<mods:mods version="3.3" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-3.xsd" xmlns:mods="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><mods:titleInfo><mods: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)</mods:title></mods:titleInfo><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart type="given">Nikolay</mods:namePart><mods:namePart type="family">Lavrentyev</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">author</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart type="given">Vladimir</mods:namePart><mods:namePart type="family">Chernushev</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">author</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart type="given">Elena</mods:namePart><mods:namePart type="family">Malysheva</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">author</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart type="given">Nataliya</mods:namePart><mods:namePart type="family">Romanovskaya</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">author</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:abstract>Since 2010-2012, residents of St. Petersburg supported by city-defending activists, experts and&#13;
politicians have been fighting against construction works carried out in proximity to two protected&#13;
architectural ensembles of the XVIII century, the Chesma Palace (1774-1777, architect J .I. Felten, 1831-&#13;
1836, architect A. E. Schtaubert) and the Aleksandrino Country Estate (1760s, architect J. B. Vallin de la&#13;
Mothe). These objects are situated within the boundaries of Components №540-034а 'Moskovskaya road&#13;
(highway)' and №540-034g 'Peterhofskaya Road (Highway)' of the World Heritage Site C540 'Historic&#13;
Centre of St. Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments', respectively. By means of official addresses&#13;
to governmental agencies, court actions, civil rallies, pickets etc, local residents together with the authors&#13;
of these proceedings try to persuade the authorities and developers to drop their plans of building multistorey&#13;
residence houses in proximity to the mentioned monuments. The construction in progress distorts&#13;
protected views and panoramas and poses threat to physical safety of monuments. With consent of local&#13;
officials and arguably via corruption schemes, developers try to undertake projects that contradict the law.&#13;
A global problem is the reluctance of local officials to follow the requirements of Paragraph 172 of&#13;
Operational Guidelines for Implementation of World Heritage Convention (hereinafter Operational&#13;
Guidelines) and their refusal to evaluate constructing projects' impact on the outstanding universal value&#13;
of the World Heritage Site. Since 1990, when St. Petersburg was recognized as a World Heritage Site,&#13;
Paragraph 172 of Operational Guidelines has never been observed. The situation has gone so far that in&#13;
2016 the Russian President charged the Russian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs with a task&#13;
to ensure that the Convention Concerning Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage and&#13;
Operational Guidelines to be observed in Russia. However, local officials, namely the executive agencies&#13;
of the Administration of St. Petersburg, stick to ignoring these norms of law.</mods:abstract><mods:classification authority="lcc">02. Urbanisme</mods:classification><mods:classification authority="lcc">09. Aspects économiques et sociaux de la conservation</mods:classification><mods:classification authority="lcc">11. Protection juridique et administration</mods:classification><mods:classification authority="lcc">04. Sensibilisation du public</mods:classification><mods:classification authority="lcc">04. Patrimoine Mondial en péril</mods:classification><mods:originInfo><mods:dateIssued encoding="iso8601">2018</mods:dateIssued></mods:originInfo><mods:genre>Document issu d'une conférence ou d'un atelier</mods:genre></mods:mods>