Another place

ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНАЯ ПРОГРАММА 2012/13

STRELKA

EDUCATION PROGRAMME 2012/13

RESEARCH REPORT ANOTHER PLACE. TOWARDS THE NEW PATTERNS OF (CO)HABITATION

ДИРЕКТОРА Дэвид Эриксон, Анастасия Смирнова ПРЕПОДАВАТЕЛЬ Куба Снопек СТУДЕНТЫ Маргарита Гооге, специалист по маркетингу, Пермь; Варвара Дегтяренко, историк искусства и реставратор, Москва/ США; Анна Кайдановская, архитектор, Москва; Артем Калашьян, куратор, Москва; Филип Майер, архитектор, Стокгольм, Швеция; Полина Филиппова, экономист, Москва; Изабела Чихоньска, архитектор, Вроцлав, Польша; Ондрей Янку, архитектор, Прага, Чехия ЭКСПЕРТЫ-КОНСУЛЬТАНТЫ Борис Акимов, LavkaLavka; Антон Белов, активист; Кирилл Белов, активист; Юлия Бичкова, Архстояние; Андрей Бордров, фермер; Наталия Бояринова, советник по здравоохранению; Ольга Вольцит, биолог; Василий Гатов, РИА Новости; Сергей Георгиевский, Архполис; Маша Гессен, журналист; Рейнир де Грааф, архитектор; Юрий Григорян, архитектор; Елена Гусева, исследователь; Олег Денисов, предприниматель; Надежда Замятина, специалист по территориальной идентичности; Анна Каретинкова, юрист; Борис Концевич, предприниматель; Егор Коробейников, UrbanUrban.ru; Брайан Куйман, профессор английского языка; Дима Левенец, РосЖКХ; Галина Лихтерова, ландшафтный архитектор; Алексей Макаров, историк; Рубен Макаров, независимый журналист; Соня Мартянова, глава отдела реставрации декоративных искусств; Алла Махрова, географ; Галина Морозова, общество защиты окружающей среды; Ирина Невская, Подольский краеведческий музей; Татьяна Нефедова, географ; Александр Осетров, географ,

специалист по земельным ресурсам; д-р Лаура Пиачентини, криминолог; Михаил Плотников, финансист и фермер; Иван Полисский, продюсер; Николай Полисский, художник; Александр Пыпин, специалист по землевладению; Ян Разинский, историк; Ольга Романова, журналист; Денис Ромодин, краевед; Валерий Сергеев, координатор информационного центра; Питер Сигрист, урбанист; Анна Сиприкова, Министерство культуры РФ; Александра Смирнова, историк; Уоррен Смит, Citylabs; Денис Соколов, специалист по собственности; Ирина Соболева, исследователь; Михаил Соротокин, философ; Владимир Спектор, краевед и экскурсовод; Антон Табах, экономист; Сергей Тархов, географ; Никита Токарев, архитектор; Андрей Трейвиш, географ; Анна Трапкова, Министерство культуры РФ; Сильвия Франческини, куратор и исследователь; Ефим Фрейдин, архитектор; Джек Р. Харкема, DVM, PhD, DACVP; Наталия Чукаева, консультант; Михаил Шляпников, предприниматель; Сергей Шошин, исследователь; Кристина Эриксон, терапевт

DIRECTORS David Erixon, Anastassia Smirnova TUTOR Kuba Snopek STUDENTS Izabela Cichońska, architect, Wrocław, Poland; Varvara Degtiarenko, art historian and conservator, Moscow/ USA; Polina Filippova, economist, Moscow; Margarita Googe, marketing specialist, Perm; Ondřej Janků, architect, Prague, Czech Republic; Artem Kalashyan, art curator, Moscow; Anna Kaydanovskaya, architect, Moscow; Filip Mayer, architect, Stockholm, Sweden EXTERNAL EXPERTS Boris Akimov, LavkaLavka; Anton Belov, activist; Kirill Belov, activist; Yulia Bichkova, Archstoyanie; Andrey Bordrov, farmer; Natalie Boyarinova, counselor at Corporate Health; Nataliya Chukaeva, consultant; Oleg Denisov, entrepreneur; Krystyna Eriksson, General Practitioner; Silvia Franceschini, curator and researcher; Yefim Freidine, architect; Vasily Gatov, RIA Novosti; Sergey Georgievskiy, ArchPolis; Masha Gessen, journalist; Reinier de Graaf, architect; Yury Grigoryan, architect; Elena Guseva, researcher; Jack R. Harkema, DVM, PhD, DACVP; Anna Karetinkova, lawyer; Vladimir Kaganski, geographer; Boris Kontsevich, entrepreneur; Brian Kooyman, Professor of English; Egor Korobeynikov, UrbanUrban. ru; Dmitry Levenets, RosZHKH.ru; Galina Likhterova, landscape architect; Alla Mahrova, geographer; Alexey Makarov, historian; Ruben Makarov, idependent journalist; Sonya Martyanova, Head of Decorative Arts Conservation; Galina Morozova, Association of

