Urban Way Of Life Research Articles

Agroecological Fair as a Differential Space: an Expression of Resistance

Objective: From the perspective of agroecology, this study analyzes the arts of making as constituents of the fractures through which the agroecological fair emerges as a differential space. Theoretical Framework: It is argued that such a fair emerges in the abstract space due to the fracture caused in it by the incorporation of differences about the agroecological way of life, as a form of resistance to the logic of accumulation. The ways of being and existing others, materialized in the space of the agroecological fair, allow us to recognize it as an expression of dialectical resistance to the forces of homogenization. Method: This research was developed through an ethnography, in the period from 2022 to 2023, from the experience in 4 agroecological fairs, in which the corpus was built through narrative interviews carried out with 25 actors. And the data were organized according to the assumptions of Riessman (1993, 2008), using thematic narrative analysis. Results and Discussion: The findings reveal that the arts of making that mark the existence of the fair resist the logic of hegemonic production and consumption, opening fissures in the urban way of life, in front of which it emerges as a differential space. By resisting, the actors use their arts of making to establish their relational networks and thus produce spaces for valuing and rescuing individual and/or collective trajectories. Research Implications, Originality and Value: The contribution to the field of Organizational Studies lies in the theoretical debate elaborated in the periphery of academic studies, in which the arts of doing are formed by the knowledge of workers often ignored by the narratives of Administration.

«Право на город»: Кронштадт глазами горожан

The article examines the social space of modern Kronstadt, a small historical town within the boundaries of St. Petersburg, whose residents still claim to preserve a special collective identity. The work is based on materials collected during interviews with locals in the spring of 2021. Kronstadt’s social space is characterized and described as an assemblage in which heterogeneous forces interact, thereby determining the prospects for the town’s development — both in terms of urban economy and the perception of the townspeople. There are four main elements of the current urban identity— or four components of the “Kronstadt palimpsest”: first, the townspeople’s perception of the town’s status and resource position within the hierarchy of St. Petersburg’s urban environment. Second, the determination of the administrative and “natural” boundaries of the town on the territory of Kotlin Island. Third, the ranking of neighborhoods based on the degree of prestige, along with the folklorization of “disadvantaged” zones. And fourth, the attitude toward the influx of tourists and the perception of “strangers” by local residents, as well as the division of city attractions into “ceremonial” and “personal” ones. It is concluded that the townspeople’s ongoing pursuit of the “right to the city”, based on the history, geographical location of the settlement, and their own ideas about the preferred urban way of life, largely determines the uniqueness of the Kronstadt assemblage. This sets this small town apart from the array of satellite towns around Russian megacities.

Urban regrets (Unhappy metros: Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS))

This is the first study of urban-rural happiness gradient using multi-item Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). A new finding is that urbanites fail especially on “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing”–urban way of life tends to result in regrets. Effect sizes of urbanicity on subjective wellbeing (SWB) are substantial–about half of health–living in a metro depresses one's happiness as much as going half way from fair health to poor health, for instance.

Urban way of life as survival: navigating everyday life in a pluriversal global south

Southern cities have become increasingly inscribed in broader postcolonial and neoliberal development forces. In tandem with global pandemics, digital threats, and migration and climate crises, these forces have posed critical implications for all residents, decimating the middle class, widening the gap between elites and masses, deepening the cost of living for the urban majority, and making it harder to rise through the ladder. In such an environment, navigating everyday life increasingly becomes synonymous with survival, constituting a proactive process of inhabiting the city, where the self and the urban are always in the making. This paper examines prominent accounts of the urban way of life as survival. We take one large city of Nairobi in eastern Africa as a representative case, highlighting manifold rhythms and ensembles of survival, such as how residents make ends meet, optimize for a soft life, niche social infrastructures, and cultivate technological infrastructures. In their material manifestations, these rhythms and ensembles demonstrate the role and centrality of urban residents as proactive producers and co-creators of multiple urban forms. They draw us to a mode of survival that is continuous rather than intermittent and of inhabitation that is reparative rather than castigatory.

