The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia

Isolde Brade, Konstantin Axenov, Evgenij Bondarchuk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134152841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

In the years since 1989, the societies of Russia and Eastern Europe have undergone a remarkable transformation from socialism to democracy and free market capitalism. Making an important contribution to the theoretical literature of urbanism and post-communist transition, this significant book considers the change in the spatial structure of post-Soviet urban spaces since the period of transition began. It argues that the era of transformation can be considered as largely complete, and that this has given way to a new stage of development as part of the global urban and economic system: post-transformation.

The authors examine the modern trends in the urban development of western and post-socialist countries, and explore the theories of the transformation and post-transformation of urban space. Providing a wealth of detailed qualitative research on the Russian city of St. Petersburg, the study examines the changing structure of its retail trade and services sector. Overall, this book is an important step forward in the study of the spatial dynamics of urban transformation in the former communist world.

1 Post-industrial vs. post-socialist
Post-industrial trends and points for investigation in the post-socialist metropolis

Discussions about economic restructuring, the tertiarization of production and its effects upon space, and about the service and information society, have been a feature of academic literature in Western countries for many years. Since the collapse of socialism, the end of the planned economy and the advent of transformation, these discussions, which are embedded within the wider issue of general urban development, have become more topical and meaningful for the countries of Eastern Europe.

Contemporary trends in urban development in Western industrialized countries

Certain social processes are currently taking place worldwide that are being accompanied by spatial restructuring on several levels. This can be observed on the international and transnational levels and can also be seen in changes within cities. These spatially relevant processes have been widely discussed in specialist literature, albeit almost exclusively in Western publications.

Wallerstein’s ‘world-system approach’ has contributed greatly to the interpretation of the time–space relations in all spheres of social life and allowed for conceptualization of global shifts (Wallerstein, 1974, 1979, 1980). Major societal restructuring, which started worldwide in the 1970s, has produced new structural determinants, collectively termed globalization (Taylor and Hoyler, 2000). These structures brought up a system of new world cities (Friedmann, 1986) or global cities (Sassen, 1991). David Clark suggests that two major trends underline the global urban development – shifts in global settlement systems are shaping the pattern of urban population majority and creation of a world city network forms what he refers to as the global city (Clark, 1996). That is, the development of a settlement system is coming to a state when, almost everywhere, the majority of populations live in cities. Also, major cities in the world are becoming interrelated in the form of a network, called the global city. Studies of the global cities have produced an extensive literature on the features of the global cities and numerous classifications of them. Certain dissatisfaction has been expressed at the extent to which the external relations of global cities are studied (Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor, 1999; Taylor and Hoyler, 2000; Taylor, 2001). Empirical studies of world city networks have invented the concept of ‘hinterworld’ as a particular form of hinterland for world cities (Taylor, 2001). More important for our topic is finding the specific regional characteristics of global cities within globalization, discovering the regional features of European cities being of prime interest to some authors (Castells, 1993; Taylor and Hoyler, 2000). Similar concern persuaded others to use the term ‘globalizing cities’ to describe involvement in urban space of centres from the global periphery (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000).

The concept of the metropolis has gained particular significance in these debates. Elisabeth Lichtenberger has, among others, posited the following thesis: in a united Europe, a new spatial way of thinking is ushering in the age of the metropolis (Lichtenberger, 1994, 1995). This refers particularly to the competition that is emerging between major cities for functional specialization at the transnational or international level. Indeed, it is largely the major metropolises that are becoming the setting, where processes triggered by the following factors are played out:

• The increasing globalization or internationalization of the economy – particularly in the world of finance.
• The transition from the industrial age characterized by mass production and mass consumption to an age of consumer-orientated, highly specialized production and a service sector that is increasingly orientated towards the provision of business services.

Saskia Sassen writes of the development of a new global and regional hierarchy of cities, characterized by the so-called global cities, but also by:

widespread, increasingly marginalized areas that are excluded from the new economic processes. A large number of formerly important industrial cities and ports have lost their function and are in a process of decline . . . This is also a sign of economic globalization.

(Sassen, 1996, p. 20)

Elsewhere, Stefan Krätke points out that the present phase of social development is being accompanied by a global shift in industry and growth centres:

A pattern of spatial development is emerging, which is shaped by the division between declining or stagnating urban regions and those areas which are still prosperous, and which brings with it an increase in socio-economic polarization within cities as well as new micro-spatial segregation processes.

(Krätke, 1991, p. 4)

The majority of recent works in urban research (by authors such as Peter Taylor, Stephan Krätke and Saskia Sassen, and also by Hartmut Häussermann, Walter Prigge and Klaus Ronneberger, Manuel Castells and Elisabeth Lichtenberger) are based upon the premise that current changes to urban spaces and urban hierarchies (e.g. the emergence of global and Euro-city networks) are caused by global restructuring processes taking place within capitalist societies.

