Methods of housing migrant workers in a megalopolis

Abstract

The problem of migration of people with a low income level to cities and countries where they could improve their standard of living is one of the most important world problems these days. The paper addresses issues of accommodation of foreign migrants who arrived for a time for earning, in big cities and metropolises of Russia, which are issues of serious concern for big cities all over the world. This problem is especially pressing in megalopolises where a number of social conflicts and interethnic ones in particular, considerably increased, and the urban criminal situation and sanitary state became much worse. Whereas, a thought-out and deliberate approach to solving this problem can harmonize a megalopolis social and urban environment and add significant funds to a municipal budget. Moscow is a characteristic example of a modern city where this problem is a priority nowadays. The paper is focused on addressing architectural planning aspects of housing migrant workers in a city based on on-site inspections of the living conditions of those people in Moscow, studying their legal status, and determining needs and demands of their urban life taking into account a huge experience of design and construction of municipal dormitories for workers gained in the USSR. The authors offer architectural planning variants of optimal accommodation for poor people who arrived to do hard and dirty work, in dormitories that are able, being highly economical with regard to planning solutions, to satisfy the actual needs of migrants so as they could be healthy and could live and work in the city normally. The paper contains recommendations for supplementing laws and regulations available in the Russian Federation nowadays and applicable to this group of population. The paper materials can be useful for formulating architectural planning norms and rules of designing similar type buildings, and legislative norms of accommodation/housing of migrant workers in a city.