Rethinking urban form in a shrinking Arctic city

Gunko, Maria; Batunova, Elena; Medvedev, Andrey

doi:10.4000/eps.10630

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…During Josif Stalin’s rule (1922–1952) this demand was largely satisfied through forced labour (Barenberg, 2014). Early Arctic cities were, thus, sharply polarized, containing a ceremonial centre with monumental administrative buildings and housing for the higher social strata surrounded by barracks for ordinary workers, forced migrants, and GULag 1 detainees (Gunko et al, 2021). With the death of Stalin, the practice of forced migration gave way to a less coercive and more incentive-based migration regime (Siegelbaum and Moch, 2014).…”

Section: ‘Comfortization’ Of Two Arctic Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various federal laws, as well as nationally and internationally funded resettlement programmes, have continued to encourage outmigration (Nuikina, 2011). Local and regional authorities supported these initiatives (Nuikina, 2011; Shiklomanov et al, 2020); however, this policy was not accompanied by federal assistance on how to manage an increasingly emptying and decaying built environment (Gunko et al, 2021). Challenges to local planning result from the need to maintain buildings located on permafrost; ‘freezing’ of vacant apartments and underused infrastructures (Gunko et al, 2021; Shiklomanov et al, 2020); as well as the declining aesthetics and safety of the urban environment due to the omnipresence of abandoned structures.…”

Section: ‘Comfortization’ Of Two Arctic Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From policy mobility to top-down policy transfer: ‘Comfortization’ of Russian cities beyond neoliberal rationality

Gunko

Зупан

Riabova

et al. 2022

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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As cities around the world increasingly seek to brand themselves as comfortable and liveable places, policies aimed at enhancing the quality of the urban environment are becoming more important. Scholars interpret this development as evidence of reinforced urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberalization. The current paper focuses on comfortable city policies in Russia, where political, social and economic transformations were often depicted as the ‘Eastern branch’ of the global neoliberalization project. It draws on field data from a case study of two cities in the Russian Arctic. By focusing on locations far away from global nodes, where the ideas of a comfortable city originally took shape, we trace and analyse policy mutations and local adjustments of such policies, as well as the related rationalities and policymaking dynamics. Our findings speak to the literature on policy mobility by questioning the focus on cities as entrepreneurial actors and the depiction of comfortable city policies as mere vehicles of neoliberalism. In Russia, what began with the introduction of entrepreneurial, globally circulating comfortable city policies incrementally turned into a top-down political project that cannot be easily explained – neither by neoliberal rationality nor by the legacies of urban planning and development.

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Section: ‘Comfortization’ Of Two Arctic Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%