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Medvedev to chair meeting on Moscow enlargement project

Some 21 municipal entities, including two city districts, 19 urban and rural settlements and three uninhabited areas will be incorporated in Moscow

MOSCOW, April 9 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will chair a meeting over the Moscow enlargement project on Monday. According to the law, the Moscow boundaries will be officially expanded on July 1. However, conceptual debates continue over how to build the life of the Russian capital on the new territory.

The Russian president approved the ambitious idea for Moscow’s expansion of about 2.5 times nine months ago. For this period of time the necessary multi-voluminous paper work was done to process the documents, the contest was announced to develop a construction concept and the so-called transitional period continues. The territory of 160,000 hectares will be attached to Moscow from the Varshavskoye Highway to the Kievskoye Highway and further south-westward to the Big Moscow Ring Railway.

Thus, Moscow will go up from the 11th to the sixth place in the rating of the world big cities in terms of territory, though the city will stay at the seventh position in terms of its population of 11.7 million people, because only 250,000 people live on the new Moscow territory.

Some 21 municipal entities, including two city districts, 19 urban and rural settlements and three uninhabited areas will be incorporated in Moscow. Troitsk, where the Monday meeting will be held, is situated in the Greater Moscow.

Troitsk, which is situated 20 kilometres away from the Moscow Ring Road on the Kaluzhskoye Highway, has the status of a scientific township and is dated back to the seventeenth century.

“I consider the expansion of the Moscow boundaries as an important task,” Medvedev pointed out. “All people, primarily the Muscovites, should benefit from” the Moscow enlargement, he noted.

Several centres are planned to form in the Russian capital. For instance, the ministries and agencies will be relocated from the historical centre.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the then governor of the Moscow Region Boris Gromov presented the coordinated plan of Moscow enlargement to Medvedev. Last week Sergei Shoigu was approved as governor of the Moscow Region and will be inaugurated in May.

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