Environmental Protection; Tatiana Nefedova, geographer; Irina Nevskaya, Podolsk Local Museum; Alexandr Osetrov, land resource specialist; Dr. Laura Piacentini, criminologist; Ivan Polissky, producer; Nikolay Polissky, artist; Michael Plotnikov, financier and farmer; Alexander Pypin, land expert; Jan Raczynski, historian; Olga Romanova, journalist; Denis Romodin, kraeved; Valery Sergeyev, coordinator of Information Center; Michael Shlyapnikov, entrepreneur; Sergey Shoshin, researcher; Peter Sigrist, urbanist; Anna Siprikova, Ministry of Culture; Aleksandra Smirnova, historian; Warren Smith, Citylabs; Irina Soboleva, researcher; Denis Sokolov, property expert; Michael Sorotokin, philosopher; Vladimir Spektor, kraeved and tour guide; Anton Tabakh, economist; Sergey Tarkhov, geographer; Nikita Tokarev, architect, MARCH; Anna Trapkova, Ministry of Culture; Andrey Treivish, geographer; Olga Voltzit, biologist; Nadezhda Zamyatina, expert in territorial identity

ИДЕАЛЬНОЕ МЕСТО, ИЛИ CЕМЬ НОВЫХ МОДЕЛЕЙ ДЛЯ ЖИЗНИ За последние 20 лет с российскими городами произошли невероятные, многослойные изменения, пока еще мало изученные и слабо отрефлексированные. На смену советскому коллективному городу явился город капиталистический, с другими требованиями к пространству, с другой логикой и другими ценностями. При этом инерция социалистического города действует до сих пор, что приводит к многообразным системным искажениям, появлению структур-мутантов и делает любое комплексное проектирование медленным и трудоемким. В течение 6 месяцев команда студии «Идеальное место: к новым моделям для жизни» занималась исследованием тех сложных процессов, которые идут сегодня в пост-советских городах и хаотично урбанизированных пригородных территориях вокруг них. Особый интерес для нас представляло Подмосковье – зона неопределенности, существующая, в отсутствие четких норм и правил, по варварским экстенсивным законам и довольно быстро превращающаяся в перенаселенный, замусоренный, фрагментированный и не имеющий внешних границ посад: не деревню и не город. Результатом нашей работы стали 7 студенческих проектов и фантастическая поездка в Южную Африку – место, где странным образом функционируют похожие, только куда более агрессивные, механизмы; серия статей об этой поездке на сайте www.strelkafieldtrips.com и, наконец, выставочный павильон Another Place, посвященный работе нашей студии. Мы начали с анализа различных законодательных систем, которые — с большим или меньшим успехом – регулируют сегодня жизнь в городе и его пригородах: системы управления, городского планирования, здравоохранения, землепользования, транспортной, уголовно-исполнительной, охраны природы и культурного наследия. В каждом случае мы пытались понять, каким мутациям подвергаются официальные структуры и какие неформальные процессы сегодня компенсируют слабость и изъяны государственных законов, регуляций и норм. Именно на стыке формального и неформального нам удалось обнаружить новые закономерности функционирования жилой среды – новые

ANOTHER PLACE, OR SEVEN NEW PATTERNS OF (CO)HABITATION Over the past 20 years Russian cities underwent unbelievable, multilevel transformations—as yet little studied and barely rationalized. The Soviet, collective city has been supplanted by the “capitalist” one, with different spatial requirements, a different logic and different values. However, the inertia of the former, socialist city is still active, which leads to diverse systemic aberrations, producing mutant structures and rendering any holistic innovative planning slow and arduous.

For six months, the team of the “Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation” studio was busy researching into complicated processes, which are going on today in post-Soviet cities and in randomly urbanized suburban areas surrounding them. Our interest was mostly engaged by Moscow and its environs—a zone of indefiniteness that lives, due to the lack of strictly defined norms and rules, according to the barbarian laws of extensive spreading, and rapidly turns into an overpopulated, littered, fragmented and boundless sprawl, which is neither a village nor a city.

Our work resulted in seven student projects and a fantastic trip to South Africa, a place where strangely similar, though much more aggressive, processes have been taking place. We have also published a series of articles about this trip online (www.strelkafieldtrips.com) and created Another Place, an exhibition pavilion dedicated to the work of our studio.

We started with the analysis of several legal systems that, to various degrees of success, regulate life in the city and its suburbs today: governance, urban planning, health care, land ownership, transport, penitentiary system, environmental protection, and cultural heritage. In each case, we attempted to document the complex transformations that official structures undergo, and the informal processes that compensate today for the weaknesses and inadequacies of the laws, regulations, and norms issued by the state.

It is at the intersection between the formal and the informal that we managed to find some new algorythms of the functioning of residential milieu—the emerging patterns that, as we see it, having fully developed in the future, will exert a substantial influence on the life of Moscow Region.

