Youth In Space Of Transforming Urban Culture

Abstract

The urban culture and its transformations under the conditions when the urban environment transforms into a complex socio-biotechnical system are considered in this paper. The urban culture functions as open system, the changes of which are metabolic by nature. That means they are carried out in four successive stages: accumulation of “substances”, their protection during the decomposition of “substances” into simple and simultaneous development and consumption of complex “substances”; discharge of waste into the environment; and their subsequent transformation. Based on the generalization and interpretation of the data of the sociological study “Sociocultural Consequences of the Formation of Urban Socio-Biotechnical Systems”, carried out by the authors in the cities of the Belgorod region in January 2020, the specific features on how the urban youth react to peculiarities of the current stage typical to culture transformation are determined: a) the need to increase the level of autonomy of personality of young people and their self-sufficiency; b) evaluation regarding some cultural processes in the context of prospects connected with the personal development and interpersonal and inter-group communication; c) the differentiated approach to the transforming urban culture, due to the subcultural diversity that the modern youth have; d) awareness of some cultural values, mainly through the Internet and social networks; e) a selective approach to "culture + technologies", expressed in identification its positive and negative consequences; f) the contradiction between the relevance towards the environmental issues and poor understanding of its socio-cultural component.