A project to improve life in the city. Example of a social project

This practice is for those who know how to think and care not only about themselves. Thanks to it, you can change your city, improve people’s living conditions and raise the overall energy of the area. How can I do that?

This interesting technique was born in meditation¹.

“I used to meditate every night before going to bed. But one day my meditation gave way to a very realistic vision. For some reason I saw myself flying over our city, and it was not evening, as in reality, but a bright, clear day.

Practice "Blanket"

I'm a bird. I'm flying over the green, sunlit Earth. The people below happily wave their hands at me, greet me, and smile. In my wing-hands the blanket is light, reminiscent of a gauze scarf, but large, simply enormous in size.

I cover the Earth with this almost invisible Veil, giving Peace, Peace and Joy. My Inner state can be defined by the word “nirvana”. And so every evening.

What happened next?

I have a good friend with whom we see each other quite rarely, but I knew that she was also interested in meditation and techniques for.

Once we got talking, we realized that in the evenings, without knowing it, we were doing the same practice. To say that we were surprised would be an understatement.

We looked at each other in silence for a long time, and when the ability to think returned to us, we began to analyze. We found out that in meditation we cover only two-thirds of the city, which means there is someone else. Later, His Majesty Chance helped us and him. The longer I think about all this, the more convinced I am that we were guided by some powerful and bright force.

It so happened that, independently of each other, the three of us “divided” the city into 3 sectors, and each “covered” their own area. We never found a logical explanation why we wanted to do this at all, and at the same time.

How can you improve living conditions in your area?

I don’t encourage anyone to do anything, but if you are a caring person and understand that each of us is capable of influencing the circumstances offered by life, at least sometimes carry out this practice. If you do this more every evening, living conditions and ecology will improve in your area, anxiety will decrease not only in the city, but also in the region.

The most interesting thing is that I have friends who work in law enforcement agencies, and they confirmed that from the time the three of us began to carry out this practice, crime for some reason began to decline.

And we ourselves felt that tension and anxiety in the city had decreased.

This went on for almost a year. Then the need to shelter the city disappeared.

Occasionally, even now, such an inner desire appears, especially in cities that are new to me. And I don’t resist :-).”