«паттерны», – которые, как нам кажется, в будущем, развившись в полной мере, будут существенно влиять на жизнь московского региона. Выявление этих закономерностей потребовало практически детективной работы. Несмотря на героические усилия некоторых социологов и географов, данных по территории Москвы и Московской области не хватает, а те, что есть в официальных источниках, не всегда достоверны и почти всегда чрезвычайно фрагментированы. Нужную информацию мы собирали буквально по крупицам из разговоров с экспертами, из интервью с жителями, в небольших поездках; нередко пользовались личным опытом коллег и друзей. Многие данные мы нашли и сопоставили действительно первыми – и это предмет нашей студийной гордости. Важно отметить, что все обнаруженные нами «паттерны» возникли сравнительно недавно, хотя корни их уходят глубоко в историю, – они еще не окончательно окрепли, и порой трудно было предположить, насколько жизнеспособными и продуктивными они окажутся в будущем. Нам приходилось быть осторожными с выводами, не теряя при этом комплексного подхода и визионерской смелости, без которых концептуальное проектирование сегодня попросту невозможно. Для студентов, впервые занимавшихся подобной работой, найти правильный баланс между тщательным анализом и смелым проектным предложением оказалось очень и очень непросто. В некоторых случаях сбор материала занимал больше времени и предложение сжималось до лишь кратко очерченного плана дальнейших действий; в других – удавалось все-таки сформулировать более внятную стратегию или модель для качественного изменения жилой среды. Именно поэтому данный отчет представляет не только 7 новых проектов, 7 новых моделей для жизни, но и 7 очень разных индивидуальных траекторий их авторов — людей разных профессий, талантов, интересов и склонностей. Очень надеемся, что опыт, приобретенный в студии, поможет им с успехом двигаться по выбранным траекториям уже самостоятельно за пределами института «Стрелка».

– Дэвид Эриксон, Анастасия Смирнова, Куба Снопек

To reveal these patterns, we practically had to engage in detective work. Despite the heroic efforts of certain social scientists and geographers, the data on the area of Moscow and Moscow Region are inadequate; those that can be found in official sources are not always reliable and nearly always extremely fragmentary.

We had to glean the necessary information from interviews with experts, conversations with local residents during our short trips; quite often we had recourse to the personal experience of our colleagues and friends. Much of the data was actually first discovered and compared by us—a fact in which our studio takes great pride.

It is important to point out that all patterns we detected are of a relatively recent origin, though their roots can be traced back to much earlier periods of history. As it were, they have not yet reached a mature condition, and sometimes it is difficult to gauge how viable and productive they can become in the future.

Our conclusions were of necessity tentative, though we never abandoned a comprehensive approach and visionary valour—the prerequisites of today’s conceptual design for cities.

Finding the correct balance between thorough analysis of this very complex (sub)urban reality and daring projects proved a formidable task for our students, who have never undertaken a job of this kind before. In some cases, the emphasis was preferably put on the research process, with the resultant project boiled down to a brief and sketchy plan of future actions; in others, students took the risk to formulate relatively clear-cut strategies for substantial change of private and public space.

That is why, the present report offers not only seven new projects, seven new patterns of life, but also seven very unique trajectories of their authors—people of different professions, talents, interests, and inclinations. We are quite hopeful that the experience they have gained at the studio will help them successfully move along the trajectories of their choice as independent professionals outside the Strelkа Institute.

— David Erixon, Anastassia Smirnova, Kuba Snopek

This book is designed for personal, non-commercial use. You must not use it in any other way, and, except as permitted under applicable law, you must not copy, translate, publish, licence or sell the book without our consent.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

(Re)Assembled City ..............................10

9

4

1 2 1 3 5 4 3 3

1 5

2

2 4

1

3 2

3

3 1 3 1

2

5 1

5

5 4

Fig. 01: Fictional Map of (Re)Assembled City Based on typologies detected in the research: 1 Rurban development; 2 Gated countryside; 3 Entrance settlements; 4 Cocktail typologies; 5 Lines of a new life

10

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

1

(Re)Assembled City

Contents

Growing Metropolis

Introduction

in the Moscow Oblast. It discovers that as the

Growing Metropolis

Fig.09: Merging typologies in Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast. Source: odinews.ru/news/V-Odintsovo-obsudili-genplan

15

together with the geographical characteristics

belong either to the state or to private 18

to be extended to all sectors of the circle.16

17

shown

y separatl

and changing trends.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

icy

9

and design in Moscow lies in the hands of three people: the

it is evident that those who are

10

ment Govern Moscow Authorities ive t u c e x E * * 11

* ow , of Mo sc nt Ma yo r pa rt me De pu ty th e De ad ad of an d Ro th e he sp or t an sc ow Tr Mo of tu re in uc tr In fr as

for the head of the *

ow of Mo sc me nt Ma yo r Go ve rn De pu ty Mo sc ow of th e - He ad

fo r Ma yo r De pu ty Pu bl ic g an d Ho us in s rk Wo

Mo sc ow in th e Ma yo r ri ty De pu ty al Se cu cy Re gi on n Po li rm at io fo In an d

ow 's of Mo sc s Ma yo r rt De pu ty sm ef fo er ro ri an ti -t

De pa rt

Co ns tr me nt of

uc ti on

order nde d in tly fo u s recen a w t.

