The Moscow City Hall regularly shifts tiles, as it is economically feasible and necessary, including for the tourist attractiveness of the city. This was told by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, speaking at the X The All-Russian Youth Educational Forum "Territory of Meanings", RBC news agency reports today, August 14.
"As for the economy, they reproach many times that we <> we are excessively engaged in the improvement of the city, why are you spending such money, are you putting this unhappy tile there, are you shifting it? Such a meme in the city: "Sobyanin digs these sidewalks endlessly, because there is a treasure of Luzhkov <> buried". In fact, this is true, but Luzhkov didn't bury it there — it's the modern economy buried there. When there were stalls at this place and cars were parked, there were no people there, there was no trade, there were no tourists," Sobyanin said.
He also noted that each of the stalls demolished in Moscow near the Chistye Prudy metro station used to bring the owner about $ 100 thousand a year.
"We demolished tens of thousands of such [stalls], got such a blissful picture [of a well-maintained city]. <> Today, having spent 100 billion [rubles] on landscaping, we have an additional 120 billion [rubles] from tourism in a year. These projects pay off in a year, in a year! And you are unlikely to find such economic miracles anywhere," the mayor added.
The Moscow authorities began massively replacing asphalt with tiles in 2011. Sobyanin then explained that in hot weather the asphalt warms up more than the air, and begins to emit a "whole bunch" of harmful substances.
"In terms of emissions, this is comparable to the exhaust of cars, and if you seriously deal with ecology, then this factor is one of the main ones," the mayor noted.
Paving slabs, especially in the center of the capital, where there is very little greenery, are much more useful than asphalt, he added.