“I'm bored in this city! Nothing happens here... There is nowhere to go in Ulyanovsk! There are no opportunities for creative growth..." etc., etc. If such thoughts have ever occurred to you, it is a pity that you did not attend the hackathon (marathon) of city projects “K-Ulsk”, which took place last week in one of the hub cafes on the street. Iron Division. We guarantee you would definitely change your mind.
The organizer of this event is the “Greenhouse of Social Technologies” with the information support of the Ulyanovsk - Cultural Capital Foundation and the creative space “Kvartal”. Hackathon participants discussed ideas and projects aimed at improving life in the city.
What has already been implemented
— We will not only discuss and select the best social projects, but also help at the initial stage of their implementation. An agreement worth 60 thousand rubles will be concluded with the winners of the hackathon: this will certainly help take the first steps in bringing any good idea to life,” explained the essence of the two-day marathon of social projects in Ulyanovsk, event editor of Teplitsa Alexey Nitsa.
The main criteria for evaluating projects are social significance, realism and “open source”. The latter means that Internet projects created on the basis of the proposed ideas will be able to scale up in the future, that is, be copied and reproduced for free by those who wish to do something similar.
Nitsa told the participants that similar events had already been held in other Russian cities and the results obtained were truly impressive.
— For example, the winner of the St. Petersburg hackathon 2014 is the Smooth project. One of its authors is a person with disabilities. It was proposed to create an online service with which you can build the most convenient route on the map - one with the least obstacles for a wheelchair. Now this service is working and gaining popularity, says Alexey.
Another successful project is the winner of the hackathon in Penza. Its authors decided to create a website that effectively helps find homeless animals future owners.
— At the moment, this project is working effectively in Penza: (http://homeforpets.ru). It is built on open source. This means that if you want to do something similar in your city, you can easily and freely use existing developments,” notes the event editor.
Also interesting is the idea that arose at the equal opportunity hackathon held in September last year. Participants proposed creating a web messenger that would help communicate using icons. Target audience of this site
- people who have lost the ability to speak or write for any reason (for example, after a stroke). The initiators believe that this project has excellent prospects.
“Love Ulyanovsk! Moscow will wait"
In addition to preparing and defending projects, there were many other presentations and master classes at the hackathon in Ulyanovsk. Thus, the head of the Moscow online school of urban entrepreneurs Vector, Dmitry Abramov, gave a lecture on how private initiatives can change the city.
“Now there are people in the province who are ready to stay in the cities where they were born and raised, and change this space for the better. These are the people we call “urban entrepreneurs.” At one time, I monitored provincial websites in search of such enterprising businessmen, and I especially liked the slogan invented by the guys from Voronezh: “Love Voronezh! Moscow will wait." It seems to me that this approach is applicable in other cities,
- the speaker believes.
He cited some inspiring examples of urban and social entrepreneurship:
— Here in Yaroslavl live a young architect Sergei Kremnev and his wife Yulia. At some point, they reached that professional “ceiling” when it becomes uncomfortable in a provincial city: a stronger environment, more projects and opportunities are needed. However, instead of moving to Moscow, the couple decided to create such an environment in their own city. In 2007, the Kremnevs came to the director of a local textile factory and asked him to allow them to spend a “creative weekend” in some almost abandoned part of the enterprise.
They invited musicians, choreographers, foreign language teachers, artists, photographers to this site and for one day they turned the abandoned premises into a creative laboratory.
“In the end it turned out so great, everyone liked it so much that from this idea the TEXTIL cultural center was born, which - what is especially important - arose without any help from officials or rich sponsors. Now street festivals and contemporary art exhibitions are regularly held here. Any city resident can come to open meetings of the TEXTIL team with the idea of their own project.
Another example of successful urban entrepreneurship is the idea of creating the so-called “anti-cafe” or “time cafe” “Tsiferblat”.
— It was invented by Muscovite Ivan Mitin. And now “Dials” have spread to many large cities in Russia and other countries. The point is that in such cafes they pay not for food, but for the time spent in this establishment. After all, it often happens - especially in the capital - that the waiter begins to look menacingly at a group of friends who have taken a cup of coffee and sit at the table for more than an hour. Mitin realized that in Moscow, as in other cities of Russia, there are very few so-called “third places,” comments the head of the Moscow online school.
The term “third place” was coined by American researcher Ray Oldenburg. The logic here is simple: there is a home, there is a job, and there must be some kind of “third place” for comfortable communication and pastime. It seems that in Ulyanovsk there is also an acute shortage of such places.
Winners of the Ulyanovsk hackathon
By decision of the competent jury, the winner was the project “So Faster” (“Road Disaster”). The idea is to help drivers know about traffic jams in advance. The developers have proposed a unique way to obtain such information: special reflectors will be installed on the highways, inside of which sensors will be placed. Thanks to the latter, it will be possible to find out the exact number and speed of cars on specific sections of the road. This information can be transmitted to special electronic displays or via the Internet.
Note that in fact, another project, a geolocation social network displaying current events in the city Inthispoint, won, but the authors refused the contract because they did not want to create their own web resource based on “open source”.
The jury also appreciated Ulyanovsk projects to create websites that help find owners for homeless animals, unite volunteers for various events and show announcements of cultural events.
Evgeniy Nuvitov

Monument to hopelessness...

You already want to drink quickly to forget. No! That's enough, pull yourself together, you rag! Today we will make the world around us a better place!

I’ll warn you right away that this will be very difficult, only a few out of thousands will reach the finish line, the percentage of success in such matters is still extremely small. But when have difficulties stopped us? People think that getting their yard in order is a fantastic, and most importantly, very expensive story. In fact, money is secondary in this story.

But first, let's take a step back. Imagine that you are on vacation and you book a hotel by the sea. You carefully study the reviews and look at the photographs. You pay extra for your windows to overlook the sea; it is very important for you that there is a clean beach, that there is green territory. You make sure that there is a robe and slippers in the room, and that the food in the hotel restaurant is varied. You are ready to pay extra for comfort, because you are going on vacation! This is completely logical human behavior, because comfort is important to all of us, we all want a cozy room, a beautiful view outside the window and high-quality amenities. Would you ever rent a hotel with a view like this?

Or like this?