N en epartm RADPLA lle d G rmer d ow f the fo in mosc ation ca organis ner structur o f po licy to create o ew y n it A in nu d ti n n n a a co e ig g nn n go vo vi de a to chan sterpla is to pr n betwee g ic ma re aims duce a strate nd co operatio structu a o s. tr ie n ew n o in n ti pa ; to The peti co m g system for co m and private plannin me platform reign fra rnal, fo te ex a new d tal an ernmen

N rc h Ge nP LA "R es ea l rp ri se Ge ne ra y En te of th e Un it ar it ut e St at e st In " si gn Mo sc ow of an d De an Pl

platform Frame petiton for co m

re

e fo r mm it te pm en t th e Co De ve lo an of Ur ba n Ch ai rm re an d tu ec Ar ch it

ec t Ar ch it Ch ie f re ct or De pu ty ti ve di Fi rs t e cr ea ow - th "M NI IT EP " sc Mo of of SU E

een c on betw le Coaliti a big ro g n yi (pla

in at e

or ga ni

za ti on

s

S

U ni ng Gl av AP l pl an ec tu ra tu re " ar ch it ec he ma in Mo sc om ar ch it SU E "T nt me ma na ge

st al ge ot ru ol og ic Mo sg or us t ge Ci ty Tr pp in g" os co w an d ma SU E "M g in su rv ey

f mber o n rent nu a d iffe shows 12 desig w o sh es ru em. nt so urc as www.mos.

7 of th ly n Differe o re names ies. W he co mpan s, mka.mos.ru ie co mpan

LAN GRADP se Enterpri ute of nitar y it U e at St ign Inst ow" es D d h an Mosc "Researc eral Plan of the Gen

plan

an Ch ai rm U De pu ty PM Fi rs t ct or of l Di re Ge ne ra oe kt 2" "M os pr

of Ma yo r De pu ty n de ve lo on ur ba ns tr uc t an d co

it ec tu r Ar ch en t te e fo ve lo pm Co mm it ba n De an d Ur

y separatl Su bo rd

er ic mast Strateg

r th e me nt fo rr it or ie s De pa rt Te of Ne w pm en t lo ve De

ons, permissi nvelopes). (e , g iving cuments ons for plots PZU. o d g e G Signin gulati g on re t gets th decid in e an architec er th m ro F

me nt of De pa rt lo pm en t De ve Ur ba n

shown

ow of Mo sc Ma yo r t lo pm en De pu ty al de ve on so ci

ow of Mo sc Ma yo r ty De pu ty pr op er on th e ti on s nd re la an d la

Exposures

Exposure 1: Lines of New Life

the area.

Fig. 02: Lines of New Life near Ivanteevka, the Moscow region

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

1

Russian regarded the fast pace of

and special conditions of the land located within power lines were allocated to those engaged in

5

6

7

8

collision of affected parties needs to be

An electrical grid is now in the hands of private

Fig. 06: Evolution of settlements under electricity power lines in Moscow Oblast

Registered plots for gardening, the cadastral map of Moscow Oblast Plots missing on the cadastral map of Moscow Oblast A chapel and commercial amenities of the area Additional Used Paths

0m

100m

200m

Fig. 03: Settlement under electricity power lines near Ivanteevka, Moscow Oblast

Eletricity pylons Electricity lines Sanitary zone

0m

100m

200m

Fig. 04: The sanitary zone around electricity power lines (the same place as Fig. 03)

2

1

Moscow

2

Vladimir Oblast

0m

1km

2km

5km

1 Fig. 05: Settlement under electricity power lines, Moscow Oblast, North-West

16

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Fig. 07: Dacha settlements under electricity pylons near Ivanteevka, Moscow Oblast

Fig. 08: Reconstructed dacha under electricity pylons near Ivanteevka, Moscow Oblast

19

dachas have since been privatised.

Fig.10 - Modernisation and redevelopment - an expression of Old Strogino, Moscow.

Source: Google Map

the desires of their owners.

As one of few landscapes in the Moscow Oblast

of cohabitation.

Fig.11 - Chenonceau - Agrarov Estate, Moscow Source: www.agalarovestate.com/ru/

celebrities and living abroad set the trend of

18

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

the shoes of a privileged foreigner.

civilisation.

Fig.12 - New form of civilisation, Agrarov Estate, Moscow Source: www.agalarovestate.com/ru/

In

Fig.14 - Migrant worker’s village on a construction site of new residential development, Kommunarka, Moscow.

In Moscow and the Moscow The rapid

or in

And so is the as a waiting period.

stores in the villages are dependent on the for the period of its transition.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

planned intentions and a higher level of

existed on the land are being restored and re-

Fig.15 - New residential development on the edge between urban and rural, Kommunarka, Moscow. Source: Google Earth

of a new intelligent balance between what we

Edge of a City.

Fig. 16 - S.Holl, Spiroid Sector, Architectural Press, 1996

Princeton

Exposure 04 - Worker’s Villages, Rural Commuters and Urbanised Countryside

Fig. 17 - Mixed-use building structures at the edge of the city connect urban and rural landscapes, while maintaining a borderline between both. The physical border has become a place of communication between two different patterns.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Exposure 03 Gated Communities and Inverted Tourism

principle of connectedness to the new post-

Inverse Tourism Exposure 04 Worker’s Villages, Rural Commuters and Urbanised Countryside). has an even longer tradition then gated

and degradation into celebration and preservation.