While many studies on urban development during the 1970s followed a socio-ecologica¹ approach1 (e.g. Friedrichs, 1978; Massotti and Hadden, 1973), contemporary theoretical interest in the development of urban spaces is orientated more towards the ‘regulation approach’ (Krätke, 1995; Hitz, Schmid and Wolff, 1992). This approach within social science views the development of capitalist societies as a succession of particular historical phases of development, in which appropriate political and institutional regulatory mechanisms emerge. If applied to urban research, this poses the following question according to Krätke: to what extent does a specific phase in historical development affect specific spatial and urban structures?

If one considers the Western European city in the ‘Fordist phase’ of development – also known as the late phase of the industrial age – the following characteristics stand out:

• the conception of the city as a monocentrically expanding system with a clearly demarcated core and fringe;
• the progressive ‘zoning’ of the urban area and standardization of urban areas;
• the separation of functions – work, living and provision with goods and services – leading to the development of mono-functional sub-areas;
• standardized mass housing construction;
• the acceptance of the mass consumption model.

The worldwide acceptance of Fordist-Keynesian² economic thinking after the Second World War was reflected on the ground by recognizable spatial structures. Industrial complexes, based upon closely knit systems of production, required the spatial concentration of workers and resources for production. Initially, cities expanded in a star-shaped pattern, primarily along radial axes of public transport routes. The strict separation of industrial and residential areas was typical. With increased prosperity and mass motorization suburban growth was freed of this predetermined radial pattern, and there followed an extensive expansion of towns and cities that reached far into the urban field. In the US, this process had commenced even before the Second World War, due to the high levels of motorization (Hesse and Schmitz, 1998). The process of suburbanization that involved the migration of people, trade and industry from the centre to the fringe (resulting in a staggering increase in commuting and traffic flows) was one of the most important spatially relevant processes of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1950, there was 14 square metres of residential space per inhabitant; by the end of the 1990s this had risen to approximately 39 square metres per inhabitant (Aring, 1999). Inner city areas became increasingly depopulated, with the middle classes and white collar workers moving to suburban areas. The resulting space in the city centre was filled by ‘lifeless’ office buildings and business zones.

The typical spatial expression of this developmental phase in capitalist society was an urban agglomeration with ‘more or less recognizable borders’, with a standardized suburban belt of ‘single-family houses for the middle classes and high-rise ghettos for the workers’, resulting in social division and large-scale segregation (Hitz, Schmid and Wolff, 1992). The city was largely developed according to the classic spatial model of the Fordist city with concentric rings and sectors (Lichtenberger, 1998). The Fordist phase of urban development remained a feature of the economic landscape in Western industrialized countries until the mid-1970s, when a massive structural crisis heralded the end of the industrial age. International economic processes changed radically under the influence of new communication and information technologies and globalizing tendencies driven by the imperatives of capital, technology and information. Deregulation and de-industrialization became the order of the day, as did the transition to flexible and specialized production structures, and the ter-tiarization and quarternization of production. The centrepiece of this new historical formation – ‘post-Fordism’ – is, according to Leborgne and Lipietz (1994), a shift in emphasis away from mass production towards the flexible specialization of the production process, i.e. the production of goods and services that are orientated towards specific consumer wishes.

The introduction of new technologies, modern methods of communication and computer integrated manufacturing, as well as new forms of organization (subcontracting) and production (just-in-time production), brought an end to the rigid Fordist system of production. Whole production units could now be outsourced and relocated to more advanced or cheaper corners of the world. The availability of a wide variety of economic locations – such as the high-wage, high-tech region of North America, regions with highly qualified personnel (Western Europe) or the attractive investment zones of Latin America and southern Asia (e.g. Hitz, Schmid and Wolff, 1992) – has provided the framework for the creation of globally integrated production systems and for the increasing internationalization of economic processes. The effect of this on urban hierarchies has been the emergence of global cities and high-tech or regional metropolises in international or transnational space. The major metropolises attempt to attract high-value services and advanced technologies in order to gain technological and locational advantages in the acquisition of important international functions, particularly in the financial sector. These cities are increasingly becoming ‘the command centres of the world economy’ (Sassen, 1991, 1996) and ‘a crossroads, where global flows of information converge. They are the seats of the headquarter economy, places, where business-orientated services and economic regulatory functions are concentrated’ (Clark, 1996; Burdack and Herfert, 1998). In this way, they are increasingly separating themselves from their national settlement systems and striving for integration into the newly emerging network of global cities or Euro-cities. Locational factors, such as the availability of human capital and important services, mean that only the major metropolises have a real chance of becoming part of this network. Through carefully targeted marketing and image-building campaigns cities attempt to improve their international competitiveness.

