Publications

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.

This paper examines the provisions of Law No. 455-FZ, which was signed by the President of the Russian Federation close to New 2018 Year's Eve along with a package of amendments to the Town Planning Code. The author emphasises the relationship of the provisions governing public consultations with the concept of the ‘right to the city’ and critically assesses the traditional public hearings. It seems right to secure a balance between the “weak” citizen and the “strong” official at any stage of the discussion on urban development projects. The author considers that the electronic form of public consultations will make the procedure even more controversial, and that new progressive tools for civic participation should be implemented into Russian legislation.

Abstract. The article explores the notions of post-city and post-city studies in the imaginal-ontological context and outlines the basic ontological models that help us imagine a large city of Modern and describe its radical spatial transformations. The author introduces the concept of co-spatiality, which determines the prospects for phenomenological studies of post-urban realities, and discusses the importance of the phenomena of borderlineness and post-nomadism in the formation of the post-urbanism and non-urban forms of settlement. The urban space ceases to be a city space in the traditional sense; it is rather divided into numerous "fractals" coexisting with space, constantly updated local situational events that can be interpreted ontologically and semantically in a variety of ways. The space of a big city, a megalopolis of the mature Modernity, is primarily an apophatic negativity of the growing and expanding movement, as if it denies that it grows parallel to the phenomenology of complete and local dissociation. The phenomenon of co-spatialitiy(ies) can be considered as the key discourse, taking into account the ontological point of view when analyzing the concept of post-city / post-metropolis. At the same time, the dynamic development of large cities of late Modernity led to the emergence and development of the phenomenon of interdimensionality. On the one hand, the physical representation of the urban environment is some sort of a "bait", a manifestation of the sociocultural and communicative appeal of large cities; on the other hand, they indicate, as a rule, a meta-visualization of emptiness, dis-communication and the formation of powerful ontological zones of "invisibility", which can occur parallel to coexisting communication flows, boundaries, nodes and places. Post-urbanism, apparently, should act, for the most part, as a boundary concept that describes and characterizes the boundary worlds of the accompanying spaces, only touching upon, but not intruding deeply into the dominant visual, sound and verbal affects of the physical reality of cities.

The online edition contains mental maps of all major Russian macroregions & some regions & cities of Russia, representing ethnic, cultural & geographical specificity of the territories. Unique regional images & their localization are combined in vivid textual & visual materials, mental maps & regional onomasticons. 

For the experts specialized in cultural geography & geihumanities, regional & local studies, cartography, and for a wider audience of those interested in geographical diversity of Russia. 

The article presents a new methodology for estimating gross urban product (the gross domestic product by city or metropolitan level) in Russia under extremely low statistical data availability about economy performance at the local level. These estimates provide new analytical instruments for assessing disparities in economic development between more than 1,000 Russian cities and other areas, and cities’ contributions to GDP as well as for comparing indicators of Russian cities with those of foreign countries.

The article presents a new methodology for estimating gross urban product (the gross domestic product by city or metropolitan level) in Russia under extremely low statistical data availability about economy performance at the local level. These estimates provide new analytical instruments for assessing disparities in economic development between more than 1,000 Russian cities and other areas, and cities’ contributions to GDP as well as for comparing indicators of Russian cities with those of foreign countries.

There have been no cultural geography in the USSR for half a century, and human geography was narrowed to economic geography alone. However the tradition of Russian anthropogeography (L. Berg) of the 1910s was one of the first in the world to focus on cultural landscapes.

The representatives of the official Soviet geography, from N. Baransky in the 1930s to V. Gokhman in the 1980s, stated the need for ‘social & cultural geography of Soviet nation(s)’. Landscape studies were ideologically suppressed and were focused strictly on natural landscapes.

When cultural geography finally emerged after the collapse of the USSR, it turned out to be rooted neither in Russian anthropogeographic tradition, nor in Anglo-American cultural geography. Making their own way, Russian cultural geographers were inspired rather by French philosophers and gave birth to a specific framework of ‘gumanitarnaya geografiya’ (‘humanitarian geography’ in word-by-word translation), which I argue to be likely to be translated as ‘GeoHumanities’.

This GeoHumanities doesn’t look like traditional Sauerian cultural geography. Its main themes seem similar to those of new cultural / humanistic geography, but its trends & prospects differ a lot, as there were no revolutionary changes like those between Sauerian vs. new cultural / humanistic vs. critical geography. There’s no other cultural geography research in Russia, except GeoHumanities school focused on cultural landscapes, geographical images, spatial myths & regional identities, majorly in modern urban areas & deeply rooted in literature & art discourses with case-studies mostly presenting the imageries of historical towns.

Before 1990, the Soviet government regarded private rental housing as a necessary evil that performs the useful function of mitigating housing shortage problems and supporting labor mobility… After 1990 and during the first two decades of the housing market’s development, Russian governments viewed rental housing as a residual segment of housing policy …

This chapter aims to shed light on the role that the private rental sector, in its various versions, played in centrally planned economics during the Soviet period and how it affected the development of housing systems during the period of transformation

Two special kinds of mental maps emerging from the Russian geohumanities are described in the article. Russian geohumanities are regarded as a specific Russian Post-Soviet tradition of cultural geography that is focused on space perceptions & interpretations. The semiotic model of ‘place as palimpsest’ typical for Russian mythogeography is used to describe the multilayered structure of a place, formed by different cultures’ visions of one & the same place. Two opposing meanings of mental maps are stated, namely, 1) mental spatial information, representing the image of the city & the orientations schemes, & 2) cartographical geovisualization, which reflects individual or group perception of space. Mental maps, combining the traits of both big classes with the example of K. Lynch’s generalized urban maps based on the results of individual cities’ perceptions gained by various research methods, are argued to be the most prospective. Urban ‘mythogeographical’ mental maps from the Russian geohumanities are regarded as another kind of that compromise, being transformed from the diagram-like ‘image-geographical’ maps by localizing place myths into ‘sign places’ of a city.

This article examines the processes of formation of geo-cultural space of the Arctic on the basis of ontological models of the imagination. Discusses the concept of geo-culture and its representations in relation to the Arctic space. Exa- mines the existential quality of Arctic space in the context of the peculiarities of mo- vement and nomadism. Specifics of development of local communities in the Arctic characterized by the dominance of the processes of autopoiesis. Arctic identities are the result of the development of pointed co-spatialites, assuming the void, white- ness, infinity, the darkness of the natural ontology of the Arctic space imagination.

The article examines the ontological and methodological features of formation and development of the Arctic geo-cultures. The possibilities of applying the concept of co-spatiality in the study of the Arctic landscape are analyzed. The specifics of the ontological models of imagination in the Arctic is discusses. The potential of geo-cultural branding base of the Arctic territories is researches. The Arctic can be seen as meta-geographical training ground for studying prognostic models of the earth co-spatialities.

The article is devoted to modelling of the basic geographical image of the tundra in the light of the geo-space resources of Yamal and Chukotka. The key archetypes, primary signs and symbols, and symbolic spots related to the basic geo-image of the tundra are identified. The image geographical model for the basic geo-image of the tundra is constructed.