Fig. 18 - An entrance to a gated estate attracting commercial amenities and informal settlements to settle outside the gate.

landscape.

50

51

In the scale of dacha

3

1

1

2

2

1 3 2

2

1 1

3

1

Fig. 19 - Allotment gardents in the middle of other city functions, Basel, Switzerland, are taken as a template for the development of the Moscow Oblast. Carefully planned residences (2), commercial amenities and services (3) in close proximity to dacha settlements (1) bring vital elements of the city to dachas and through that, reintroduce many missing values. Where in Basel, the allotment gardens are

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

(Re)Assembled City

different design forces. A precise explanation of

detectable in the Moscow Oblast.

and read these patterns needs to be delivered.

that needs to be addressed.

Fig.20 - The Manual for (Re)Assembled City. How to read emerging patterns of cohabitation in the Moscow Region?

WATERWAYS as a source for new connections Anna Kaydanovskaya

St. Peterburg Baltic sea

White sea

200

400

Belomorskobaltiisky canal

Volga Moscow canal

Moscow

100

300

500

Moskva

Oka

Vyatka Volga Kama

Sea of Asov

Volga Belaya

Don

Caspian sea Black sea

Dacha belts around Moscow and St Petersburg.

Source: Tatiana Nefedova (presentation for Strelka), 2013 Legend: - nearest dachas - avarage remote dachas - remote dachas - city

26

The map shows the area occupied by existing dachas that belong to people permanently living in Moscow and in St Petersburg. It shows the abnormal size of the phenomenon.

People are ready to move 600 km one way from the city to their dachas each summer, 300 km each weekend and 100 km every day.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

INTRODUCTION Today, around 40m Russians own a plot of land, a cottage in a village or a shed in a garden; many more millions just rent a place in the countryside during the summer.

Every Russian city and town — even those in the far North — has a wide belt of individual dwellings that expands according to the old extensive logic of rough urbanisation, swallowing more nature and more land every year. This is a result of an old tradition in That means all these people use their dachas Density map during winter weekdays

(or its equivalents) temporarily as an (usually in a micro-rayon) is a way of life for the majority of the Moscow agglomeration (and in Russia in general). Every day, people spend hours commuting to bring their children to school or kindergarten, and other unique elements of infrastructure concentrated in the city. This connection seemed to me the weakest point. The system of transportation makes this unique living

Density map during summer weekends

people/km2 30000 10000 3000 1000 300 100 30

Seasonal migration is approximately 5 million people: *average density in Moscow during winter weekdays is 10,000 people/km2 (9m people in general) *average density in Moscow during summer weekends is 40,000 people/km2 (14m people) Source: A.I. Treivish, research 2010

At the moment there are: 6,200 rural settlements; 12,000 garden and dacha settlements; and 1,000 cottage settlements (only 320 of them inhabited) in the Moscow Oblast. 36 per cent are owned by Muscovites and 30 per cent by citizens of Moscow Oblast.

Source: Tatiana Nefedova (presentation for Strelka), 2013

The amount of people moving every day is constantly increasing, so the problem, paradoxically supported by the current system of development, gains new scale.

At the moment we can talk about several millions moving back and forth using the system of connection that was established for a city with completely different rules and conditions. The system simply does not work for the present situation, but people

for the existing pattern. They take physical space, they need to be planned, designed and built, private cars can be considered as indoor space; people meet on roads and have to spend a lot of time there during

space in Dachaland, and are sometimes the only reason for meetings (especially when dacha inhabitants need to repair one).

All these factors brought me to the idea that systems of transportation are the key its short-lived use. components of the current pattern, and that On the other hand, roads are the third place it is necessary to research in all its meanings.

Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

27

ROADS MAP

50 km Legend: - highway - trunk road - primary road - secondary road - towns - dachas, cottage settlements and villages

The system of roads in the Moscow Oblast (outside the city) consists of 10 radial roads connected by three main rings: MKAD, which divides Moscow from its commuter belt; Betonka 1 (concrete ring road 1) and during the 1960s and used legally by civic transport only since 1990. >1km/km2 in Moscow and <0,1km/km2 close to the border of the region. The jams are concentrated around Moscow and disappear towards the periphery, depending on the time, day and season. The quality of road surface also varies from well paved and systematically repaired ways in the city centre, to dirt roads (or broken asphalt) around the outer regions.

28

On the scale of Russia it is even more visible that all roads are concentrated in Moscow. The whole eastern part of Russia is connected with Europe through Moscow and Moscow Oblast

Density of roads (density of people): - 0,54 km/km2 (650 p/km2) - 0,45 km/km2 (200 p/km2) - 0,21 km/km2 (90 p/km2) - 0,15 km/km2 (70 p/km2)

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

RAILWAYS MAP

50 km Legend: - Moscow railway - Oktyabrskaya railway - lines without electricity - towns - dachas, cottage settlements and villages

As we can see the railway system has a very similar structure and almost coincides with the network of roads. It also consists on radial roads (10 Moscow railway

The whole network of railways is connected in Moscow, that gives a huge additional load on the existing overused system inside the region.

rings (one is inside the city and connects all main railway stations, the second one is in MO located from 25 to 75 km from MKAD).

