Publications

This paper identifies education, skills training and improved social infrastructure as key development issues to address population decline in regions of steady out-migration from the Russian Arctic.  Migration flows are mostly stabilized after the sharp and unexpectedly large population decline in the Arctic in the 1990s, during the transition to a market economy. However, the trends set in motion during that collapse, including falling general levels of education, declining size of all but the largest cities, and aging of the populace, are deepening in consequence for some regions, even where government resettlement programs exist. As young professionals continue to leave, resettling com-patriates and hiring shift labour may contribute to the vitality of more resilient regions, for example, Krasnoyarsk and Yamalo-Nenets. However, the European part of the Russian Arctic, despite its critical importance to commerce and to military security, and despite assistance programs and subsidies, is conforming more to the aging, less productive contours of neighbouring Artic states on the periphery of Europe.

This paper examines territorial practices of enclosure in the Russian land commune. Using archival research, it explores how the state and territory in the periphery were dialectically co-produced through spatial technologies and public discourses. This work brings a territorial dimension into Russian agrarian scholarship by positioning the imperial rural politics within the context of capitalist land enclosure, thereby introducing complexity into the state-centric Western territory debate.

From methodological standpoint, a comprehensive study of post-urbanism imply a cognitive fixation any spatial events as co-spatial. We can talk about the co-existence of different cognitive / ontological regimes in the post-urban reality, which themselves can also be called co-spatial. Co-spatialities, understood as a communicative event nodes, can be considered as key elements in prototypical imagination map of post-urban space. Post-urban geo-cultures, producing a variety of cartographies of the imagination, are a fundamentally heterotopic. Different communities become post-urban, forming their transversal cartographies of the imagination, constantly proliferating, becoming more and more co-spatial and, consequently, generating this post-politics, which aimed at accelerating multiple dispersion of communicative events. Post-urban communities create a post-political situations, in which the cartographies of the imagination becomes the basis of new urban landscapes or new geo-cultures. Post-city develops practices and processes of hetero-textuality when the texts of individual geo-cultures not assume a common space of reading, the plan of value and the plan of expression, and becoming only in terms of consistency as the landscape modulations, immanent to imaginary cartographies. Any post-city cartography of imagination supports special landscape modes which create the realities of material and mental character. Any cartography of imagination can phenomenologically think as the line becoming a particular identity of individuals and communities. Post-nomadic mobilities lead to the coexistence of multitudes of such cartographies, whose event co-spatialities create a post-political communities, manipulating differences "velocity" of multiple communicative discourses. The creation of new cartographies of imagination forms post-urbanism as an art of detailed co-spatialities.

The article analyzes the transformation of the regional political regime in Moscow Oblast from the decentralized type to the centralized one. Centralized subnational authoritarianism is understood as the implementation of the federal center policy to incorporate regional and local elites into the system of national electoral authoritarianism. The authors examine the institutional context of transformations: the reform of urban development authorities, understood as the process of redistributing rental flows, and the limitation of political autonomy by transforming the procedure for occupying elected offices. The transformation of formal institutions made the political process more predictable, though it led to a number of unobvious results, which included the increase in the importance of informal procedures in the political process. In turn, it led to restriction of the access to political participation. The results of the elections (Moscow Regional and State Duma campaigns of 2011 and 2016, and the governor election of 2018) show that the mayors being ‘old-timers’ managed to provide better electoral results for the ruling party than the newly appointed loyal mayors. The authors conclude that dismantling of old ‘political machines’ has led to the reduction of electoral support for the ruling party in the Moscow region on average. Thus, political centralization, which made the political process more predictable, led to the unforeseen consequences such as the decrease in the ability of municipal authorities to provide electoral support for the ruling party.

This article aims to contribute to the recent efforts of ISUF to bring closer and ultimately integrate the academic research on urban morphology and urban planning practice. Methodological differences between schools of urban morphology are a barrier to integration between research and practice. Qualitative schools focus on the historico- geographical approach of MRG Conzen and the process typological approach based on the work of Muratori (Oliveira, 2016)). Quantitative schools include Space Syntax (Hillier, 1996) and various spatial analysis methods primarily popularised by Michael Batty (2013). Each school brings its value to the urban morphology research, but even the academics may not always be able to appropriately select the methods according to particular problems they are trying to address (Oliveira and Medeiros, 2016).