Bytový dům pro zemědělce: k procesu adaptace městských standardů bydlení v prostředí vesnických sídel

Housing construction in Czechoslovakia began to grow in the 1940s, which was reflected in the increased number of flats and improved housing standards. This growth was made possible mainly due to the construction of blocks of flats. Although in the countryside, in contrast to the cities, people predominantly lived in their own family houses, the construction of apartment blocks also contributed to the increase in capacity there. However, the experience from the 1940s and 1950s shows negative impacts of adopting the projects for blocks of flats which were designed for the city and the urban way of life and did not suit rural residents, who had different working patterns and needs. In the 1960s, an intensive dialogue between local participants, architects, and the authorities took place, leading to the adaptation of the apartment block concept to the needs of agricultural workers. The adaption concerned both the external appearance, which had to respect the village environment, and the internal layout. The adapted projects included separate rooms for residents to wash themselves after their return from fields and gardens, and storage compartments for foods and livestock feed. Attention was also paid to the surroundings, where buildings related to residents’ farming activities were designed (small animal breeding, working in the gardens and small fields). The willingness to conduct the dialogue and to adapt the projects for rural blocks of flats disappeared in the 1970s as a result of the normalization and gradual improvement in agricultural workers’ living standards.

Barguzin: Urban History (1783–1927)

The article is devoted to the “urban” period of Barguzin (1783–1927) – one of the oldest settlements in the Republic of Buryatia. Its history has its own peculiarities, closely related to the marginal policy of the state. Founded as a prison settlement on the way of the Cossacks of the Russian Kingdom advancing to the East, Barguzin became one of the first strongholds of the “sovereign’s servants” on the territory of modern Buryatia. After the completion of the process of annexation of the Siberian territories, less than a third of all Siberian prisons – wooden fortresses – got a chance for further development due to their successful transport and geographical location, opportunities for economic development and patronage from the regional authorities. Barguzin was among them. The article for the first time considers the question of compliance of Barguzin with the status of the city throughout its “urban” history. Based on a wide source base, including archival documents introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the author proves that Barguzin, even with a small population, in the chronological period under study corresponded to the criteria of the city highlighted by researchers: the diversity of the population occupations, a significant economic and political role in the region. Although Barguzin stayed only a few years as the administrative center of Western Transbaikalia, having retained the administrative status of a county town, it became the focus of the political, economic and cultural life of the region, the center of gold mining and a place of mass exile, including the political one, new cultural traditions having been brought to the urban way of life. The author states that Barguzin lost its positions at the end of the XIXth century which is explained by the decline in gold mining and remoteness from the Trans-Siberian railway. During the years of economic prosperity provided by gold mining, Barguzin did not create a material base that, with the depletion of gold placers, could fuel the city, and the remoteness from trade routes excluded a developed trade turnover that provided an influx of population. The loss of Barguzin urban status did not diminish the interest of researchers in its rich history. The basic principles and methods of historical research: objectivity, historicism, scientific, systematic, comparative analysis allowed us to identify cause-and-effect relationships, patterns, facts, features of Barguzin development due to both external and internal factors.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROBLEMS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, PRESERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN BUILDING OBJECTS OF UKRAINIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE

The article reveals the peculiarities of the coverage of the architectural heritage in Ukraine from the historiographical point of view. The theoretical basis of the paper is the work of national and foreign culturologists, urban planners, geourbanists etc. During the twentieth century the thematic sphere of research of the city as a cultural phenomenon has significantly expanded. If in the XIX century the analysis of the urban way of life (both in the city and in the suburbs) was conducted in general from an economic standpoint, in the last century urban culture has been considered in terms of administrative and economic arrangement, synthesis of social and natural sciences, population of the city center and suburbs. The literature argues that the architectural forms, structures and decorative plasticity of buildings and structures of the centers of modern Ukrainian cities, belonging to the same functional type, can be different depending on the chronological and geographical parameters. Within one functional type, there are can exist different types of architectural form. The architectural form of a building is formed as a set of certain characteristics, depending on the functional program, materials and structures, which can be classified by type, having previously agreed on their terminological characteristics.

Activities of the state labour reserves system as an urbanization factor in after-war Ukraine (1945 – the early 1950s).