At the same time, the transition to flexible production structures is bringing about the restructuring of intra-urban space. Extensive growth beyond the city boundaries has characterized the main trends in urban development in the last few decades in Western Europe. This ‘classical’ suburbanization has been eclipsed since the 1980s by a new phase of development in the urban periphery. This ‘post-suburban’ phase of development is not defined by quantitative growth alone but, rather, increasingly by a functional enhancement of the city margins (Burdack, 2001, p. 189).
The emergence of new regional production complexes, known as ‘new industrial complexes’ (Sassen, 1995), provides innovative new locations that act as magnets for growth industries and the business services sector. These locations, which are normally situated on the fringes of the metropolis and manifested in a variety of new spatial features, are often functionally specialized, occurring as industrial estates, business parks, office parks, etc. Others exhibit a mixture of functions, such as retailing and leisure.

In current discourses of regionalization, the city and its surrounding area are no longer understood in terms of a contrast between centre and periphery; rather, they are considered to form a spatial unit. When the term ‘urban area’ is used, this refers to the scale of the urban region. In contrast to developments in the US, however, there is no evidence that edge cities are emerging in European states. The reasons for this include differing urban traditions, modes of regulation and forms of economic growth.

The continuing trend towards suburbanization in Western industrialized countries is propelled by residential suburbanization, albeit at reduced rates, and in particular by the leisure and service industries, as well as by small businesses, which are increasingly moving to the city periphery. Household and business-orientated services are also contributing to the ‘tertiarization of the suburban area’ (Burdack and Herfert, 1998). These decentralized areas now provide the greatest concentration of employment and the fastest rates of employment growth within the urban region (Brake et al., 1996). Crucial to this Western model of urban development, however, is a high degree of individual mobility (Petz and Schmals, 1992).

New economic centres have now begun to develop independently of the city core, helped by their agglomeration advantages, which attract business and industry. As a result, the traditional centre–periphery urban structure of Western cities is slowly breaking down. The post-Fordist city is ‘disintegrating’ into specialized locations of a fragmentary nature (Burdack and Herfert, 1998), i.e. it is made up of ‘various specialized locations such as new towns and satellite-cities, linked by freeways, high-speed trains and fiber-optic cable . . . Places, which are not connected to these links are being relegated to the urban periphery’ (Hitz, Schmid and Wolff, 1992, p. 77). The development of urban regions is no longer concentrated on one pole – the city centre – as ‘the new metropolis is much more decentralized, consisting more and more of a mosaic of unevenly developed living areas’ (Soja, 1993, p. 213).

The role of the traditional Western city centre is currently undergoing a period of significant re-evaluation. It is extolled as a ‘place for sophisticated consumption’, representative of a ‘new lifestyle’. While residential functions and so much of the ‘life’ of the city centre were squeezed out as the Fordist city centre was restructured into business and office zones, current urban development strategies focus on the development of districts that meet the needs of the ‘new urban elites’. These new elites generally work in modern, highly paid sectors, and are representative of the headquarters economy. They view the city centre as a suitable place for projecting their own self-image, and as indicative of their own sophistication. New patterns of consumption are also initiating changes in spatial structures, and the creation of the corresponding post-modern ‘architectural backdrops’. The centre has been rediscovered as a sophisticated place to live. Rising rents, luxury redevelopments and gentrification are slowly driving out the lower socio-economic classes, providing room for the new metropolitan elites. At the same time, city centres have not just become attractive places to live; they are also attracting high-quality services. Financial advisers and management consultants, realtors, advertising agencies, designers, artists and other ‘creative’ branches are moving to the inner city. Luxury shopping malls and art galleries, elegant restaurants, cafes, bars and bistros, leisure centres and cultural forums are emerging to meet the needs of the new inhabitants. Security cameras, security guards and iron gates are merely the outward signs of their perceived need to protect their new ‘possessions’ and guarantee the security of their ‘lifestyle’. Formerly public places are becoming semi-public or even private spheres.

The Leibniz Institute of Regional Geography in Leipzig, Germany, has carried out comparative research into current developments in peripheral areas of city regions.³ The findings indicate that the following five characteristics distinguish post-suburban space from suburban space (Burdack 2001):

1. Increased functional variety: peripheral areas are now places where people not only live but also work, spend their leisure time, and are educated.
2. Qua...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• 1. Post-Industrial Vs. Post-Socialist: Post-Industrial Trends and Points for Investigation In the Post-Socialist Metropolis
• 2. Changes In the Functions of St Petersburg As a Prerequisite for Structural Change In the City
• 3. Transformation, Tertiary Sector and City Space: Time–Space Approach
• 4. Transformation and Specific Forms of Spatial Saturation
• 5. The Spatial Transformation of Vertical Business Structures
• 6. Territorial Complex Building
• 7. Post-Transformation Urban Space: The Results of Spatial Saturation and the Spatial Organization of New Business Forms
• 8. Post-Transformation Vs. Modernization: Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography