Speaker
Description
The research is aimed at studying the patterns of development and integration of new mass housing residential areas on the periphery of Moscow in logic of postmetropolis urbanization (Soja 2000). The rural areas annexed to Moscow less than 15 years ago have increased their population to 750,000 people, and by 2035 1.5 million will live here. In fact, an urban mega-satellite built from scratch will appear nearby the Russian capital city.
Although the development of the Moscow periphery resembles mass residential construction in the form of late Soviet residential development, the investment logic of development sets a different structure of spaces – the residential function of territories is not complemented by the proximity of workplaces (the proletarian periphery of socialist Moscow combined both functions), the development of large territories occurs in stages through the implementation of small-scale development projects - quarters or individual phases, stretching the building process for decades, constantly modify the original plans and planning projects to suit market conditions and investment cycles. The unfolding processes have more similarities with other cities of the Global East (Müller 2019) than with the socialist past.
We propose the following working hypotheses: 1) the logic of the investment cycle and the diversification of risks by property developers leads to the urbanization through seepage (forests, villages) into voids of rural areas, 2) this pattern of space development generates the compactness and isolated residential areas. Such development tends to minimize risks and maximizing profits of the capitalist method of space production. This is an urbanization of residential estates or minimal areal units of peripheral space, rather than complex site development.
The purpose of the study is to identify patterns of development of Moscow's peripheral areas in the process of mass residential development and to assess their integration into the established urban system. Here, integration is understood as the inclusion of these territories in the center-peripheral relations, the filling and transfer of both new and old functions – the transfer of some functions from "old" Moscow to these areas. An example of such a shift is the specialization of New Moscow in affordable standard-class housing, while new construction inside the “old” city is shifting to middle- and upper class housing. Affordable housing in Russia is understood as purchased with a mortgage, social housing in Moscow is nothing more than a vestige of socialism. Although housing policy in Moscow is set by a neoliberal approach and fits into modern trends of urbanization (Brenner and Schmid 2015), the development of the new areas is subordinated to the logic of state capitalism (Kinossian 2022; Kinossian 2023).
We look at the processes of space exploration using two optics. The first is the study of spatial development of territories from the perspective of urban planning, the second is the optics of a resident of these territories, how he or she feels in this environment, how she or he appropriates and interprets it. Such buildings form specific vernacular areas of citizens, formed by the isolation of new residential buildings both on the scale of a megalopolis and on the scale of local isolation from neighbors - residential buildings literally rest against a forest or a federal highway, its functional monotony, and the subway station acts as a portal to the big city.
References
Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a new epistemology of the urban?. City, 19(2-3), 151-182.
Kinossian, N., & Morgan, K. (2023). Authoritarian state capitalism: Spatial planning and the megaproject in Russia. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(3), 655-672.
Kinossian, N. (2022). Rethinking the post-socialist city. Urban Geography, 43(8), 1240-1251.
Müller, M. (2019). Goodbye, postsocialism!. Europe-Asia Studies, 71(4), 533-550.
Soja, E. W. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions.
| Keywords | residental development; postmetropolis; neoliberal urbanism; urban periphery; state-led urbanism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
