The PPP path: why residents of new buildings remain without schools
The court declared illegal the inaction of the Vladivostok city administration in the Izumrudny and Snegovaya Pad neighborhoods, where there is a catastrophic shortage of places in schools and kindergartens. Now officials have been ordered to finance and create at least 1,8 thousand places in educational institutions within two years. However, similar problems in the neighborhoods that have appeared in the last 10 years are typical for many cities in Russia. Izvestia investigated why residents of new buildings still cannot send their children to the nearest school and what is the recipe for solving this problem.
Why were there no schools in Vladivostok's new buildings
The decision was made by the Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok, according to the Joint Press Service of the judicial system of Primorsky Krai. The defendants were the administration of Vladivostok and its department for work with municipal educational institutions, which did not take measures to provide residents of the Izumrudny and Snegovaya Pad neighborhoods with places in kindergartens and schools in accordance with the need.
Now the administration of Vladivostok must allocate money for the creation of 1,810 places in schools and kindergartens within a year, and after the availability of funding, these places will be created within a year. In other words, it doesn't matter how to solve the problem within two years: the construction of a new building, as well as the purchase or reconstruction of other suitable buildings for this purpose are allowed.
The Primorsky Territory Prosecutor's office, which filed a lawsuit, told Izvestia that there were educational institutions in the Snegovaya Pad microdistrict, but they were overcrowded, and there were no schools at all in the Izumrudny microdistrict.
Moreover, the Leninsky District Court made the first decision back in April 2025, but the city administration did not agree with it and appealed it to the Primorsky Regional Court. In October, the decision taken in the first instance was confirmed and entered into force.
The Vladivostok city administration had not responded to a request from Izvestia at the time of publication.
At the same time, the authorities did not abandon plans for further development: in May, residents of Snegovaya Pad appealed to the authorities to stop the construction of new houses. At the same time, an attempt to build a school failed last year: at that time, a building with 1,100 seats was being built under a concession, but the company that was doing this was almost not invested in the work and the site was idle. As a result, the construction of the school was declared illegal. The concessionaires were ordered to return to the budget 620 million rubles allocated for the construction of the facility.
The construction of the Snegovaya Pad microdistrict was carried out under the federal housing program for military personnel, the first houses were commissioned in 2010.
The Izumrudny residential complex is a younger one: it began to be built in 2017, and the first stage was commissioned in 2020.
The All-Russian problem
Daniil Alimpeev, Chief Expert at the Institute of State and Municipal Management at the Higher School of Economics, noted that the current situation in Vladivostok is associated with frequent errors in urban planning.
"When issuing permits for the construction of houses, the city authorities did not foresee the growing need for social infrastructure," he told Izvestia. — Thanks to the intervention of the prosecutor's office, two new school projects were included in the city's development plan, but for various reasons they were not implemented.
He doubts that the court's decision will help solve the problem promptly. But it is obvious that the processes of creating social infrastructure and apartment buildings have become disconnected from each other.
— It is all the more important to understand that the current legislation, at least not directly, does not oblige the developer to build infrastructure, it is the responsibility of local authorities, — Daniel Alimpeyev noted. — It is the authorities that must ensure the constitutional right to public education. As a result, they often use public-private partnership (PPP) mechanisms so that after receiving all permits, the developer builds a school or kindergarten, and then transfers them to the municipality.
Oleg Filippov, Chairman of the Opora Russia Construction Committee, emphasizes that construction should now be carried out taking into account the construction of social facilities, as well as current federal and regional urban planning legislation.
Back in August last year, analysts at Metrium stated that in Moscow only 49% of developers meet the requirements for the construction of social infrastructure. However, after that, a law was passed on the mandatory construction of social facilities for the integrated development of territories. Now, says Yulia Yemelyanova, head of the department for the implementation of new buildings at Genesis PRO, any project for the integrated development of a territory (CAT or CRT) cannot receive permission without approval of a social infrastructure plan, which determines the number and location of schools, kindergartens, clinics, sports and cultural facilities.
Alexander Moore, head of the All-Russian Center for National Construction Policy, also emphasizes that the problems relate primarily to old facilities that were built 10-15 years ago. Back then, developers often skimped on schools and kindergartens, and administrations turned a blind eye to it.
— The heads of cities are now trying to solve this problem somehow, to build this infrastructure. In a number of cities, it reaches the prosecutor's office, which issues orders," the source told Izvestia. — There are enough tools to solve problems, but it is not so easy to do, primarily due to budgetary issues.
Why are there still problems?
However, there is still a certain imbalance between the central and regional executive authorities in terms of urban planning, Oleg Filippov believes. According to him, it is expressed in the fact that local buildings of maximum density are allowed with critically minimal indicators of providing the territory with social infrastructure facilities.
Yulia Yemelyanova explains that currently the number of places in schools and kindergartens is calculated according to approved standards. As a rule, these are 135-180 places in school and 60-90 places in kindergarten per 1,000 inhabitants. But the numbers may vary depending on the region and its features.
— The calculation method exists, but in practice it often faces demographic distortions — young families move to new areas en masse, and after two or three years the project, originally calculated "according to the standard," turns out to be overloaded, - said the interlocutor of Izvestia.
The indicator of the number of educational places in a school for a certain territory has a specific range of values, and if the executive branch rushes to the extreme values of the indicator in urban planning policy, it turns out "that it is dense and where it is empty," Oleg Filippov notes.
Alexander Moore notes that both the methodology and the stage of construction are prescribed in the law on the CRT. Moreover, he says, municipalities are now trying to make calculations with a margin so that, if necessary, the school can accept children from the neighboring district.
However, Nadezhda Kosareva, President of the Institute of Urban Economics Foundation, notes that the problems remain not because the number of places in schools is poorly calculated.
— On the one hand, cities and regions have limited budget opportunities. On the other hand, in cities with low housing prices, it is often impossible to ensure profitability for developers of housing construction projects involving the creation of social facilities, and in cities with relatively high housing prices there are no fair rules for imposing obligations on developers to participate in the development of social infrastructure," she explained.
Are legislative innovations needed?
Alexander Moore believes that the legislation on the integrated development of territories is already balanced enough to avoid new problems with the lack of schools. Another thing is that many regions "have not yet learned how to use this tool."
Nadezhda Kosareva sees a gap in what is not spelled out: who should provide housing construction facilities with social infrastructure — the authorities or developers?
— This question is not so simple. The new CRT legislation regulates that such a distribution of responsibilities should be established in the contract, but housing is built not only within the framework of the CRT," she noted.
As one of the solutions to the problem, she mentions the international practice where "infrastructure collection" is used. It is paid by developers, and the authorities use this money to build social infrastructure.
— In the absence of federal regulation, some Russian cities and regions have also followed this path, providing either monetary or in-kind (construction of facilities) forms of developer participation in the creation of social infrastructure (for example, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Tyumen), — said Nadezhda Kosareva.
Daniil Alimpeev also suggests using this variant of the public-private partnership mechanism for the construction of schools and kindergartens — he calls it an "infrastructure agreement." According to him, it is thanks to this institution that there are no problems with the social infrastructure in Moscow. He stressed that the current legislation is quite sufficient to solve this problem, and the key to this is the competent use of CRT and PPP mechanisms.
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