At the same time, such a view from one’s own window does not bother anyone. And here the question arises. Why do you pay so much attention to a hotel where you will only spend a few days? And why then don’t you think at all about the comfortable environment in your home, where you spend your whole life? Why are most people willing to spend a lot of money to have a blooming garden outside the window of their resort room instead of a parking lot, but at the same time they slam the door in your face if you ask them to chip in 2,000 rubles to repair the entrance?

This is completely illogical behavior, because from the point of view of long-term investments, it is beneficial for everyone to have a high-quality environment around them.

Recently, a person wrote to me who wished his story to remain anonymous. And the story is very interesting. He decided to start improving his yard and bring order there. I drew up an estimate and invited designers who made a landscaping project. The courtyard was formed by houses with about 500 apartments. Landscaping the yard cost 5 million rubles. That is, 10,000 had to be collected from each apartment. We managed to extract some of the money from the municipality, and the amount dropped to 7,000 rubles. As you may have guessed, when a man went to the neighbors with an offer to raise money, he was sent and almost beaten.

It would seem that here it was necessary to spit on everything and score. But no. The man approached several real estate companies with his project and asked to calculate how the price of apartments in these buildings would change if the residents tidied up the yard. It was then that it turned out that thanks to a steep yard, real estate would rise in price by an average of 5%! That is, by investing even 10 or 20 thousand in their yard, each resident would increase the value of their assets by 200-400 thousand! Is it a good investment? The same applies to rental housing. People who rent out their apartments could raise the rental price and recoup their investment in six months or a year.

Having made a presentation to the neighbors, our hero was able to convince many of the benefits of the reforms. I hope this story ends well and I’ll write about it later.

In Russia, few people think about such things, but in vain. People calmly invest hundreds of thousands of rubles in renovating their apartments and tuning their cars, but they don’t think at all that if they improve the environment around them, the value of their assets will increase, as will their quality of life. Why live in shit if you can live in a beautiful garden?

After studying the experiences and success stories of people who managed to transform their yard, I came up with some rules. Perhaps they can help you get your yard in order.

1. Set boundaries

It is impossible to do anything unless there are clear boundaries. Therefore, of course, you need to start with land surveying, if you haven’t done this yet. That is, it is necessary to define clear boundaries of the local area. And, of course, the yard must be properly decorated and managed by the residents. I will not dwell on all the nuances of land surveying, this is a separate big topic, read it on the Internet.

But it is not enough to draw up boundaries on paper: they must also exist in life. This is a big problem for microdistricts, which, unlike block development, do not imply a clear division of courtyards. Often, looking out the window, you will see a shapeless wasteland with vague landscaping and parking. What to do with him?

In any case, there is nowhere without zoning. It is not necessary to put up a fence. You can, for example, move a parking lot to the border or plant bushes there. You can at least separate yours from someone else’s with a path or a lawn.

It is important that every resident of your home clearly understands where your land is. Because in the future you will have to fight and shed blood for this land!

2. Let's close ranks!

Almost all stories of changes in a house or yard begin the same way: “I went around the neighbors and realized that no one needed anything!” Indeed: if there is a garbage dump outside your window and everyone was happy with it, then most likely you will be faced with the indifference of your neighbors and reluctance to change anything. This is a banal story, and you shouldn’t be scared by it. You just need to record the current state and change it.

You won't change anything alone. To clean up the mess and make a cool yard, you need to make friends with your neighbors! There are a lot of ways here, and each of you will probably find one for yourself. These could be some kind of chats and forums in your home, where residents will communicate, these could be some kind of real activities.

European practice shows that people unite very well around children. That is, your neighbor is probably an asshole, but it’s not the children’s fault. And for the sake of the children, you can endure it. Therefore, for example, creating a backyard garden for children, where you plant various plants, and then everyone will take care of them together, can be very helpful.

A BBQ area can help too! By the way, you can often find a tandoor in the yard! This is the soul of the yard, and it is what unites the neighbors when someone prepares flat cakes or pilaf for the entire entrance!

3. Start small

A good yard is a place where you will enjoy being. Therefore, treat it as, for example, a personal plot. What is the first thing a person does on his property? Sets up the table! Nothing will work without a table. The table brings people together. At the table you can play dominoes or drink culturally. You can work at the table, do homework outdoors, or draw. If you look at how people arrange their own yards, you will notice that no one can do without a table.

