– Mr. Sargsyan, you have your own development plan for the city of Yerevan and have presented that to the government. Why did you come up with that draft? Did someone ask you to do that?
– I am an expert in that field; I have not only based my studies on Armenia, but also Europe. Besides that, after five years of working at the municipality, I can surely say that Yerevan has a wrong governing system. After the constitutional amendments were passed, there was a demand to change the mayor and the government proposed electing a new mayor with the help of the alderman’s council. I’m certain that that is not the right way; it’s not better than current way-when the mayor gets appointed. There are some problems in this draft-first, the citizen will once again not have the right to elect his mayor; secondly, the aldermen are always going to be a problem for the mayor they have chosen. This will lead to strictly personal relationships and will lead to changing the mayor. On the other hand, you have the community heads, which are going to make things more complicated. I suggest splitting Yerevan and making 7-8 cities and have the mayor get elected by the people.
– Based on your plan, what are the limits going to be for “central” Yerevan?
– I called people’s attention to the fact that it would be more interesting to turn Yerevan back into what it looked like in Alexander Tamanyan’s second plan. Based on that plan, there were about 450,000 residents living in Yerevan and nearly 7-8,000 hectares of land-current Central community, Nork-Marash, Arabkir, the Pantheon, the railway station section, the Yerevan Lake, where the 6,000-year old ruins of Shengavit are located and Marash. With this plan, today there are nearly 300,000 people living in Yerevan, but we are still trying to reach the 450,000 mark.
– What will happen to the rest of the communities?
– The rest of the communities should go back to being called cities; basically we will have municipalities instead of districts-Yerevan-Davtashen, Yerevan-Shengavit, etc. Community heads are officials with half of the local government power. They should have the same power that the mayor has. The new mayors must plan out the structure of the city, make it correspond to the structure of Yerevan as a whole, after which they will have the right to allot lands, be granted permission to start construction, etc. This system will help all structures in Yerevan work better, there will be serious competition, rights and responsibilities. The resident of Charbakh won’t be forced to come all the way to the Central community to make house repairs. I know how hard it is to govern a centralized city like Yerevan. Nobody understood my proposals and there were some misinterpretations. I presented it to the government two months ago and I think that there will be a serious discussion with all levels of society in the months to come. I have followed up on the press and there are already some rumors going around that the municipality will not accept the offer.
– What’s the goal of your project?
– To see Yerevan develop. There is one secret to the development of cities around the globe-mayors must occupy themselves with getting as much investments as possible. The community head has a piece of land, but he is not interested in getting people to invest because he doesn’t have the right to negotiate with the investor. The mayor is the one negotiating and regardless of who it is, the mayor is mainly interested in the heart of the city. I was the chief architect of the whole city of Yerevan, but I didn’t go deep into the issues concerning Shengavit, Charbakh. That’s physically impossible. I felt like the architect of central Yerevan. If we have outskirt cities, the local mayors will immediately start negotiating with investors and plan projects. If we only have the head working, then over time, the rest of the body parts will also start functioning.
– What will the capital of Armenia be-the heart of Yerevan or all the cities combined?
– Central Yerevan. This is not something new; I didn’t make a discovery. This has been around in Europe in the 70s. When cities started to develop and get bigger, that led to lack of governance. People started coming up with mechanisms to better govern the big cities and divided them. In this case, power is distributed and, in my opinion, this is good for Yerevan. It’s dangerous to have the 1.2 million people living in Yerevan elect a mayor. The elected mayor will have the rights equal to those of a city/state president. But let’s leave that aside. Why can’t the 1.2 million population have, let’s say, 9 mayors? Why can the city of Artik with its 20,000 residents have a mayor and Erebuni can’t, when it has 100,000 residents? Leone, France is the best example of this-the city has a 2 million population and 55 communities. The same goes for Los Angeles. This is just strange for our culture.
– How will the plan help the resident of Yerevan living in Davtashen? How can he be sure that this is a good plan?
– The resident of Davtashen gets his right to govern; he will get the right to vote for the mayor governing in his territory. His will have the power that a citizen should have. In fact, the citizen will have the right to plan out the structure of the city. He will decide whether he wants a park or not. Currently, the municipal officials have the power in their hands, but they need to give that power to the citizen. Maybe the citizens want to turn their park into a construction zone, or vice versa.
– How can the resident take part in all that?
– The chief plan solves some strategic issues: how should the future streets pass? Which section of the street is going to be part of the forest? Where will we have sections for water? Where will there be residential and industrial areas? This can never solve the issues concerning the structure of a building or how many floors it has. It will solve issues concerning the security of the territory. The next step is where the resident comes in-this is the plan where you can see the yards, parks, kiosks. This plan must be discussed with the people.