The article is devoted to analyzing the role, scale of influence and significance of the Labour Reserves system for the post-war urbanization processes in Ukraine. The State Labour Reserves (SLR) was a Soviet centralized structure that mobilized young people, trained skilled workers, and accumulated and distributed this new personnel among enterprises in strategic industries and infrastructure. The activity of the State Labour Reserves system of the USSR became a rather specific factor that played a significant role in the urban development of Ukraine during the period of Late Stalinism. The real impact of the Labour Reserves on urbanization processes was: – the mechanical movement of a significant number of young people from rural areas to cities; – the transformation of potential workers in the agricultural sector into industrial workers, increasing the share of the working class compared to the collective and state farm peasantry; – the creating conditions for inculcating the urban way of life to young people mobilized from the countryside, their incorporation into urban society. The real reasons for the establishment of forced conscription into SLR facilities were the general militarization of the economy and society at the time, as well as the unpopularity of the hard-working jobs to which conscripts were sent, effectively using non-economic coercion. It was assumed that a significant mass of young people had to move centrally from rural areas to industrial centres (that is, urban settlements). Youth appeals to SLR facilities during the post-war reconstruction led to the organized migration of about three-quarters of a million young people from rural areas to cities. The cities of Eastern Ukraine (mostly Donbas) were the most significant areas of such centralized movement under the auspices of the Labour Reserves. Soviet labour laws of the 1940s were analyzed. It was found that fleeing Labour Reserves and illegally leaving the workplace was considered a criminal offence and punishable by imprisonment. The USSR State Labour Reserves system became one of the tools to control and regulate urbanization processes in the country for the Stalinist totalitarian regime. Mobilized boys and girls were involved in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. They were forced to quickly get used to anonymous transactions among the large population of Ukrainian cities and inevitably changed their way of life, becoming part of a new generation of urban society. The research is based on materials from the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine and the State Archives of Sumy region.

Animal Husbandry, Import Replacement, and Urban Growth in Medieval Odense, Denmark

Issuing from Jane Jacobs’s concepts of ‘import replacement’ and ‘adding new work to old’, this paper proposes that these processes can be traced in the archaeological record of the early stages of the medieval city Odense in Denmark. It is suggested that Jacobs’s concepts help model the drivers of urban growth and expansion of economy. Therefore, it is suggested that Jacobs’s concepts are an alternative way of studying and comparing settlements regardless of their functional, topographical, or administrative traits. The paper also proposes that social processes of interdependency, related to co-presence and the dynamics of growth, are defining for the urban way of life. The argument is developed through an analysis of use and strategies towards animal resources - meat, bones, fur, and leather.

Models of Consumer Behavior of the Kyiv Residents and the Modernization of Urban Way of Life in the UkrSSR in 1955-1965

Models of Consumer Behavior of the Kyiv Residents and the Modernization of Urban Way of Life in the UkrSSR in 1955-1965

Creativity and Myth Making in Moscow Texts by A.S. Dolmatov

The article deals with the problems of creativity and myth making in the Moscow texts by A. Dolmatov. The research is aimed at studying the authors ideas about his lyrical hero and the formation of the narrators self-portrait. A. Dolmatovs texts are dedicated to Moscow and the urban way of life, since it is the Moscow theme that is the sense-making component in the writers work. The article presents a brief history of rap poetry formation in Russia in the XXI century. The main features of problematics and poetics of A. Dolmatovs texts are analyzed. The task is to trace the evolution of the authors ideas on poetics and the meaning of rap as a genre of literature. The relationship of Dolmatovs lyrical hero with the city of roads, Moscow, defines the development of the authors work in alternative poetry of the 21 century.

Odporność miast i nowe polityki miejskie

Urban Resilience and New Urban Policies The article analyses new urban policies and the question of urban resilience. The author focus on two case studies: the examples of “superblocks” idea in Barcelona and the idea of “15-minute city” in Paris. Both initiatives are now becoming model solutions, providing inspiration for other cities adapting to the new challenges. Moreover, both cities in the middle of the 19th century, as a result of the revolutionary reconstruction of the urban fabric, have also become model examples for other cities and symbols of the new urban way of life. The analysis, based on such examples, allows the phenomena to be explained in a long-term perspective, indicating the role of the city and urbanity in the process of initiating social change processes.

Second home tourism present and future. The case of Greece.

Second-home tourism is a rapidly growing form of tourism around the world. Being an integral part of rural areas and their history, second homes are an established example of the post-productive consumption of the countryside. Τhe expansion of urbanization and the pressures of the urban way of life, as well as the search for a pleasant climate and clean environment, have contributed particularly to the development of second home tourism globally.
 This study intends to investigate the present, the future and the impact of second home tourism on destinations, local people and tourists. The development of second home tourism, or tourist home is, undoubtedly, a strongly evolving social phenomenon. Activated by economically developed societies and is linked to income growth, urbanization, the possibility of geographical mobility and the increase of leisure time. This phenomenon operates and intensifies, almost in parallel with tourism.
 Also, the study investigates the effects of second home tourism in Greece, a very popular destination for international and domestic tourism. The country has been experienced a high growth of second home tourism in the last few years.