In Finland there are tables in every yard.

It is very convenient and inexpensive.

It is also very important to create conditions so that you can be in the yard in any weather. For this you need canopies from the sun and rain. These can be pergolas, which over time will entwine plants, or ordinary gazebos.

A good solution would be to make an extended canopy with benches over the entrance.

4. A yard for everyone

Reading the third point, many of you probably thought to yourself: “Yeah, give him benches and tables so that the bastard can drink there until late?! So that homeless people can live there?”

Let me tell you about the homeless theory. There are homeless people, drunkards and gopniks in any city. And their requirements for the urban environment, for obvious reasons, are extremely low. A homeless person doesn’t care whether there are good amenities or not - he can sleep under a bush. It's the same with drunks. They will drink anyway, and interiors are not very important to them for this activity. But normal people have high requirements for the urban environment. For example, for a hipster to go outside to work with a laptop, you need to create conditions for him.

When conditions are unsatisfactory, we go out into the street, and it may seem to us that there are only asocial elements around us who do nothing but spoil and interfere with normal people’s lives. But there are not as many of them as it seems: there are simply no normal people. But they don’t exist because the environment is bad, and normal people prefer to sit in a cafe, at home or in the office, and rather run away from the street.

And now you look out the window and think: how can you drive the drunks out from under the window? This is where many people make a mistake. The moment you look out the window at an unpleasant company, you try on the situation for yourself. And you know that an unpleasant environment once drove you off the street. And you think that if you worsen the existing environment, then unpleasant individuals will become uncomfortable and they will leave. So you decide to remove the last bench at the entrance, insert an ugly metal door, unscrew the light bulb in the lantern so that these bastards will feel completely bad.

This is a big mistake, since you will not be able to descend to the level of an environment that is uncomfortable for the same homeless person. Have you seen the conditions in which homeless people sometimes live? On some heating mains, in garbage, shit and insects... Do you seriously think that you can scare them away with an unscrewed light bulb and a cleaned bench?

So: on the contrary, the environment needs to be improved. Your goal is not to lower the bar, but to raise it! And it is necessary to create such an environment so that as many residents of the house as possible spend time on the street. Then, among 100 normal people, you will not notice one drunkard, and the drunkard will be uncomfortable, and he will rather go to another yard. Remember how it was in Soviet courtyards, when there was always someone on the street. Grandfathers played dominoes, grandmothers sat on benches, children played, adults repaired cars, and in some courtyards they even did homework on the street.

It is very important to make sure that people of all ages and all walks of life have something to do in their yard. Grandmothers need comfortable chairs and shade, young people need a gazebo, adults need a grill and sports grounds, and so on. Every homeowner just needs to ask themselves, “What will make me want to spend more time in my yard?” Distribute questionnaires to residents and ask them to write down what they would like. And you will see:

Alcove;
- swing for adults;
- horizontal bar;
- simulators;
- hammock;
- fountain;
- a place for car repairs;
- grill;
- vegetable garden;
- a house on a tree.

It is important here to avoid noisy activities under the windows. That is, if you have a small area, you should not make a basketball court or skate park. This way you will preserve the mental health of those residents of your house whose windows overlook the courtyard)

This is how the yard in Satka was landscaped. It was like this - a typical wretched courtyard, of which there are thousands in Russia...

A gazebo with an equipped place for grilling meat and a children's rope playground were built there. The improvement of the yard was carried out by the team of Mikhail Shatrov from Ivanovo.

I often get asked how to inexpensively landscape your yard.

Such a project is within the capabilities of the residents themselves, if they wish.

This is how you can inexpensively and easily tidy up an ordinary yard.

All this was done in 10 days last summer, during the first “My Satka” festival. Invited architects and designers supervised the improvement process, and they were helped by caring local residents. Satka entrepreneurs also took part: some purchased boards for designers and planners, some provided the necessary equipment, some brought crushed stone.

5. Parking war

This will be the most difficult test. You have to put things in order with parking. This will be incredibly difficult, since most people will think that they are ALLOWED for a piece of land under their window! By whom it was placed and why, no one knows. Apparently, car dealerships promise people that they will allocate a piece of land under the window for their car.

There is a lot of explanatory work to be done here. You can start. Finish with logic and mathematics.

