The Genplan Institute of Moscow landed the commission for the development of a master plan of the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk agglomeration in May 2022, after the federal program for developing Far-East cities was launched. For the Eastern Economic Forum, which took place five months later, the municipalities prepared two dozen master plans, and only five of them, after an expert review, reached the presidential level and were recently approved for implementation. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was one of them.

The Genplan Institute of Moscow has been working with the city for a long and fruitful time – since 2016; it developed a package of documents for it, the most important of them being the master plan approved in 2021. The situation looks paradoxical, but the team explains that there is no contradiction: the new master plan is fully consistent with the original one, it uses its developments and solutions, but has slightly different goals – primarily to outline and justify the economic development strategy. In addition, the new master plan covers a larger territory – for example, the city of Korsakov, located 30 km to the south on the shore of Aniva Bay.

The consortium headed by the Institute includes Knight Frank – a strategic partner, one of the major players on the market of commercial and high-end residential real estate in Russia. Another member is IND Architects, whose presence also makes perfect sense, since the concept of this team won the competition for the creation of the new model of Korsakov “Ecopolis”. The economic model was supervised by Anton Zaitsev, deputy chairman of the government of the Sakhalin region.

The company called Marta made a package of high-quality visualizations and an interactive map for the Eastern Economic Forum, as well as 3D visualizations for a promo video, which was directed by Yulia Nemova. Watching it makes you want to buy a ticket to the other side of the world, which will soon become economically self-sufficient. On a more serious note, the video reveals the essence of the 300-page album with the materials of the master plan in a very accessible and comprehensible manner.



Acupuncture for Growth

The main thing that distinguishes the new master plan is the macro-processes and the emphasis on the investment component. The economic model is built based on the unique features of the region and mathematical calculations. The planning horizon is about ten years.