Behind majestic columns adorned with hammers and sickles, Gorky Park in Moscow once stood as a testament to Russia's post-Soviet decay: dirty and forgotten, tinny techno pumping from its loudspeakers as children rode rusty rides that had seen better, and safer, days.

As Moscow grew richer after the oil boom of the 2000s, the park fell further into disrepair. While the capital became home to more billionaires than anywhere else in the world – 78 in 2012 according to Forbes – average residents had to navigate piles of rubbish and drunks during an afternoon at what was once Soviet Moscow's pride and glory.

Last year, something changed. Seemingly overnight, the park was transformed into an urban paradise, a rare spot of verdant tranquility in the midst of Moscow's overcrowded, traffic-clogged streets. There are neat rows of ping-pong tables and a pétanque court permanently occupied by the city's hipsters. Each summer night, an open air cinema blasts out hits new and old. There are lounge chairs, free Wi-Fi, even a lawn filled with pillow-shaped beanbags for a mid-afternoon nap.

The park's renovation is part of a citywide attempt to make Moscow – or at least parts of it – more liveable.

"Many people make money in Moscow, and many people spend money here, but there are very few people who smile at one another," said Sergey Kapkov, who was promoted to head the city's culture department after overseeing the renovation of Gorky Park.

Overseeing the renovation of parks across the city has been his most visible achievement, an initiative launched by Sergei Sobyanin, who was appointed mayor in 2010. That the project coincided with an eruption in popular protest and social activity unseen since the Soviet collapse is no coincidence.

"Everyone knows that I went to the protest at Bolotnaya Square," Kapkov said, referring to one of the big protests against Vladimir Putin's return to power that rocked the city earlier this year. "All Muscovites have demands – people call them the creative class, oppositionists; I call them new city professionals. These people work in various places, have a stable wage, have travelled a lot and they understand what they want from the city. We're trying to fulfil their demands."

In an attempt to recognise Muscovites' newfound political and social activism, city authorities said they would open "speakers' corners" in Gorky Park and another big park, Sokolniki, something they said would be akin to a Russian Hyde Park. "We need the city to be human," Kapkov said, listing plans to launch a series of citywide festivals and music points in the metro and ubiquitous underground passageways, modelled on those on the London tube.

The city has renovated 30 parks this year and plans to upgrade the 74 that remain by 2016. Each comes at a cost of around £30m. "There were good parks in the Soviet Union," Kapkov said. "Parks were called culture factories. They were the main places in Soviet times because they were accessible and free."

Then came the Soviet collapse and the swarming of wild capitalism, when everything went from being free and cherished to being costly and shabby. Gorky Park, once the jewel in the Soviet parks crown, even instituted an entry fee. "So this most accessible form of entertainment became home to rides and alcohol and cheap food. And this place degraded terribly," Kapkov said.

Marianna Remizova, 75, was taking a stroll through the park recently with her husband. They stopped going to the park five years ago and only recently rediscovered it post-renovation.

"Right after the Soviet collapse it was bedlam," Remizova said. "There were crazy rides, people with wild animals – a crocodile, a puma, once I even saw a woman holding a young lion. Now everything is great. They've finally started to do something, to concern themselves with Moscow." Not everyone is happy. Some decry the lack of games and rides, saying the park has lost sight of its general audience to appeal to the minority of modernised hipsters instead. The modernised hipsters, in turn, at least those of an opposition bent, have decried the Hyde Park idea, arguing that the city is attempting to destroy their protest movement.

Kapkov explains the park's appeal this way: "Fashionable and hip young people are always the quickest on the uptake. When something new pops up, they always fill it. You can call them hipsters, or fans of Gorky Park. In 20 years, we want people to say: my parents met at Gorky Park."