The logical chain here is very simple.

First, find out how many cars the residents of your home have. Depending on the region, home and area, the number may vary. Next, take a map of your yard and see what percentage of the yard area you are willing to devote to parking. Perhaps you decide to give away the entire yard - then everything was in vain. If common sense prevails, then it would be good to allocate no more than 20% of the yard area for parking. In this case, it is better to organize parking at the border of the yard.

Further, most likely, it will turn out that there is not enough space for everyone. And parking in the yard is a scarce resource that must be somehow fairly distributed. There are two ways. The first one is the queue. That is, whoever arrived first parked. It is not entirely fair, since someone can abandon their car and go on vacation, taking up a place for two weeks. And someone works late, and he will always be left without a place. The second way is to charge a fee for the opportunity to park a car in the yard. This should be exactly the amount so that supply and demand are equal. Perhaps it will be 1000 rubles a month, or maybe 5000 rubles. It all depends on the area and the level of income of your residents. Yes, the richest will park their cars in a beautiful parking lot, and all the money will go towards landscaping and maintaining the yard.

But even if you are not ready to reduce the number of parking spaces, you can reconstruct the yard while maintaining the number of parking lots! For example, in 2014, the People's Architect Bureau prepared a project for the reconstruction of a Moscow courtyard at 21 Berzarina Street.

Almost 80% of the yard area was taken over by parking (140 parking spaces).

The project involved landscaping and landscaping the yard with the creation of play areas and recreation areas, while parking would be reduced by only 13 spaces. It was proposed to organize parking spaces outside the yard.

Off-street parking can be a very important resource for financing the entire project. For example, 10 cars for 5,000 rubles - and now you already have a personal janitor-gardener who will keep the yard perfectly clean. And in six months it will be possible to buy a new gazebo or plant new trees.

Other residents will park on adjacent streets and in other parking lots. I am sure that you can find a parking space in the immediate vicinity of any house. Yes, you have to walk 5-10 minutes to get home, but that’s okay. Don't fall apart.

At the same time, it is very important to stop any unauthorized parking. An effective solution here would be to install bollards that do not interfere with pedestrians, but prevent cars from driving onto sidewalks and lawns.

6. Vacant lands

In any yard, the question arises of the purpose of ownerless areas. These are areas of land that, for various reasons, cannot be used, but they need to be monitored. One type of such area is the land under the windows. You can’t do anything special there, since people live on the first floor: you can’t put a horizontal bar under their window. On the other hand, someone must clean up and improve this land. It turns out to be such an exclusion zone.

It is most logical to give the area under the windows for free use to residents of the first floors. This is exactly how all modern housing in Europe is now designed. The second floor has a balcony, and the first floor has a small area. There they can make themselves a personal recreation area, a vegetable garden - whatever they want.

The main thing is that they take care of this land. This still happens in many yards, when some grandmother plants flowers under her window or makes figures from bottles. Then we will have a living yard.

Your goal is to strive to ensure that there is not a single square meter of unused land in your yard.

7. Garbage

Nothing ruins a yard like trash cans. Fetid, dirty tanks that spoil the view, the air, and create unsanitary conditions. Garbage cans must be dealt with. It is clear that this is not entirely your area of responsibility, and you cannot make an underground storage facility if there are no special garbage trucks in your area. But organizing a site for containers, even if they are the most ordinary ones, is a very important stage in transforming the yard. Buy new trash cans, if you have old and broken ones, decorate the area for them (for example, with plants), and keep it clean.

8. Tactical urbanism

This technique is often used in the city to understand the needs of residents. The main principle here is to quickly, inexpensively and efficiently improve the space with the help of non-capital changes. Before thoroughly blocking the street, you can cover it with flower beds for the summer, install inexpensive street furniture and see the effect. This is exactly what they did with Broadway back in the day.

In the courtyard, tactical urbanism also works. At the first stage, you can landscape your yard without special expenses. Here a pallet or pallet will come to your aid - a wooden container that is used in any warehouse for storing and transporting goods. A standard Euro pallet measures 80 x 120 cm and is ideal for creating outdoor furniture. Here are some ideas for you:

It’s not difficult to create such furniture, it doesn’t cost a lot of money, but you can understand what will be in demand by residents and what won’t. This usually takes a year. During this time, you can move furniture around the yard, create areas for games and recreation in different places, and arrange flowers and plants.

