Sochi residents oppose general plan amendments

When amending the general plan of Sochi, officials mislead townspeople and hide the true state of affairs with the city development, said the participants in the meeting of activists, who are against public hearings on the general plan.

The meeting of activists was held on November 24 in the Sochi Geographical Society in Kurortny Avenue with the participation of the members of the Sochi City Public Planning Council, the "Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus" (EcoWatch), the Geographical Society and local house committees.

The officials and local deputies suggest making 705 changes in the general plan, adopted eight years ago. They claim that these occurred during these years while the resort city was actively developing. However, activists believe that in fact there were many more changes, but they are not presented in the supplements to the general plan. Valery Suchkov, a member of the Public Town Planning Council, has counted about 5000 changes.

According to his version, "officials are trying to amend the Sochi general plan under complete ignorance of townspeople, concealing the truthful information and deceiving people on legality of these actions."

"By official documents, Sochi is by 83% a territory of the national park, but in reality everything is the other way around. All of these 83% are actually occupied by corrupted construction projects; and now they want to legalize them. In fact they should be demolished; and the areas, which are documented as specially protected and common-use territories should be restored; however, they offer to expand them and build even more; that is, the city is being destroyed," Valery Suchkov has stated.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.