– In any case, your plan has a political context to it and you get the impression that it is more important than the residents’ issues. It will be easier to govern Yerevan by splitting it into small communities, especially during elections.
– I have never been in politics and that is not a category for me. Political life changes, but we always have the development issue. It’s not up to me to decide how many polls there will be; you can ask the government or the electoral commission for the answers to those kinds of questions. In both cases, the resident is the one choosing whether to vote by bribe or not.
– Mr. Sargsyan, let’s talk about the construction of central Yerevan, in which you play a major role and have been criticized for. Do you like the buildings being constructed today?
– In contrast to everyone else, I have never made populist announcements and don’t intend on doing. I have said that Yerevan is going to change. There are some buildings which I don’t like. I recently said that I don’t like the idea of getting rid of the old, monumental buildings on the major street because based on all the previous plans, there was supposed to be a park there. But the ecologists agreed that they have to construct buildings there, and not parks. That’s just the way it is and construction reflects the culture of a given country.
– Some people say that it’s not good to have too many high buildings because central Yerevan is in the seismic zone.
– I don’t think so. I know many central cities around the world and how close the buildings are. Seismology has nothing to do with the number of building floors. Those rumors are non-professional. There is no such thing. The fact that Yerevan can’t fulfill the demands of 21st century urbanization and that it’s falling apart is a different story. They are building the same things they built back in the 70s. Back then, they started building high-story buildings in yards and got criticized. People think with inertia.
– I’m talking about the Opera building, which is lost amongst all the high, newly built buildings. After all, according to the No.774 resolution passed by the government in 2000, the altitude of buildings on “Northern Avenue” must be 20-25 meters high.
– I wrote that resolution and presented it to the government. I believed in that project. The resolution stated that the width of the avenue must be 21-24 meters, with 7 floors on each building, except separate accented constructions, in this case towers.
– What accented constructions? All the buildings on that avenue exceed 8 floors.
– We formed an authorized group and I was the leader. We decided to turn the 24 meter width into 27 meters. That helped us make eight floors instead of seven. Later on, the eight floors created problems because there was an issue of getting rid of the snow and rain, but we decided to stick with that. There is a huge 8-9 meter slant between Abovyan street and the Opera house and we can add another 9 floors. The “Northern Avenue” is not just about constructing separate buildings, but rather coming from the current city and entering a new one, where you get a totally different impression.
– Many people are of the opinion that the construction is low-quality.
– Our buildings are built based on high standards and they are high in quality. There has never been a building equivalent to this in Yerevan. The buildings are not alike. Everyone used to steal each other’s ideas in the Soviet era. Today, that’s impossible-there are hundreds of supervising bodies and they are even supervised by the client.
– Some citizens think that the client doesn’t make too many investments and that’s why the quality is low. They say that construction is the best field for money-laundering.
– That’s out of the question.
– Haven’t you been pressured by the clients while making the plan? Did you plan what you wanted to?
– Urbanization is the art of compromises. You can make compromises, but to a certain extent. There is a limit and I think we haven’t crossed it.
– You mentioned your vision of Yerevan 50 years later.
– Yerevan is going to be huge and one of the well-known cities in the world. Yerevan is going to play the same role that Tbilisi used to play in this region at the time. The citizens who don’t like this or that residential area will leave central Yerevan 20 years later, settle down in the Aragats mountains or elsewhere. Central Yerevan will become a business/leisure environment.
– How do you imagine the overload of commercial and regular cars in Yerevan?
– This is a problem. During the Soviet era, when the city was being urbanized, nobody really paid any attention to the streets. There have to be more streets in Yerevan. Today, many streets lead to a labyrinth; they have to be opened up.
– Do you like modern Yerevan, especially with its newly built skyscraper in the yard where there are 5-story buildings? We are not used to seeing this and it seems as though it doesn’t correspond to the architectural style of the city.
– Urbanization is a form of art; if you are building something and you are making it beautiful and commensurate, then that is a work of art. But if you are an architect and build something awful, incommensurate and rough, then that will simply be distasteful.
– Your name is mentioned a lot during architecture/urbanization critical discussions. Aren’t you concerned about that?
– Being involved in urbanization has always been painful. I don’t know one building in the world, which hasn’t been criticized. Tamanyan pursued his career in the 20th century, got criticized; we started the 21st century-it’s the same thing. In closing, I am happy and feel confident that I have been the one taking the initiative of implementing urbanization projects in Yerevan. Let’s remember the year 2000 when all we had was the interior “remodeling” of “Yerevan” hotel. That was the only investment made for the city. Now take a look at the lighting on the streets of Yerevan, the number of new hotels, “Northern Avenue”, “Northern Ray”; we no longer have half-constructed buildings. Yerevan has changed tremendously. Why don’t you want to look on the bright side of things?