T. Polidi, IUE Executive Director, made a presentation on “Housing and Urban Environment as Assets of Urban Economy” at the first session of the Living Environment Forum hosted by the city of Kaliningrad on May 18-19, 2018.
“RIA Nedvizhimost (“Real Estate” Russian News Agency)estimates the potential of town-planning development in RF at about one billion square meters of housing,” informed the audience T. Polidi, Executive Director of IUE, at the Living Environment Forum.
“The prospects for urban development of our metropolitan areas are bright. We attempted to estimate the potential of the existing residential areas and cities against a simple indicator, such as the intensity of a residential area use expressed in housing density. This helps to improve understanding of the investment market for housing projects, and also of the potential for territory development,” said T. Polidi.
“The market potential makes up, at least, about one billion square meters of housing,” added the head of IUE.
“With regard to the effects the potential will have on the increase in the living space per capita, the latter will rise up to 35-40 square meters per capita. Even today, when compared with other countries and agglomerations, Russia and its agglomerations are not so much falling behind their counterparts,” said T. Polidi.
She estimated the total housing stock in Russia at 3.5-3.7 billion square meters.
“In monetary terms it makes up around 70 trillion rubles, which accounts for 75 percent of GDP. So far, the territory being used has a substantial town-planning potential. There is no need to attract additional sources for expanding the existing residential areas and territory, and here we mean the potential of the existing residential areas, but a city also has inefficiently used areas, and so on. The estimates should be considered as minimal,” she noted.
Also according to T. Polidi, the capitalization of Moscow’s housing stock alone makes up 55 trillion rubles which represents around 60 percent of Russia’s GDP. “If we unite the figures across all the indicators we’ll get several Russia’s GDPs,” she concluded.
