New Moscow: Plans afoot to double the size of Russia's capital

Plans have been laid to fundamentally rethink Moscow. The Kremlin and the rest of the historic center of Russia's capital city are groaning under the weight of automobile traffic thanks to the boom in car ownership that followed the collapse of communism. Traffic in the city, memorably described by Keith Gessen for The New Yorker in 2010 as feeling "like an existential threat," frequently coagulates into jams which were reported by Pravda last year to be the longest in duration in the world: on average 2.5 hours long. The plan is bold: to create a new Federal District that would move the seat of government out of the old center and into a brand new district, doubling the size of the city. Following a six-month international design competition, a particular vision has been chosen.

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