Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 23 / Trend U.Ismayilova /
Norms of town building are not observed in Baku, Head of the Information and International Relations Department of the Azerbaijani Committee on Architecture and Town Building Jahangir Gojayev said.
"Such a chaotic situation in Azerbaijan has appeared in connection with the fact that the development plan of Baku is outdated, while builders and designers are to follow it in construction work," Gojayev added.
According to Gojayev, now construction density in Baku does not correspond to any norm and standard. The constructors also do not follow the environmental standards and at present areas adjacent to the oilfield sites are the most contaminated lands.
Gojayev also mentioned the problem of non-compliance with the design of residential buildings. The constructors build houses and buildings in the large areas, but there is no school nearby, which leads to an increase in the volume of passenger traffic and constant traffic jams on the roads of the city.
Regarding this, one of the ideas of the General Plan is to transfer the universities from the city center to a less populated area, he added.
According to Gojayev, one of the main reasons for traffic jams in Baku is the universities, around which gathers lot of people and machines during a day.
"The most important problem of incompatibility in Baku city planning standards is that there are very few specialists in this area and mainly architects are engaged in town building," Gojayev said.
The tender commission of the Azerbaijani Committee on Architecture and Town Building is about to complete unsealing the results of the tender on the development of the Regional Development Program of Greater Baku which was announced by the committee earlier, Gojayev stated.
According to Gojayev, the tender commission delayed the definition of the winner because of the attractiveness and diversity of all proposals.
The committee received applications for participation in the tender from 34 companies from 21 countries and is admitting six groups of companies to participate in the tender:
AS & P Albert Speer & Partners GmbH (Germany);
Moshe Zur Architects Town Planners Ltd., Marmanet organization & Projects, Management International Ltd., Geoda Geographical Data, Landed Property, Mapping and Surveying Ltd. (Israel);
EDAW, AECOM (U.S.);
HOK (Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum) Inc., Development Planning Unit, (England), Shaw Consultants International (U.S.), Scott Wilson (Az. Office) (England);
GHK Consulting (United Kingdom), International Land System Inc. (U.S.), Synergetics Ltd. (Azerbaijan);
Urban Solutions (The Netherlands), Hansen Partnership (Australia), Baku State Design Institute (Azerbaijan).
The tender procedure is carried out with support of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (a member of the World Bank group).
Under the conditions of tender, the plan will be developed over two years.
"The plan is called Greater Baku, as the previous plan for Baku covered graphic principles and 22,000 hectares of the territory of the capital city. The real area of Baku totals 219,000 hectares," Gojayev said earlier.
The last major plan for Baku was adopted in 1987. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani government, through the Azerbaijani Committee on Architecture and Town Building and with loans from the World Bank, completed the project on drafting a regional development program for Greater Baku. The project includes the prospective development of Baku, Sumgayit and the Absheron region as a whole in the subsequent 20 years. Similar projects have been implemented in some countries of Eastern Europe. However, none of them covered the capital along with its suburbs, with a population of over 3 million people. The project will involve new technology, such as the use of a geographic information system.
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