If the process is organized correctly, it will be possible to involve neighbors in it and accustom residents to the new life of the yard. When you understand where it is convenient for people to relax, and where they prefer to walk, taking shortcuts, etc., then you can do everything more thoroughly.

Same thing with the grill space. To begin with, you can simply buy an inexpensive regular grill or equip a barbecue area. Next - see how residents will use it, whether there will be complaints, whether it is conveniently located. And only after that make solid designs.

9. Entrance groups

Make good entrance groups to the entrances. A good idea is to make a large canopy and organize seating areas under it. Change the doors to transparent ones, put up benches, and bring order to the entrance itself. I recently wrote how.

In one of the Moscow houses, the chairman of the house council installed a new door in her entrance at her own expense. The remaining residents donated money at will after the fact. As a result, out of 20 apartments in the entrance, only 5 were not happy about the positive changes.

Was:

Became:

The entrance with a transparent door immediately became much more pleasant, and no special effort was required from anyone. This is a very simple example of basic changes to your yard and home that will immediately improve your quality of life.

The simplest change would be to replace the door. And here you will have to overcome another myth. A metal door in the entrance has nothing to do with security. Moreover, it is much more dangerous than a transparent door. From a security point of view, a metal door cannot solve the problem of unauthorized access to the entrance.

Residents apparently build the following logical chain: if a metal door is safer for an apartment, then the same rule applies at the entrance. Here any burglar starts laughing) After all, it’s not the door that is broken, but the lock. But okay. I hope I won’t upset anyone if I say that the entrance door and the door to the apartment are different things? And the material from which the entrance door is made does not matter at all. The reader may note that the doors to restaurants, cafes, shops, banks are made of glass - and nothing...

The biggest security problem with a solid metal door is that it is opaque. Previously, in houses they tried to make the entrance doors as transparent as possible so that you could see what was behind it. This is exactly what safety is. You approach the entrance and realize that there is no one behind the door, no one will hit you on the head, no one is waiting for you there. In addition, when the entrance is visible from the street, it is unlikely that anyone will “foul” there in every sense of the word. It's the same when you go outside. Already at the entrance you see what is behind the door - a maniac with an ax, gopars are waiting for you, or a grandmother is sitting on a bench.

10. PR

It is important not only to do something well, but also to tell the world about it. Any successful cases of transformation of the urban environment today attract a lot of attention. Even replacing the door at the entrance is already a reason for people to write about you. Publications in the media and social networks motivate people to do more and better. Compliments from neighbors and approving comments can convince even the most ardent opponents of positive changes in your yard. People are vain, so don't be shy about telling the world about your successes.

Many people underestimate the PR part, but in vain. Even at your home level, it is important to inform residents about the changes and their benefits. Make propaganda leaflets and put them in boxes, hang up advertisements, tell everyone in your home what you are doing and why, what the effect will be. It will be very useful to print out the correct articles and also put them in boxes.

If you consistently go through all these 10 steps, perhaps your ordinary yard in an ordinary Russian city will look like this:

Or like this:

Everything is more than real.

By the way, in almost every Finnish yard there is a shovel hanging:

It is needed to hit the skeptics over the head who whine that nothing can be changed. I collect success stories. If you were able to tidy up your yard or entrance, if you have experience communicating with neighbors and bringing people together, write to me: [email protected] .

Well, spread the post) The more people read it, the better.

Question: Prepare (together) a project “How to improve living conditions in our neighborhood.” Think about what needs to be done in your house (neighborhood, neighborhood) to improve the living conditions of its residents. Write down your proposals addressed to the house (block) committee, district government or other local government body. I need an answer very urgently

Prepare (together) a project “How to improve living conditions in our neighborhood.” Think about what needs to be done in your house (neighborhood, neighborhood) to improve the living conditions of its residents. Write down your proposals addressed to the house (block) committee, district government or other local government body. I need an answer very urgently

Answers:

We need to respect people, let their grandmothers pass and help them cross the road in everything, carry their bag home, and in general it is recommended to help them in everything

Women's portal Fleurot

Practice "Blanket"

What happened next?

How can you improve living conditions in your area?

Answers:

RELATED ARTICLES