Construction activity turning into PR: who clogs the information space with unnecessary noise

Sooner or later, they begin to believe things that cunning PR people have told them.

Sergey Levin

For some time now, reading the editorial mail in the morning has been reminiscent of Groundhog Day from a Hollywood movie. You poke into the message of the Moscow construction complex, and there the invariable name in the headline is Andrei Bochkarev, vice-mayor of the capital. This is followed by a colon and, in fact, the news itself:

Andrey Bochkarev: At the transfer from the Rizhskaya station of the BKL to the orange line, the installation of decorative panels has begun.

Andrey Bochkarev: The installation of fencing for the foundation pits of two stations is being completed at the central section of the Troitskaya metro line.

Andrei Bochkarev: New life will be breathed into the Torpedo stadium.

Andrey Bochkarev: More than two-thirds of the monolithic work at the Lianozovo station has been completed...

Andrey Bochkarev: Concreting of the supports of the last overpass of the North-Eastern Expressway within the Moscow Ring Road has been completed...

And so - ad infinitum. Judging by the interactive map , there are now 1613 construction sites in Moscow. Take any - and sculpt the news on behalf of Andrei Bochkarev. Somewhere - hurrah!!! - they dug the foundation, somewhere - twice cheers !! - finished laying the roof, and at the station "Rizhskaya" - what happiness! - began installation of decorative panels.

At the same time, absolutely every construction site, like a record-breaking cow, is milked for hundreds of informational reasons. You can report on the concreting of each of the dozens of supports of each of the dozens of overpasses under construction, or you can give the same process as a percentage:

Andrey Bochkarev: Sokolniki station of the BKL metro is almost 60% ready

There is no doubt that Bochkarev's self-promotion plans include at least four more news from Sokolniki - upon reaching 70, 80, 90 and 100 percent. But this - except for other "successes" of Bochkarev at the station, somehow - laying marble tiles, installing columns, rails, lamps, escalators ... After all, every action, even if insignificant on the scale of Moscow, should be consecrated in the name of Andrei Yuryevich Bochkareva.

He, Bochkarev, is omnipresent and omniscient. So it seems that, starting the working day at 8 in the morning, Andrei Yuryevich asks his assistants:

- And how is it with the installation of decorative panels? What about concreting the 16th pillar? Good? Well then, let's urgently release - both in newspapers and on television ...

Thus, Moscow Vice Mayor Bochkarev, managing the construction complex, which employs more than 400 thousand people , is the only speaker of the entire industry.

Previously, it used to be that both the senior foreman and the foreman of a subcontractor or contractor could tell about the installation of panels in the subway. Now - no-no! What if someone thinks that more than one Bochkarev is building Moscow?

However, another thing is to think about why Bochkarev himself needs this cheap PR?

I remember that the chief Moscow builder, Vladimir Resin, has always been in Luzhkov's shadow and never the frontman of information flows (except for the million-dollar watch scandal). Marat Khusnullin also did not run ahead of Sergei Sobyanin, who personally opened all any noticeable construction projects (and certainly during the election period).

But it is also true that the charismatic Khusnullin in the information field has overshadowed his subordinate Andrey Bochkarev, who since December 2010 has headed the Department of Construction of the city of Moscow. Apparently, 10 years of obscurity inflicted psychological trauma on the official and, having taken the place of Khusnullin, Bochkarev decided to urgently recoup all the years of silence.

However, they decided to engage in enhanced PR using purely construction, that is, quantitative methods. When building bridges and roads, it is important how much concrete was laid and how much reinforcement was welded. But the information support of officials is based on somewhat different laws and rules.

Although in the case of Bochkarev, there may be a completely reasonable explanation for the meaningless informational noise, namely: the number of positive, as it were, news under the name of the head of the construction complex should clog any negative on the Internet.

And he, the negative, is in large quantities. Many Muscovites are already taken aback at the sight of the next mega-projects of the construction complex. Here, for example, are reviews of the future Moscow High-Speed Diameter (MSD):

- Why run a transit highway through Moscow? She is already overloaded with traffic jams, getting additional transit traffic into her is idiocy. Transit must be outside the Moscow Ring Road. Until the construction of human settlements is stopped, no matter how many roads you make, there will be no less traffic jams. That is, those who have a high-speed highway under their windows, while many have broken insolation, do not care? Have many broken garages? Also don't care? Don't care about all these people, right? She is paid ... High-speed through the city and paid. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.

- In Kuskovo, centuries-old oaks were cut down for this chord. Sobyanin brought out more than 12 hectares from the forest park zone of Kuskovo - hundreds of trees were ruined. Really, why aren't people happy?

- People are worried that a physically dedicated route will pass at the level of the windows of residential buildings in their immediate vicinity. At the same time, traffic jams are expected on it (the picture of the 3rd ring in the Begovaya area is still in front of your eyes). And what the city authorities will do or what measures will be (or have already been) taken to avoid these traffic jams and noise from the road - it is not obvious from the SS program speech, to put it mildly. Hence the negative...

Whether Muscovites are right in their fears or not, we do not know. But it is obvious that Andrey Yuryevich Bochkarev, the main builder of Moscow, is in no hurry to enter into a dialogue with the population and instead of answering sharp questions, he talks about the installation of decorative panels and the concreting of some kind of supports.

The situation is the same with the protests of citizens in New Moscow against the cutting down of the Trinity Forest. In Troitsk itself, almost a civil war has begun in defense of the green "lungs of Moscow", and Mr. Bochkarev says that there should be a mega-school. But he does not say a word, but who is to blame for this crisis? For years, Troitsk has been built up with commercial housing, but now it turned out that there was no place to build a school, it was necessary to cut down the forest. And over the past 10 years, Andrey Bochkarev has not been a stranger to the development of New Moscow.

In the meantime, even in "old" Moscow, no one really knows what exactly will be built under your windows. The promised new General Plan of the capital will appear, according to Bochkarev himself, only in 2025. There are fears that thanks to record-breaking builders, Moscow will be turned into Shanghai, where nightmarish human giants are interspersed with high-speed roads and multi-level interchanges.