Culture Clash In St. Petersburg

This week, planning permission for Gazprom’s proposed Okhta Tower reached the beatings and arrests stage. There’s been ongoing controversy since 2006 but now Limonov’s people and Yabloko are lining up alongside the conservationists. Scuffles guaranteed.

Quick recap: almost no-one has a good word to say about the Gazprom Tower. The Director of the Hermitage thinks it’s a travesty, St. Petersburg’s Union of Architects want nothing to do with it, Unesco believes it threatens St. Petersburg’s ‘World Heritage’ status. For good measure, the media has dubbed its elliptical design, ‘The Corn On The Cob’.

As you’d expect, the tower’s English architect doesn’t agree. He says the design evokes a Swedish fortress and anyway, ‘towers only make cities more precious’. Think Pisa or Paris.

But really, the argument has moved right along from aesthetics. Public sentiment at this time isn’t gung-ho for corporate self-indulgence, especially since the tower will cost around 3bn. Ironically, the construction work is going to Arabtec of Dubai fame, where real estate values have crashed over 40% and skyliner projects are rapidly being canned in favour of sustainable housing. Skyscrapers aren’t unlike old palaces, in that they cost a fortune to maintain and can easily fall into disrepair – or maybe in this case, into the river Neva.

No one thinks for a moment that any protest will succeed, since the tower has the backing of St. Petersburg’s well-connected mayor, Mrs. Matvienko. To her, probably, the tower is only one feature of ‘Gazprom City’, a development intended to generate boodles in city taxes. Attracting Moscow investment, however, also invites Moscow style agitation.