PROBLEM OF TERRITORIAL AND FUNCTIONAL DЕVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF ALMATY
Authors: KOZBAGAROVA N. 
Published: April 2023

Since the beginning of the 20th century in the city of Verniy - which was later renamed to Alma- Ata and afterwards to Almaty - implementation of the "garden city" concept starts. With city's growth and acquirement of the status of capital its public center structure becomes more complicated, the ratio of urban area greening raises, landscape architecture objects typology is broadened. The largest city of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty, having overstepped millionth milestone in the population, during its functioning nowadays faces series of issues in providing comfortable accommodation for residents: ecological – noncompliance with regulatory norms of greening ratio within the city limit; social - failure to ensure the accessibility of landscape architecture objects of recreational purpose, as well as thematic variety of public use green territories for residents of the peripheral areas; low quality of pedestrian area aesthetics. Feasibility of saving valleys of mountain rivers undeveloped, placing elements of green areas system along the direction of the breeze, presented with latest master plans of the city is not being implemented in full. This leads to development of fragmented mesh structure of the whole natural complex and is one of the most important factors of lowering resistance of city's natural ecosystem against anthropogenic exposure. In 2017 within implementation of program on raising quantity and quality of open recreational public spaces in the city, on broadening pedestrian areas an architectural-landscape reconstruction was conducted of existing pedestrian street, and in the core of public center of the city functional reorientation of transport street into a pedestrian street was carried out. During execution of architectural-landscape reconstruction of the new pedestrian street fragments of historical paving were uncovered and its accentuation was then made with use of decorative paving, that allowed to improve the characteristics of recreational space and identity of the city's center. To increase the attractiveness of the historical part of the city some radical reconstruction of historical Almaty plaza was conducted. Its transport dimensions were reduced, the emerged pedestrian space was filled with parametric park and garden furniture, flower beds and planar fountains that in evenings are enriched with decorative lighting. Abrupt drop is demonstrated by the retrospective analysis of ratio of Almaty city area greening in conditions of increased building density. To solve the problem of approaching to normative sufficiency of city areas greening, the important aspect is saving the reserve territorial fund of natural complex of small rivers of Almaty city for recreational purposes. The lesser sizes of riverbeds of small rivers typical for foothill cities, their deep laying entail feasibility of attention to urban-planning and artistical solution of near water territories, equal to advantages of natural water area. Issues discovered, deficit of reserve territories mandate use of additional resources of architectural-landscape character: forming gardens of man-made foundations, rebirth of vertical greening which was once-traditional for Almaty.