There is a need for a unified approach to the study of urban morphology. Oliveira (2013) proposed such an approach (Morpho) on a street scale, later Oliveira and Medeiros (2016) demonstrated its application at the city scale. Building upon the Morpho methodology this paper assesses the urban form in Moscow using seven morphological measures. It then explores the effects of physical urban form in Moscow on urban vitality (where “vitality is what distinguishes successful urban areas from the others” (Montgomery, 1998)) characterised by (a) intensity of use of urban space (through analysis of mobile phone data and locations of businesses) and (b) land value (through residential rental rates – Xiao (2017) explored links between housing market and urban morphology extensively, but only in relation to a set of Space Syntax measures).

A metaphor of palimpsest is used to describe the multivocal cultural landscapes since the 1970s. Interventions into new cultural / humanistic geography, semiotics and the theory of regional geography help to regard each layer of the palimpsest as a constructed context, centered by dominant representation of a place. Real-and-imagined landscapes are regarded as palimpsests lived through everyday practices seen as processes of (re)construction of new layers. Trying to unite those “constructing’ and “living’ perspectives is a challenging task for urban cultural agenda. A series of mobile quest games was made by the author for Moscow Agency for Area Development through Culture in order to construct new tourist sights outside city centre. This project is discussed as a case of constructing new geographical contexts (palimpsest’ layers) and the lived experience rediscovering the distant residential areas, traditionally regarded as standardized “non-places’, as becoming rich in symbolic capital.

The article deals with regional diagnostics as a method for studying the socio-economic space of Russia, the quality of the economic space and its regional differences, methods and tools for the sustainable development of regions.

Konstantin Trofimenko (PhD), Director of Centre for Research of Urban Transport Problems, Institute of Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies, and Nikita Krupenskiy (PhD), a senior research fellow at the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge, both at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, explain how digitalisation has been introduced to the cities of Russia and how its continued development is making city spaces and transport networks smarter.

The grand challenge of accessing fresh water and sanitation is a global concern. The intensity of challenge depends on the geographical location as well as the level of socio-economic development of individual countries. The present paper first reviews the key water-related global trends and examines the global agenda on water issues. Next the focus is turned on Russia. Despite of being one of the water-rich countries in the world, Russia faces a number of substantial administrative and structural issues in the water sector. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a long-term strategy for the management of this infinite, but strategic resource. The present paper develops long-term scenarios and strategies for the Russian water sector towards the year 2030. The study draws upon an earlier horizon scanning activity that identified a set of global trends and uncertainties related to water sector. This horizon scanning work is extended into alternative futures for the Russian water sector by using a combination of Foresight methods including scenario analysis, data mining, and various expert methods. Scenarios developed are characterized by a set of qualitative and quantitative factors and indicators of future developments in three key domains for the water sector: (i) the sustainability of water systems; (ii) water use by households and industry; and (iii) new water products and services. Scenarios present four alternative trajectories for the water sector that may also be applied for certain countries whose water sector is comparable with the Russia. Among the scenarios developed in the study, it is concluded that the most probable ones are Problem conservation and Losses and accidents. However, there is a possibility to revert these scenarios into more desirable trajectories, which are presented in other scenarios. For instance, a variety of new clean water technologies may be widely applied to achieve the Nearly perfect future (visionary) scenario.

Studying visual and plastic arts, social researchers tend to assume that an aesthetic object is pre-given to a viewer who does not participate in the process of the object’s becoming. They problematise the aesthetic status of an artwork, but not its objectness. This paper shows that audience perception, considered as interaction and situated practice, does not merely define the meanings and emotions attached to a certain object, but plays a constitutive role in the objects’ physical state and its very existence as an object, i.e. as an integrated unity extracted from its surroundings and affording a direct, intensive encounter. Synthesizing the conceptual resources of Hennion’s pragmatics of taste, Simmel’s aesthetic theory, gestalt theory, and social phenomenology, I explain various ways whereby an object in the situation of perception happens and achieves a certain mode of existence or fails to happen and disappears. The paper is based on three empirical examples derived from the ethnographic study of the open-air land art/architectural festival ‘Archstoyanie’. The first case illustrates how an object is extracted from the environment and the festival’s infrastructure; the second, how the visitors destroy the incomplete boundaries of an object so that it dissolves into the surroundings; and the third, how an object maintains its integrity despite its inner complexity and multiple centres attracting the visitors’ attention.