Except regional connections, the Moscow railway brings people to the three main international airports from the city centre and back.

Due to extremely crowded and overused surface transport, people use railways to move from the nearest periphery to the city.

So now the load on the system is several times higher than when it was planned many decades ago.

Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

29

AIRWAYS MAP

50 km Legend: - international airport - airport - aerodrome - airschool

Airways in the Moscow Oblast are not considered as internal communication, but and railways. Three main international

Additional connections Helipad map:

Domodedovo and Vnukovo, are becoming more and more popular. They are connected to the city by roads and railways, increasing carriages.

On closer inspection, there appeared to be 28 different places to land a plane, aerodrome) to major international airports that serve several thousand people per hour.

The main part of these airplaces is used by military services and they are not available to the public, while another part is used by

30

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

WATERWAYS MAP

50 km Legend: - existing navigation - whole water system - towns - dachas, cottage settlements and villages

The existing system of navigation consists of: Moscow river, Moscow canal, Oka river and it is carried from mid-April to mid-November. During the winter most of the ships are stored in Nagatinskaya

St.Peterburg

Moscow region

Moscow

The system of navigtion, western part of Russia.

Moscow is connected with White Black Baltic Caspian Sea of Azov

There are two main river stations: Northern and Southern (Kolomenskoe), three river ports inside Moscow: Northern (Rechnoy vokzal), Southern (Pechatniki) and Western Serpukhov and Kolomna (both Oka river).

Public transport was working 1923â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2006, now it has only recreational function.

Cruises cover three separated zones and are part of Moscow Canal.

The system of rivers in MO is part of a bigger water structure, which connects the whole western part of Russia.

Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

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SUMMARY

Inside systems of connection double each other

of urbanisation

After studying the systems of communication, the most visible thing is its strong orientation to Moscow; in other words, its extreme centralisation. Even in the scale of Russia, everything is connected to Moscow and operates through Moscow Oblast. The most centrally oriented are the systems of inside connection (there are only two of four): roads and railways. These two systems double each other, which makes the logic of development even more visible.

This extreme centralisation is increasing. The region is mostly occupied by new construction sites, producing similar housing blocks or cottage settlements without including necessary public infrastructure. The closer to Moscow, the bigger the areas of development. The result is that a constantly growing amount of people have to move to the city (and back) to get a job or/and most of necessary services. The regularities show unhealthy processes going on inside the new roads â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the problem is more complex. development of roads depends on new magnet points â&#x20AC;&#x201D; new towns developing as close to the capital as is currently possible.

Urbanisation is spreading along existing roads and railways. Fingers of urbanisation grow from the centre (Moscow) along these transportation rays. Furthermore, the system of roads is developing only where it is needed, so it coincides with these areas of new housing formations. The systems are other, so their current direction can only reinforce existing problems.

32

System of rivers follows another logic

Within this context, waterways have very promising potential. It is a system based on landscape, it is decentralised but still has a connection with the regularity of settlements.

step does not break the logic of an increasing problem, but works inside it. Problems will not be solved by adding new transportation rivers overcrowded and more contaminated.

We would lose more than would be achieved. but the function of this connection is not clear. Rivers have particular qualities: slow direction) and seasonal cycles that coincide with the use of dachas. This vagueness shows the necessity to research rivers in the broader context of MO. All this brought me back to my thoughts about communication routes as a physical space, although a very uncomfortable one considering its ecology, quality and the constant feeling of wasted time. Paradoxically, people do not notice them as important part of their life on the way to somewhere.

The situation with water is the opposite: this space is extremely attractive. A river is a solid piece of nature, which creates a different (or alternative) atmosphere.

We may dream about having a recreational zone that connects the whole region, but although we do not notice it, we have it.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

WATERWAYS

river through the canal (14m3 was drinking Looking at the maps of urban and rural water that supplied Muscovites at home), settlements, it is easy to see where the main but in the 1930s, to keep it as just a water roads are supposed to be. The pattern is supply was too modest an ambition. clear: the closer to a road, the more inhab- Propaganda promoted it as a link between ited the area. All big towns are connected to the Soviet Palace, London and New York. roads and surrounded by the gradient from It is part of our heritage that is not known the nearest dachas (or its equivalents) to about and not maintained. At present, the abandoned villages. system is used to its minimum capacity, and The situation with water is completely differeverything that could be abandoned does not function any more. Waterways are only to see on the pattern of settlements where the used for freights and cruises, although there water connection goes. It is different from place to place, but there is a logic behind it. The infrastructure is partly there, but not used.

