Aesthetic Politics in St. Petersburg: Skyline at the Heart of Political Opposition
Alexei Yurchak, University of California, Berkeley
This working paper focuses on the plans to construct a skyscraper in St Petersburg, Russia, known originally as Gazprom-City and recently renamed into Okhta Center, and on the controversy that developed around these plans. The paper uses the skyscraper debates as a lens to discuss a particular "aesthetic politics" of St Petersburg, the meaning of "world cities" and "global architecture" in Russian and international contexts, post-Soviet forms of political and corporate governance, the mobilization of civic opposition to such projects and the ability of such urban protests to translate into a more unified and politically oriented opposition than has been possible in other contexts in Russia.
People in Transition: Spatial Shifts in Population within the Moscow Region
Grigory Ioffe, Radford University and Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, Russian Academy of Sciences
The overarching goal of this working paper is to reveal how post-communist transformations affected population distribution in the Moscow Region. The article is integral to a project focusing on the evolving geography of Russia's shrinking population.We first outline the exceptional role of the Moscow Region in Russia in terms of population dynamics and migration and as the niche for Russia's largest urban agglomeration. We then characterize the migration-induced population growth of Moscow and the Moscow Oblast, including upward adjustments of their population estimates in the wake of the 2002 census. The following three sections of the article reflect our attempt at disaggregation of previously uncovered trends. We then look into recorded and unrecorded migration streams and into origins of labor migrants to Moscow and to the Moscow Oblast. Finally, we switch to a larger-scale analysis, focusing on population growth poles within the most ecologically clean and "prestigious" western sector of the Moscow Oblast.