Paradigm Shifts. Patterns and dynamics of innovation processes in urban planning and design.

Through the case study of the paradigm shift from modernist housing estates to compact mixed-use urban neighbourhoods this study investigates how profound novelties enter the discipline of urban planning and design. It neither focuses on the reasons for change (why?) nor on its results (what?), instead it seeks to provide insights on how a novel approach is created, disseminated and established as new routine. It finds that the compact mixed-use city model has been collectively produced and shaped by actors in an intense search for a new consensus in a milieu of heightened uncertainty, and it was successfully spread and established by referring to pressing needs in rather arbitrary ways. The study contributes to basic research in the fields of planning theory and planning history. The object of this research is the transformation in the conceptualization and planning of new housing estates in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Austria from the 1960s until today. The field of housing estates was one of the origins of the paradigm shift under investigation. As the provision of large-scale housing continues to pose a challenge to contemporary policy makers, understanding how novelties enter this field is of high importance.

This paper is motivated by the evolution of relations between public transport authorities and operators all over the world. So far, however, there has been little discussion about this phenomenon with regard to Russian land passenger transport. This issue only received considerable critical attention in light of the transformations in the countries of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. However, recent developments have not been extensively studied. The major objective in this paper is to understand both positive and negative trends of evolution of organisational practices in Russian land passenger transport. The methodological approach is mixed and based on an analysis of legislation, market structure and contracting approaches. Studies of the largest cities, including the recent Moscow ‘new model’, are also performed in this paper. The overall structure of the study includes overviews of legislation, the performance of public operators, institutions in the private bus sector and the recent bus reform in Moscow. This research paper sheds the light on an important example of public transport evolutions in developing and transitional countries.

A comparison of Arctic cities in Russia with their counterparts in the southern parts of the country suggests that there are no significant differences in the degree of employment specialization or in many indicators of social amenities and services. The most important distinguishing feature of Arctic cities in Russia is the high mobility of their populations and the relative ease with which they move. The mobility of the Arctic population should be recognized as a kind of safety valve for the Arctic cities, underpinning their resilience in the face of changes in economic conditions.

This paper tests whether the implementation of a key market-oriented reform in post-Soviet Russia, property rights in land, proxied by the percent of privatized land by region, affected the pace of sub-national economic growth during two unprecedented expansion periods: 2001-2008 and 2010-2014. Individuals gained the Constitutional right to own land in 1993, but implementation was stalled. The pace of land privatization can be explained by arguably exogenous factors such as distance to Moscow, as well as climate and also regional political culture, proxied by concentration of votes in the 2004 presidential election. We show that this rate of land privatization in Russia’s regions was significantly associated with output growth in 2010-2014, confirming the policy importance of this measure for developing economies. Regions where private holdings expanded most rapidly with the enforcement of property rights in land, gained a competitive advantage in the growth process through increased investment in fixed assets and private consumption.

Real estate expropriation for public needs is quite a common practice in Russia. Over the past 30 years, as private ownership of land and other real estate has developed in Russia, an objective need also developed for such expropriation, including forced real estate expropriation, based on judicial decisions, subject to “fair” compensation for the owners. Over the period, a regulatory environment emerged for handling cases, establishing grounds and procedures for real estate expropriation for State and municipal needs, and a certain enforcement practice was developed.

Organizing and regulating influence of public authorities on the activity of the population of the region, in order to streamline and reproduce, based on their power force.

In order to understand a country as large and diverse as Russia, it is extremely important to consider spatial patterns of economic development. As Russia looks for new drivers of economic growth, it is important to understand the structural conditions that have defined economic development in Russia’s regions. This report uses the Economic Potential Index (EPI) methodology to identify the conditions that drive regional development. Economic potential is the level of productivity that is possible for a region to achieve given its structural endowments, which are characteristics that are hard to alter in the short run. The methodology used in this report combines quantitative analysis of drivers of productivity across regions with in-depth case studies that focus on the role of regional governments and institutions in converting endowments into economic outcomes. This methodology generates insights that are relevant for both national and regional governments. The first chapter of this report provides an overview of regional development in Russia over the last 25 years and identifies “Russia-specific” national structural conditions that may affect regional development. The second chapter discusses the results of an assessment of economic potential at the regional level and the factors that shape it in Russia. The third chapter focuses on the role of national and regional governance, policy, and institutions in promoting economic development of the regions. The final chapter proposes policy priorities for both regional and national authorities.