Pokrovsky N.E., Nikulin A.M. “There is and there will be territorial reformatting of rural spaces” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2023. V.8. №2. P. 140-158.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2023-8-2-140-158

Annotation

In the interview, Professor N. E. Pokrovsky describes his scientific path related to the issues of rural-urban development. Based on his experience as originally a city dweller, Pokrovsky considers how and why city-dwellers move to the countryside with their projects and plans to change the rural reality; identifies the life trajectories of different social strata of city dwellers in their rural searches; focuses on the essential characteristics of rural changes in recent decades, including those identified on the basis of his long-term observations in the Ugorsk rural development project in the Kostroma Region. As a sociologist-Americanist, Pokrovsky refers to the American roots of the rural lifestyle — ideas of T. Jefferson and H. Thoreau — and to his personal impressions of rural regions of the United States. Pokrovsky also mentions the spatial rethinking of rural-urban development as related, on the one hand, to the criticism of life in large cities, and, on the other hand, to the new economic-technological, culturalhistorical and recreational-environmental practices in rural areas. In conclusion, he considers the possibility of a new mapping of rural spaces in order to assess the development of local territories. 

Keywords

City, village, suburbanization, deurbanization/counterurbanization, migration, dachas, ecology, Henry Thoreau, Ugor project.

About the authors

Pokrovsky Nikita E., DSc (Sociology), Chief Researcher, Institute of Sociology, Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow, 101000.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; Vice-Rector for Research, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Prosp. Vernadskogo, 82, Moscow, 119571.
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Lepetyukhina Ya.O., Neroda M.A. Uferwerk partnership, or implementation of social utopia // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №2. P. 141-150.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-2-141-150

Annotation

The article considers the history and everyday practices of the German housing cooperative partnership Uferwerk located in the countryside not far from Berlin. On the example of the housing cooperative Uferwerk, the authors analyze the social structure, financial and legal features of the contemporary housing partnership that reconstructs traditional relations and at the same time creates new humanistic relations of the community. This partnership transformed and rebuilt the former industrial territory of the metallurgical manufactory into an environmentally attractive space for the community of ninety adults and sixty children of various generations. The article focuses on the successful intergenerational interaction of the members of this housing partnership; considers its search for optimal legal and organizational-financial forms. The authors emphasize that all members of this unique project did not have any special data or skills for creating a cooperative, arranging a joint life, reconstructing real estate or developing a set of rules for the partnership. Thus, the new community developed due to the internal mutual learning based on the active participation of its members in management and decision-making, work and leisure, and on their desire to achieve the old utopian goals of cooperative solidarity in the new social realities of the 21st century.

Keywords

community, family, partnership, cooperative, suburbanization, real estate, ecology, generations, utopia

About the authors

Lepetyukhina Yana O., PhD Student, Institute of Political Sciences, RheinischWestfälische Technische Hochschule. Mies-van-der-Rohe-Straße, 10, 52074, Aachen.
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Neroda Maxim A., Graphic Designer; Head of the Electric Workshop at the Uferwerk Partnership. Halle 36 e.V., Luisenstr. 16, 14542 Werder (Havel).
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Breslavsky A.S. “Suburban Revolution”: The regional case (Ulan-Ude) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2017. V.2. №1. pp. 90-101.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2017-2-1-90-101

Annotation

The author considers the processes of suburban growth in major Russian cities that becomes  more and more visible, and at the same time has much in common with the processes  of development of other large cities in post-socialist countries. The driving forces  of the so-called “post-socialist suburban revolution” in Russia determined by the  rapid growth of private housing construction on the periphery of the capital cities are  similar to those typical for Eastern European countries. They are as follows: the prolonged  housing crisis, restrictions on the private property and private housing construction  in the Soviet period, degradation of the social infrastructure in central districts of  the cities in the 1990s, liberalization of distribution and developing of urban and suburban  areas, in-migration from rural areas — all these factors have a significant impact  on the growth of cities with a million-plus population as well as on smaller regional capitals.  The growth and development of the suburban zone of Ulan-Ude — the capital of  the Republic of Buryatia — quite fit into this “post-socialist context” though with important  regional features related to local housing traditions, level of income, character of  rural-urban migration, etc. The key directions of growth of the inner and outer suburbs  of Ulan-Ude are as follows: wooden low-rise housing construction, transformation of  dachas into places of year-round accommodation, construction of cottages and townhouses,  high-rise housing construction, development and reconstruction of suburban  villages. The suburban area of Ulan-Ude has mono-functional character (residential areas)  for the industrial and commercial construction and social and public infrastructure  are still poorly developed, which determines the rural-urban look of the suburban  micro-districts. 

Keywords

suburbs, urbanization, suburbanization, Ulan-Ude, segments of housing development, social geography

About the author

Breslavsky Anatoly S., Research Fellow, PhD (History), Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Address: 6, Sakhyanovoi St., Ulan-Ude, 670047, Russian Federation.
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Center for Agrarian studies of the Russian Presidental Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA)

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