Development, Prosperity and Aspirations: A Narrative from the Peri-Urban Areas of Noida

Urban development at city periphery as a unique process of urbanisation, manifests in distinctive spatial and socio-economic characteristics. The emergence of settlement types—an admixture of rural and urban characteristics—functionally transient between agrarian and non-agrarian economy with pervasive change in land uses and attendant livelihood sources, retreating mode of rural social norms and advancing urban way of life are remarkably obvious in peri-urban landscape of large Indian cities. The resultant socio-economic challenges for peri-urban inhabitants often create chasm between promised development agenda and their aspirations. Delving into the socio-economic transformations on account of land appropriation by the State government for urban and industrial development and ramifications of land negotiations in five peri-urban villages of Noida—this study reveals the discordant side of urbanisation benefitting urban at the cost of rural, and administrative processes which remain oblivious to the aspirations of those whose lands provided the grounds of this development agenda.

»Reclaiming« the City: A Collective Endeavor

This contribution elaborates upon the appropriation of urban space in spatiotemporal and procedural interventions in the example of the city of Kharkiv, as well as the impact of urban space on the process of how various groups rediscover and use various parts of the city. Being moved during collective actions - in the sense of feeling urged to move along - goes beyond routine practices by influencing the city and its perception. It seems that these general processions, celebrations, and festive activities of the residents are their contributions to the process of »urban renaissance« - the rebirth of interest in the urban way of life. Since public spaces reflect the historical inheritance of local communities, joint transformative actions such as, »appropriation«, »production«, and »governance« of urban spaces are considered. This article advocates for the practice of domestication of urban space by the local community, as well as the need for the existence of »urban lagoons« - free (unregulated) areas of the city used as resources for urban development and interaction of citizens.

A Post-Corona Perspective for Smart Cities: ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’

This exploratory essay aims to provide a reflection on the possible implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for urban development and to sketch a plausible picture of the urban future. It serves as an introductory contribution to the Special Issue of this journal on ‘happy and healthy cities’, with particular emphasis on the implications of COVID-19 in pluriform cities. There is no doubt that contemporary cities are growing, and have become more dynamic and crowded. The more people, the bigger the challenges are to manage urban growth and to cope with—and control—density frictions, such as pandemics (e.g., COVID-19). Cities have the task to satisfy the essential needs of many heterogeneous people and to develop appropriate people-based strategies in order to make or keep people happy and healthy. The current COVID-19 disaster is a real urban challenge. The deployment of smart cities’ strategies and the use of digital technology tools in order to capture and provide intelligent internal and external online information and communication opportunities may help cities—in active partnership with their residents (‘smart citizens’ voice’)—to manage shocks and disruptions in the urban system. Clearly, cities are dynamic and adaptive organisms with a high resilience capacity. A key question addressed in this paper is whether urban inhabitants may be inclined to move out of the city due to human health threats, or whether intelligent digital technology tools will be able to overcome the current challenges to the ‘urban way of life’. The paper argues that modern information and communication technology offers a range of opportunities for a healthy city life, so that the COVID-19 pandemic will most likely not lead to a massive demographic outflow from urban agglomerations to less densely populated areas in particular rural areas. Instead, what is called the ‘corona crisis’ may cause just a ripple in the permanent dynamic evolution of cities.

Urbanism as a political way of life: the case of highly educated mainlanders in Hong Kong

PurposeThe disengaged form of urban experience, addressed by Louis Wirth in his classic essay, is worthy of further theorization and contextualization. The themes such as indifference, alienation, and disengagement, once the focus of early urban theorists, remain underdeveloped in contemporary China. Through the case study of gangpiao (“Hong Kong drifters”), the highly educated youth from mainland China to Hong Kong, this paper aims to offer an apt and logical illustration of how a disengaged form of urban experience is contingently made.Design/methodology/approachBetween 2017 and 2020, the author and his assistants interviewed 50 mainland Chinese youth, aged between 25 and 35, in Hong Kong and explored how they perceive, conceive and relate themselves to the city.FindingsMost informants, instead of devoting themselves to the local community life, embrace a way of life characterized by impersonal, superficial and transitory contacts. The author argues that their feeling of estrangement and indifference, rather than a “natural” outcome of economic progress, is an ethos primarily nurtured by China’s governing strategy and tactics of segregation. The transnational space of gangpiao is a part of the process of reproduction of the Chinese state across territories.Originality/valueExcept for a very limited number of studies, most scholars and critics barely examine the responsibilities of non-state actors for the dominant project of urbanism. The themes such as indifference, alienation and disengagement, once the focus of early urban theorists, remain underdeveloped in the new era of Chinese urban culture. In other words, more scholarly attention should be paid to the circumstances under which people disregard local differences and envision and embrace a “generic” form of city and way of urban life.

