Urban identity and perception of the city in management discourse

Abstract

The discourse on the city, its forms, planning and management under uncertainty is undoubtedly the most widespread and relevant in the last ten years. The prospects for the development of the city and its urban community depend rather on the articulation and representation of the content of social demand from society, the population of specific cities, than on external factors. Citizens have a clear vision for the future and present of their city. The city perception of its inhabitants is correlated with the citizens’ ideas about the modern city and appears as a discourse in their judgments, opinions and assessments. Urban discourse is defined as positioning, representation of urban identity of citizens and reflection of the perception of the city identity. The presence of this discourse is found in the citizens’ narratives about the city. The study is based on the personal experience narratives, specifically the informants’ reflections upon their evaluation and perception of their city were analyzed. Narrative analysis, supplemented by sentiment analysis (positive or negative presentation of the material) was chosen as a research tactic, the research method is content analysis. The major purpose of this work is to study the perception of the identity of the city by citizens. The novelty of the work is determined by the design of the study, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, the method of triangulation according to N. Denzin., as well as the choice of a subjective parameter (perception by citizens of their city) as a guideline for managerial actions in shaping the identity of the city in order to achieve connectivity “city – citizen”. An additional contribution of this paper is the construction of a paired logic of connectivity: “city – citizen” through the correlation between the citizens urban identity indicators and the identity of the city on the basis of empirical data of six cities in the Tyumen region. The study showed that citizens with a high level of urban identity perceive the city through personal participation in its life, through the manifestation of subjectivity.