@inproceedings{icomos1928,
       booktitle = {ICOMOS 19th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium "Heritage and Democracy"},
           title = {Local Residents against Developers and Officials: a Case Study of Protection of Architectural Ensembles of Chesma Palace and Alexandrino Country Estate in Saint Petersburg (Russia)},
            year = {2018},
        keywords = {ARRAY(0x560c4b937500)},
             url = {http://openarchive.icomos.org/id/eprint/1928/},
        abstract = {Since 2010-2012, residents of St. Petersburg supported by city-defending activists, experts and
politicians have been fighting against construction works carried out in proximity to two protected
architectural ensembles of the XVIII century, the Chesma Palace (1774-1777, architect J .I. Felten, 1831-
1836, architect A. E. Schtaubert) and the Aleksandrino Country Estate (1760s, architect J. B. Vallin de la
Mothe). These objects are situated within the boundaries of Components ?540-034? 'Moskovskaya road
(highway)' and ?540-034g 'Peterhofskaya Road (Highway)' of the World Heritage Site C540 'Historic
Centre of St. Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments', respectively. By means of official addresses
to governmental agencies, court actions, civil rallies, pickets etc, local residents together with the authors
of these proceedings try to persuade the authorities and developers to drop their plans of building multistorey
residence houses in proximity to the mentioned monuments. The construction in progress distorts
protected views and panoramas and poses threat to physical safety of monuments. With consent of local
officials and arguably via corruption schemes, developers try to undertake projects that contradict the law.
A global problem is the reluctance of local officials to follow the requirements of Paragraph 172 of
Operational Guidelines for Implementation of World Heritage Convention (hereinafter Operational
Guidelines) and their refusal to evaluate constructing projects' impact on the outstanding universal value
of the World Heritage Site. Since 1990, when St. Petersburg was recognized as a World Heritage Site,
Paragraph 172 of Operational Guidelines has never been observed. The situation has gone so far that in
2016 the Russian President charged the Russian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs with a task
to ensure that the Convention Concerning Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage and
Operational Guidelines to be observed in Russia. However, local officials, namely the executive agencies
of the Administration of St. Petersburg, stick to ignoring these norms of law.},
          author = {Lavrentyev, Nikolay and Chernushev, Vladimir and Malysheva, Elena and Romanovskaya, Nataliya}
}