No 2(56) (2022)

City parks, the traditional leisure areas for the citizens’ calm repose, sports activities gain new functional dimensions these days. It’s here where comfortable sites are being set up for distance work and art exhibitions are being held. Parks play a key role in maintaining the city’s air quality, but it is equally important to properly organize green spaces in the streets and yards. There’s a need to review the approached to the choice of the trees and shrubs species, aimed at excluding the harmful ones for the local flora. As shown by the “Apothecary Gardens” experiments, plant communities that come near natural variety of species composition prove their worth in city environment. Green technologies help bring cities conditions closer to natural ecosystems. Roof gardens, rain collection systems, solar batteries, systems that help cool premises and simultaneously heat water will allow us to improve the air quality while balance the energy and water turnover in the city’s ecosystem. Economic management that will take the up-to-date green technologies into account will bring about comfortable and healthy life in the Capital metropolis.

Moscow is home for 3.5 million senior citizens. Their quality of life is one of the city’s authorities’ and social spere specialists’ priority concerns. Starting from 2018 a large-scale health-improvement, educational and recreational “Moscow Longevity” Project has been in train. It’s spearheaded at setting up special conditions in the city environment to stimulate Muscovites’ active longevity. Over 30 various cultural, recreational and sports programs are working as part of the project. Citizens can choose a format of their participation (online or offline). Everyone has free access to any of the available locations, whether cultural, sports or social organization-based. A new city project was launched in 2019 named “Moscow Longevity Center.” The project’s unique club format is gaining popularity, keeps attracting more and more citizens to participation in health and emotions stimulating activities. Moscow’s projects for the city’s elderly provide for their social well-being, improve their living standards in the Capital.

Effectiveness of any organization’s work of whatever level is directly dependent on the optimal nature of its structure. Rational approach means that the organization’s structure should fully comply with the goals that it sets for itself, while at the same time staying as simple as can be. Contemporary methodical approach to efficiency evaluation of managing the housing fund in the Capital’s region proceeds from analysis of structures that have both horizontal and vertical ties. The administrative districts’ ratings, compiled by methods of cluster analysis and using data on asset management companies’ performance makes it possible to juxtapose the districts’ results, as well as to devise approaches to the optimization of the city’s housing fund management structure.

Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University has developed a new instrument for personnel performance assessment, based on the idea of roles played by members of an organization. The model called “TCP roles” is more flexible, adaptive and, above all, easier to understand for executives, compared to the widely spread competences model. It offers a fundamentally different perspective for an employee’s development, orienting the latter not for gaining competences as such, but for attaining a balance in his roles in the course of performing his functional activities. The roles model allows to evaluate not only individual executives of various levels, but entire teams, for that matter, which is an important asset for the Moscow Government system. It is in fact the cross-functional teams that are carrying all major city’s projects into effect. Their performance efficiency reaches its peak exactly when the team’s model roles are represented in a well-balanced fashion.

Immersive technologies – virtual and augmented reality technologies – have been put to good use in higher and special education due to their faculty of acquiring and accumulating experience that is similar to the real one. Under conditions that imitate natural processes, employees drill operating procedures in dangerous situations without any real risk of loss of life or bodily harm, in situations of stress or discomfort. The number of runs is unlimited and they could go on ad lib until the positive result has been achieved. The training effect of such a course is higher than in the case of the traditional approach – lectures, seminars, workshops. Immersive technologies are used to train professional skills inpilots, retail staff, drivers, medical staff, machine operators. Virtual reality technologies find active proliferation in advanced research – in pharmacology, organic chemistry, medicine. Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University develops VR simulators to form and consolidate universal professional competences in public sector workers. Plans have been made for the future to build equipment, which will upgrade procedures of testing and assessment for Moscow Government structures’ personnel.

Moscow Metropolitan Governance Yury Luzhkov University boasts “Laboratory of quest” ever since 2015, that realizes social and cultural projects for the city with participation of its own students. In 2020 it was transformed into the Center for social and cultural design. So far as the students are being progressively involved in projects organization, they develop a taste for the work in the interests of the city from within the Moscow Government institutions and for the changes occurring in the Capital metropolis. They develop an insight into the opportunities for their professional growth. A role in the project management broadens the managerial and supra-professional skills of the students involved. The participatory principle as applied to the training process helps develop all facets of a young person’s character, helps become self-assured and responsible. Mastering practice-oriented expertise turns students into true professionals well adapted to contemporary working conditions. Proficiency that students acquire during their university course is instrumental in the young persons’ turning into high class specialist, who are ready to have their share of developing of the comfortable urban environment in the Russia’s Capital.