Editorial: Where Do Cities Come From and Where Are They Going To? Modelling Past and Present Agglomerations to Understand Urban Ways of Life

Editorial: Where Do Cities Come From and Where Are They Going To? Modelling Past and Present Agglomerations to Understand Urban Ways of Life

Тенденции развития городов в едином региональном пространстве (на примере Челябинской области)

Introduction. The article highlights the role and trends of urban development in a single regional space. The authors consider the industrial region, where the economic centers are the cities of monospecialization (metallurgy, mechanical engineering), which form the settlement framework of the regional economic system. At the same time, the connectivity of the regional space was determined by the contacts of cities in infrastructure areas and the possibilities of agglomeration formations. The authors analyze the urban environment of cities in the region, which revealed common problems for them in organizing urban space. It was shown that the competition of cities for a person can be won by offering the population more comfortable working and living conditions, a variety of social services, and the possibility of using agglomeration effects. Scientific novelty of the research. The peculiarity of the author’s research was a new approach to urbanization as an urban way of life, extended to a set of cities of different status and population in the region. At the same time, the zones of attraction and concentration of business and social activity were connected with large cities and centers of agglomerations of the region, which ensure the joint use of resources, transport, and social infrastructure. The purpose of the article is to Identify constraints and opportunities for developing cities in a single regional space, taking into account their connectivity and interaction. Methods. The authors use the information base: statistical data, scientific literature, and expert assessments to clarify the conceptual tools of the research and to analyze the demographic situation in the cities-centers of agglomeration associations of the region. The authors present the assessment of the state of the urban environment, and reveal the disproportions in its organization. The research approaches are tested on the example of the cities of the Chelyabinsk region.

Problematization of the development of non-capital cities in the works of Soviet and post-Soviet researchers

The article is dedicated to a critical analysis of the theoretical and methodological developments of Soviet and Russian scientists in the field of urbanism and sociology of the city. The relevance of this work is seen in the fact that today the desire of a significant part of Russian citizens (especially young people) to move to Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of large cities - centres of the subjects of the Russian Federation leads to a weakening of the spatial framework of the country. This makes it important to study the topic in the context of urbanisation processes in general. The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of the approaches of domestic scientists to the problems of the city, and non-capital cities in particular, as well as their general dynamics in the late Soviet, post-Soviet and modern periods. In the 1970s–1980s urbanisation processes in the USSR were subordinated to production (the leading theme was “city and labor”); the settlement strategy continued, the advantages and contradictions of new cities were noted, the importance of including small towns in the agglomeration was emphasised. The foundations of urban social planning were developed, the ideology of "developed socialism" contributed to the formation of the problematics of the urban way of life and communities. During the Perestroika period, many of the principles of urban development were formulated in opposition to the Soviet ones. The city was understood as a self-developing system, the individual was declared the measure of urban processes. The settlement system, that determines the most acute problems of new cities, was critically assessed. Differentiation of the capital and non-capital cities of Russia, serious contradictions in the development of small towns, and the weakening of agglomerations were noted. The focus was made on maintaining the large and largest urban centres. In the 2000s, extreme criticism of Soviet urbanisation was overcome, strategic urban planning, the idea of preserving the network of small and medium-sized cities, and the development of agglomerations as the basis for the country's spatial development were promoted. The direction of research of intercity and intracity stratification in the context of problems of spatial inequality, urban activism and urban social environment was being developed. The authors come to the conclusion that Russia has accumulated a wealth of experience in studying urbanisation processes. This suggests that in the future it will be possible to successfully combine the use of cities as reference points for the country's integration with the planning ideas developed during the Soviet period and models for the formation of a comfortable urban space, based on the activities of local communities.