Authors

Khayrullina Yulia S.
A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE PLANNING OF KEY URBAN RAILWAY-INFRASTRUCTURE FACILITIES

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (40) December, 2012

Urban facilities performing the transportation function have a long history of development. The term "railway station" was modified with changes in its functionalities. The author intentionally introduces the working term «key urban facility with a transport function» because this town-planning phenomenon has no accurate definition. «A key urban facility with a transport function» generally means railway transport infrastructure facilities (stations, transit centres, multipurpose complexes).

At the turn of the 18th century, the Russian language had the word «voksal», derived from the English word «Vauxhall», which at that time designated entertainment facilities for high society at railway stations. In the 19th century, this entertainment facility lost its specific functions as the railway infrastructure was developing, and additional, less «active» passenger services were added to its main function, i.e. transportation. The result was a new type of railway infrastructure – a railway station. Throughout two centuries the railway station was a typical element of the transport infrastructure, defining the general character of a transportation facility for all railway station complexes across the country. However, the technological and, later, information revolution in society led to advances in technological thinking and rates of technical progress in all spheres of life, including transport infrastructure. The information society developed a broader range of needs in connection with the opening opportunities, and this has had an inevitable effect on the structural organisation of railway station complexes. Acquiring an increasing range of functions to satisfy the growing needs of the passenger as consumer and an ordinary person with his/her broad range of needs, the railway station has expanded beyond the typological boundaries of a usual railway complex, becoming something like «a key urban facility with a transport function». A modern-day project of this kind includes a lot of functions, communications and, accordingly, spatial treatments. It is still located within the city structure, more often than not being based on an existing railway station. Therefore, in order to allow for all the variety of scenarios that a person may find him/herself in today in the same context with numerous functions – railway transport and passenger services – we need a clear definition of this facility with a description of its criteria and parameters and new planning methods. Frequently what we see is a chaotic «functional mess» of railway station services with subsequent excessive functional and social density in the same space. That is why it is necessary to give attention to the shift in the transport paradigm with changes in society as exemplified by the evolution of railway station as a median typical concept of a transport and transit complex.