Publications

Memory narratives commonly include characters such as heroes (triumphant or fallen), martyrs, perpetrators, and victims. In recent years, the victim has become the central character in the dominant, western-centric, and globalized memory culture. A victim’s definition is problematic: few existing memory narratives include “ideal,” or innocent victims who suffered meaninglessly. The lines between victims and other characters in memory narratives are blurry in many cases, for instance, between a victim and a perpetrator. Using the case of Russian museums dedicated to the Soviet repressions, I study the problematic relation between victims and heroes, adding to the discussion of the victim character’s complexity. Often, victims of Soviet repressions are presented as both victims of political persecution and heroes who did not just suffer through their imprisonment but continued to live productive and creative lives. The resulting victim-hero character indicates that the category of a victim is too limiting and adds to calls for the theorization of victim taxonomy.

Literary texts can be considered as the most attractive research material for analyzing the key features of both the semiotics of the city as a whole and the semiotics of individual cities, to which many works of art are devoted. The urban space of Modernity as a result of the processes of powerful semiotization can be considered as both textual and intertextual. The intertextuality of Modern urban spaces presupposes sets of "floating" topological signifiers corresponding to similar sets of "floating" topological signs. In the traditional semiotics of the city, the existence of two realities is assumed – the "real" reality and the "semiotic" reality, between which clear logical correspondences and/or relations can be observed and analyzed. The appearance of non-classical / post-classical urban narratives focused on the problems of dis-communication at the beginning of the XX century became one of the important signs of the primary formation of the phenomena of post-city and post-urbanism. The post-city is not a text and cannot be considered as a text; at the same time, it can generate separate texts that are not related to each other in any way. Post-urban texts, which are the communicative results of specific co-spatialities, remain local "flashes" that do not form a single text or meta-text (super-text). Hetero-textuality is a phenomenon of post-urban reality, which is characterized by the coexistence, as a rule, of texts that do not correlate with each other, relating to certain stable urban loci. Trans-semiotics in the general context is understood as the study of any texts that involve the creation of sign-symbolic breaks or "gaps" with any other potentially possible correlating texts in the process of signification. Trans-semiotics of post-cities are studies of (artistic) texts that involve the creation of sign-symbolic breaks or "gaps" with any other potentially possible correlating texts related to a particular urban locus in the process of signifying any urban loci. The heterostructuality of a post-city can be considered as the co-spatiality of mutually exclusive texts corresponding to "non-seeing" post-city loci. Post-urban trans-semiotics in the course of their development form a kind of "dark zones" that reject or neutralize any attempt at any semiotic interpretation.

Throughout the period after the municipal reform in 2003, the governing of Russian cities has been changing. A city as an object of governance is located at the intersection of interests of different levels of public authorities and is not limited only to local authorities This article investigates how budget autonomy of Russian cities has been changing for the last 16 years, and how exogenous economic shocks and large-scale federal initiatives such as the “May Decrees” have influenced the budget autonomy of Russian cities. The paper considers a hypothesis that there was a transition to multi-level governance of Russian cities in 2006–2019, which led to significant reduction of the budget autonomy. Budgets of the 35 largest cities of Russia (except for city-regions like Moscow and Saint Petersburg) were collected and analyzed in terms of their revenue and expenditure sections to test the proposed hypothesis. The relationship between the economic level of development and budget sufficiency was investigated with cluster analysis. The main result of this research is that Russian cities have become dependent on the financial grants from regional governments since there is no national policy of stimulating the economic development of cities. The national economic crisis of 2014 accelerated the process of governance centralization. In addition, the budget autonomy of municipalities was reduced due to the fact that achieving indicators of the May Decrees had become the primary objective for the public authorities. The share of the income tax in local budgets increased significantly although the share and diversity of other income sources decreased.

The article continues the topic of good neighborliness as an important direction for the development of neighboring and local communities. It is devoted to practical issues and social technologies of good-neighborliness, primarily the use of good-neighborly technologies in the modern housing sector, and, especially, in the housing and utility sector, given the important changes that have occurred there in the last 15 years after the adoption of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, fi rst of all — the emergence of private management organizations and new "collective customers" — residents of apartment buildings. The activity of modern management organizations, introducing their own "rules of good neighborliness" in the management of modern apartment complexes in Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities, is considered as a new model of the activity of the educational institution.  

Сitizens are socialized to look for the signs of danger around them whether it is a suspicious- looking man or an unattended package. Due to their multiplicity, widely varied threats, such as crimes, terrorist attacks, car accidents, infrastructure failures, different kinds of injures, are considered to be inevitable in urban environments. As a result, a vague premonition of danger becomes a part of everyday travels supporting the reproduction of a climate of urban fear. In this essay, I would like to take a closer look at how people experience this fear in their everyday life.

В статье рассматриваются вопросы прогнозирования микроклимата городов и ветроэнергетического потенциала жилых зданий применительно к России, Северной и Восточной Европе. В исследовании проанализирована климатическая структура крупного города, биоклиматический комфорт, а также представлен климатический анализ на примере Москвы. Уточнена взаимосвязь ветрового режима с климатическими и градостроительными факторами. Представлены возможные подходы к оценке ветроэнергетического потенциала здания. Проанализирован зарубежный опыт и классификация факторов, влияющих на размещение ветроэнергетических установок. Отмечена возможность детализации данных микроклимата по ветровому режиму для размещения ветроэлектростанций с учетом благоустройства и озеленения городов. Рассмотрен вопрос первичной привязки ветроэнергетических установок в строительстве на основе ветроэнергетического потенциала зданий и территорий. Концепция "Умного города" рассматривается с целью формирования системы управления ветроэнергетическим потенциалом в городском строительстве и оценки комфортности аэрации для пешеходов с интеграцией в градостроительное энергетическое моделирование (УБЭМ).

