Increasing the number of floors of residential buildings as an element of the “Compact city” concept (on the example of Kazan)

Abstract

The concept of “compact city” involves the intensive development of the central and middle zones of large settlements by increasing the efficiency of using the territories that have the greatest value. One of the directions contributing to the implementation of this concept, which consists in the development of the vertical component of the city, increasing the height and number of floors of buildings, is known in geourbanism as “superurbanization”. The increase in the number of floors of buildings is a modern trend in the development of cities in almost all highly urbanized countries. The purpose of this work is a spatiotemporal analysis of changes in the number of floors of residential buildings in the city of Kazan. The authors created a register of housing construction objects in Kazan, built over the period 1860–2016, which contains information about 5317 multi-apartment residential buildings; a thematic map reflecting the distribution of residential buildings in the city of Kazan, depending on the number of floors of these objects, was built. Within the analyzed period, there was a tendency to increase the construction of residential buildings with an increased number of floors, as well as high-rise buildings. The number of high-rise apartment buildings built in 2001–2016 increased especially intensively: their number was 11.4 times higher than the same indicator for 1986–2000. As a rule, spatial differences in the number of floors of residential buildings have a clearly expressed historical conditionality and administrative height regulation: peripheral, relatively young areas (where there is no regulation on building height) are characterized by indicators of the average number of floors of buildings erected there within 12–14 units. High-altitude restrictions during construction in the central, historical part of the city led to lower average number of floors, which is 8 units. This measure is aimed at preserving the unique architectural appearance of historical buildings. The introduction and implementation of the ideas of “vertical” urbanism contribute to the spatial concentration and compact distribution of the activities of the population in the urban space.