Historically, civilisations grouped around the water as a source of life â&#x20AC;&#x201D; at that time, rivers Public transport: Since 1923, 70 motor boats were the main transportation routes. Now holding from 40 to 100 passengers each this logic does not work, but we can still were used for public transportation in Mostrace it: historical parts of towns are located cow. During the 1960s, new lines were close to water (it opens potential for tourism added inside and outside the city using of a new kind), as well as old villages, which hydrofoils. In time, the relaxed rhythm of are abandoned or replaced by dachas (the water transport became too different from trend was typical for 80-90th). the tempo of a fast-developing city, so since The second regularity appeared during the 2006, boats remain recreational. The whole industrial era: water was one of the most system was reduced to several cruises, which important raw materials for factories, and are many times more expensive than public transport and make water less available. rivers. These industries formed towns around them, or were placed into the existing Quality: Although the quality of water in the settlements with the required conditions.

Moscow Oblast is controlled, the rivers are Now the towns are developed following extremely contaminated. Apart from maps inertia, on the other hand these factories and statistics about pollution, there are separate water from the residential areas. simple facts that show it: for example, there At present, people see the value of water are only 20 spots per 50,000 km2 where as a place perfect for recreation, so it is occupied by elite dachas. This makes access research showed that water after the city does not freeze in winter any more. the waterfront becomes more inhabited.

Availability: People do not have easy access History: The Moscowâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Volga canal is a to water for several reasons: man-made waterway 126 km long, which > access to water is commercialised/not was built in 1938 by 200,000 prisoners from Dmitlag (Dmitrov). During the period of > water is extremely contaminated/not construction (14 Sept 1932 until 31 January available for swimming 1938), 22,842 people died. > riverbanks are illegally occupied by elite This is a project comparible to Moscow dachas and cottage settlements Metro in its scale, ambition, the expenditure > industry belt makes the majority of water of effort it took to create it and its importance. inaccessible At present, the capital receives every second > water is separated from the city by roads 30 cubic meters of water from the Volga and stone quays make contact impossible Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

33

PROJECT

Outboard Motors Propel Floating Theatre in Holland

Floating Church of Nikolay Chudotvorets in Russia

idea:

PEOPLE >>>>>>> PLACES PROJECT:

PLACES >>>>>>> PEOPLE

The most important point of the project is an attempt to interrupt the extreme concentration of all city attractions in Moscow, and to increase the density and size of the dependent belt around. As long as the system is supported, there is no chance to solve ever-growing problems of transportation within the region.

The project is mostly based on the idea that

school hospital ambulance local shop shopping centre local disco bar internet cafe amusement park local museum swimming pool theatre zoo beach casino bakery etc.

+ BOAT

of activities along the system of waterways.

Through the connection of small settlements, the amount of people required for each kind of public building is achieved, so they can be grouped into independent islands without an acute need to go to the city.

It works differently for periphery. Small villages are historically located along the rivers, but they are almost inaccessible for cars, because of the quality of local

move inside the region. Other words, it is easier to bring a building to people than it is for emergencies, such as an ambulance to bring people to a particular place or Of course, the system is very adaptable for the areas far away from Moscow, simply provide necessary infrastructure to places because the closer to the city, the higher the where it is needed. density. On the other hand, the lack of diverse infrastructure around Moscow is infrastructure are going to distribute a variety growing.

34

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

SCALE 1. WATER MAP Dubna

Moscow Canal

Ruza

Istra Klyazma

Moscow Moscow Voskresensk

Nara

Kolomna Oka

Osetr

Legend: - rivers and water reservoares - towns - dachas, cottege settlementa and villages - case study

This map shows a proposed system of water connection, based on the biggest rivers of the region that are already connected to each other. The network includes the Moscow River linking the western and the eastern borders, Moscow Canal, and the following rivers: Volga, Oka, Klyazma, Ruza, Istra, Osetr, Nara, Dubna and water reservoires: (Rublevskoe), r. Istra â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Istrinskoe, r. Ruza â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ruzskoe, Ozerninskoe; Moscow Canal: Ikshinskoe, Klyazminskoe (Pirogovskoe), Pyalovskoe, Himkinskoe, Uchinskoe, Pestovskoe.

This new system includes more riverways,

pattern connecting different types of environment. Due to the diversity of enough to provide navigation for middlecombinations of these elements, each area needs its own project. boats.

These components can be grouped into As I said before, the network of rivers a new type of settlement; they are located connects the existing road-based system in a separately, connected by infrastructure and completely different way. Instead of a use common public buildings. These areas gradient from very inhabited towns near the form independent islands that need minimal main communication routes to the small and and rare connection to centres of almost abandoned villages on the periphery, urbanisation. the network of waterways create a new Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

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SCALE 2. CASE STUDY

MALISHEVO DUBROVO

ELINO

BORTNIKOVO

MYACHKOVO

PESKI AIRDROME SEVERKA

CHERKIZOVO

KONEV BOR

SEVERSKOE

BAKUNINO

Legend:

connected together to get basic infrastructure) - lines of further connection (bigger settlements are attached to these new formations, providing the amount

500m

36

1 km

2 km Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

CONCLUSIONS The case (adaptation to the terrain): This area is located between Voskresrnsk and Kolomna â&#x20AC;&#x201D; two well developed (in context of Russia) and inhabited towns. The case shows several villages and dacha settlements that can be connected into one system using common infrastructure. All these places are different, but it is possible to classify them: very small villages without basic infrastructure (such as Dubrovo, Malishevo, Severscoe, Konev bor); independent, rather big settlements (Peski, Cherkizovo, Bakunino); and other in-between types.