Financial losses due to low demand for parking spaces in garages at residential estates is a key motivation for this research. The purpose of this paper in particular is to statistically explore the relationship between parking occupancy rates and various factors on transport supply, characteristics of location and the building. The occupancy rate of parking was measured as the ratio of actual number of cars to total number of parking spaces. The fieldwork on counting occupied parking spaces was conducted 2 times per day during a week on a sample of 13 locations in different areas of a 1.4-million Yekaterinburg city in Russia. 4700 observed parking spaces give sample size of 173 records. Statistical analysis shows that the crow-fly distance to the city center as well as the number of public transport stops are strongly associated with occupancy rate for parking. Also, occupancy rate is much more affected by the type of parking ownership. Private owning means purchase of a parking space or renting it while public ownership suggests free access. So private parking means a 45% decline in occupancy compared to the public parking regime. Research provides empirical results and some theoretical underpinnings are also highlighted.

The purpose of this book is to show the specifics of the formation of cultural landscapes and geocultural images of Northern and Arctic cities in the context of the concept of post-urbanism. The ontological and phenomenological category of cold, which is key for understanding this specificity, has a decisive influence on the formation of both material and expressive (mental) environments and identities of the inhabitants of Northern cities. The image of cold can be considered as an important component of the symbolic capital of the Northern and Arctic cities, as well as a field of implementation and struggle of various post-colonial practices.

The purpose of this article is to show the specifics of the formation of cultural landscapes and geocultural images of Northern and Arctic cities in the context of the concept of post-urbanism. The ontological and phenomenological category of cold, which is key for understanding this specificity, has a decisive influence on the formation of both material and expressive (mental) environments and identities of the inhabitants of Northern cities. The image of cold can be considered as an important component of the symbolic capital of the Northern and Arctic cities, as well as a field of implementation and struggle of various post-colonial practices. The phenomenon of co-spatiality, basic for understanding post-urban trends of social development, acquires a special configuration in the cultural landscapes of Northern cities, contributing to the enrichment of the semantic space of post-urbanism as a whole.

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) – one of the USA federal government’s policy tool for preserving and encouraging the development and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing. LIHTC provides an incentive for home developers to build, buy and refurbish housing for low-income taxpayers and also provides a non-refundable credit for those who invest in low-income housing projects as a means of stimulating the flow of capital into this sector. The type of housing structures typically used for this credit are multi-family dwellings.

The article reflects the main features of the new Strategy for Socioeconomic Development of the Northern and Arctic Regions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory of Russia. The work employs standard methodological tools for the development of the regional strategic documents, such as assessment of the situation, general principles of the socioeconomic development of the Northern and Arctic regions, characteristics of the main tools and expected results of the strategy, and spatial planning issues. The new policy is aimed to soften development contrasts between the Northern and Arctic municipalities of Krasnoyarsk krai. Big expectations are associated with the introduction of innovations in the delivery of the critical services and products to the remote towns and settlements of the area. The main methodological innovation applied in the Strategy is the establishment of three project offices working on the problem on three large-scale levels. These are the “Person”, “Settlement” and “Territory” project offices. Their tasks involve ensuring synergy between the government, large and small businesses, and social bodies. It is assumed that in the year 2030 the implementation of the proposed measures will enable the Krasnoyarsk Territory to regain its leading position in the development of the Russian Arctic it used to hold during the first decades of the Soviet period

The dichotomy of the market initiative and central planning is considered to be one of the main issues in the governance of public transport provision. It relates to the rights of either the operators or authorities to design public transport services. The advantages and disadvantages of these models can motivate the reforms of public transport governance. Such reforms usually result in significant changes in the technical specifications of the public transport services. In this paper, we attempt to study the changes in the Moscow bus network introduced within the reform of public transport governance, the so-called ‘new model of partnership with private operators’ scheme. In 2016, all market-initiated minibus routes were replaced by those directly designed by the Moscow authorities. Since then, the private branch of the Moscow bus system came under a central planning regime with no room for market initiative. The large changes in the network in 2016 opened up a discussion on the impact of public transport governance on the network structure. This paper provides an analysis of the land passenger transport network of 2015 and 2016. It can be useful to describe the paths of network development under different regulatory regimes.

 This paper focuses on the Tsoi Wall in Moscow, an iconic place on Russia’s music map that appeared in Moscow in 1990 in memory of the cult Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, to develop a framework for studying non-auratic music place—that is, places that are not connected with the biographies of musicians or musical events, but emerge directly from the experiences of visitors and fans. These places are constantly negotiated and only lightly formalized, but are nevertheless enduring. To analyze this type of place, we propose a concept of institutionalization “in becoming.” The case of the Tsoi Wall reveals that light formalization (vague and changing positions and rules, and openness to different interpretations of a place and ways of using it) leads to the recognition of the place as a significant one and to its popularity. We put institutionalization “in becoming” in a wider context and juxtapose it with well-studied musical places in Europe and the US.