the authors’ sociological study of Moscow’s and other cities’ inhabitants’ readiness to take part in financing green projects. Recommendations have been developed as a result of that study to scale up the use of green bonds as instrument and raise citizens’ readiness to invest in the city’s green projects.

In the modern world, green (ecological) building serves the purpose of improving living standards in cities. It is a broad and comprehensive concept that embraces many aspects of the entire life cycle of a building and goes far beyond the feature of energy efficiency. Head of RuGBC – the Council on ecological construction works – G. Eames boasts 15 years of experience behind his back of expert assessment of green building projects in Russia, consulting and training professionals. In his interview to the Herald he shared his ideas on what specialists mean by branding buildings “green”, how then theory is realized in the world and Russian practices, he shared his views on the prospects of this trend in our country. Russia has introduced first national green standards and has launched state programs in green housing construction. G. Eames drew attention to the importance of creating Russia’s ecosystem of green construction. Apart from direct participants of construction works, means and ways of state regulation, it must include mechanisms of support for designers of innovative technologies and new construction materials. No less important goal is to organize a domestic institute for training personnel.

A new professional development program for faculty members was completed at Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University in the spring of 2024. It’s crucial that those teaching the science of management have had a clear picture of managerial realities in which the City of Moscow is developing, knew well the city’s development sites and Moscow’s new ongoing projects. It is equally important that program participants have up-to-date skills of dealing with educational formats and technologies, combined with the ever widening horizons of their knowledge and skills along the way. The program forestalls the introduction of “the gold standard teacher”, which is to become the foundation for shaping a new brand of a teacher at Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University, while at the same time will represent one of the landmarks in the transformation of the University’s system of higher education.

The Directorate of Federal Service for State Statistics for the City of Moscow and Moscow Region has been tracking several indicators of social and economic development of Moscow. The major achievement for the Capital in 2023 was natural growth of the city’s population. The state of the labor market shows low unemployment rates. The capital city retains large resources that allow knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy to develop. The retail and manufacturing sectors demonstrate positive dynamics despite the sanctions pressure and the outflow of foreign capital from the country. The indicators’ analysis results may serve as the basis for defining future directions of the city’s development.