Moscow Mayor to set up 3-4 national parks

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Wednesday he would set up three to four national parks in the new expanded Moscow. In June, President Dmitry Medvedev proposed extending Moscow's boundaries by more than two times (by 160,000 hectares or 400,000 acres) to create a new Moscow federal district. Sobyanin unveiled his plans in comments on the sidelines of the Global Policy Forum in Yaroslavl, 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow. "There will be three to four national parks on the new territory and they will cover at least a thousand hectares [2,500 acres] each and there will be 100 other nature recreation projects," Sobyanin said. The mayor also said that he expects a second administrative center to appear, in addition to Moscow's existing downtown area, together with 600,000 new jobs. The infrastructure must be upgraded and expanded with new transportation links, he said. The mayor said the urbanized east and south of the Moscow Region would be used for industrial development of the city, while the nature-rich northern and western territories would be used for tourism, and the southwest for low-rise construction. RIA Novosti is the official information sponsor of the Yaroslavl forum.