German TV and radio company Deutsche Welle has prepared a story about problems of town planning in Samarkand, Kun.uz correspondent reports.
A three-minute video raises the problem of preserving historical and cultural identity of the city during the period of large-scale construction of new buildings and objects.
“Tradition or progress? History or future?” - this question is identified as the most relevant in the video.
DW correspondent Yuri Shereto says that Samarkand has been intensively rebuilt over the course of a year. High-rise apartment buildings, shops and hotels appeared there.
The third largest city of Uzbekistan is preparing for the mass flow of tourists from around the world. A whole block of 16-story buildings are expected to appear there.
Creation of the new city is headed by the architect Kamol Rakhimov. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, he noted that his task is to turn Samarkand into a green oasis, which it was in the Middle Ages, during the Great Silk Road period.
“Today, by the instructions of the President of Uzbekistan, we are working on a master plan for Samarkand,” the architect Rakhimov said. “The head of the country strictly set the task of re-creating the city’s image.”
However, residents of houses in the old town are afraid that their homes will be demolished in order to build a modern tourist complex with the proud name Samarqand City. Critics of this project fear that the boundaries of the old city requiring protection will be arbitrarily changed at the request of investors.
Kamol Rakhimov confidently replies to these concerns that the master plan of the city provides for the reconstruction of Samarkand in the form of a city-monument to which both tourists and population will be able to look like a city-museum under the open sky.