Step 1: Small villages can be grouped to have their independent basic infrastructure (school, kindergarden, ambulance).

Step 2: Small villages can be grouped together with big settlements to gain developed commercial infrastructure (cafe, shop, bakery, disco bar, cinema).

Step 3: All settlements can be grouped into structure (museum, theatre, zoo, casino).

Using this principle each small settlement becomes a part of an independent system, and can afford all spectrum of public infrastructure.

Apart from the goals I want to achieve through this project, there are consequences that are interesting to mention. This new type of infrastructure, constantly moving from one place to another, creates a new timetable, which changes lifestyle that was established and accustomed to during the Industrial era.

does not work for these new formations.

During the Industrial era, the majority of people were working class. All had the same eight-hour working day, which started early in the morning. Other services were organised in a way that supported this scheme; for example, lessons in schools and kindergartens started earlier, so people could bring take children there before going to work.

That way of living was uniform throughout the whole country.

At present, the situation is changing, and a new era brings a new schedule of life. People work from home, or in small, independent companies according to their own time organisation. In reality, the old regime does not work, but its inertia still exists. This project consciously breaks it. Everything works within a new schedule, based on a completely different logic that is more complicated and which has to be synchronised on many levels. This moment can be compared with of a particular area, so they would have the Middle Ages, when a linear way of thinkdifferent functions, size and speed. That means the name is not perfect. It is a floating ing in music was replaced by polyphony. element that can be used as a building, as a bus or even as a proper riverbank. has more recreational function: it is a floating platform with a bar or a cafĂŠ with free entrance, or co-working space; or even a tivities and spatial connections because of its constant movement.

The spectrum of functions is wide: secondary school, kindergarten, adult vocational school, local shop or shopping centre, coffee shop, local disco bar, internet cafe, theatre, cinema, amusement park, zoo, casino, etc.

ultimate solution for the problem. The main ambition is an attempt to break out from the habitual mechanism, to look at the problem, to offer something that works differently and opens new questions.

Anna Kaydanovskaya: Waterways as a Source of New Connections

37

38

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

THE OTHER PLACE Polina Fili ppova

Artem Kalashyan

We started to search for another place far from from the relationshi p between man and ownershi p, from the relationshi p between man and governance. But with each new step that deepened our own expert knowledge, came the thought: the current system has nothing to do with human values or selfrealisation, nor with common sense. In a country where free will gets constantly challenged by different obstacles, we propose to find freedom in a place that is yet invisible for everyone and to use this time for the creation and discovery of its potential. We are going to explain what this place is, how we found it, what exists there and what can potentially be.

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

39

GOVERNANCE

BY ARTEM KALASHYAN

The studio is looking for effective models of human co-existence. The result will be a model designed to in the summer happens to remain the debtor. They organise the spontaneous chaos of the metropolis buy raw materials and sell products in other regions: and to reach a compromise at least on a single site that will hopefully expand into other places.

Claims in court and statements to the police do not I’ll take the study of governance system and hole and agree on acceptable terms, and with certain other regulations. In fact, I am allergic to the word skills and desire, can even join the cartel. obvious: how can we bring improvements to a system hoarding a lion’s share of resources? but lost his business. Vladimir Nekrasov, the former

Better than nothing

are hundreds of thousands of examples.

Let’s start. The initial focus is on Moscow and CentraliSation - the capture or release two are closely linked: it is difficult to understand the details without understanding the system as Changes in the fall of the USSR in the early a whole. Indeed, we are well embedded in it as an institute, therefore it must somehow function well. representatives, nothing like the French Revolution.

Democratic innovations proposed by enthusiastic enthusiasts have been rejected, and Vladimir Putin’s Horizontal authority The first thing that catches your eye is the ubiquitous presence of horizontal associations, violating the princi ple of separation of powers. In fact, they are part of the control system despite the fact that they have been declared. Such groups are consolidated around certain financial interests, and the protection of their territories is determined by the size of the hierarchical level of income.

The legacy of the USSR’s unitary system has the branches of government. Those who do not understand the difference keep trying to make futile efforts to make change. The authors of the textbook

have analysed a longer time period, believe that the historical preconditions for democracy in Russia will not emerge during the next half century, although Any stable company X has strong informal ties in the last edition they were surprised to note faint with the judge, a prosecutor, a representative of the hope and positive change. It seems premature. administration and the head of the superstructure (MVD) of the site location. In the event of a mayors, governors, heads of administrations, informal conflict with a company that is not in a union, the interests of the latter are not taken into account: and far from the princi ples of individual freedom. the decisions taken within the framework of informal With separate kingdoms, it is the return to an old era. consultations within the group, and only broadcast through specialised bodies: the court, the prosecutor, Putin’s team returned control to the centre, having to the police, the local branch of the executive power. It make the exterior superstructure introduce additional major administrative divisions in the federal district (link) to introduce the institution of pleni potentiary as former employees of the company X. representatives of the President. Personal governors (link) add other parallel structures of control at each territorial level. The notorious vertical power fixing’. The father of my friend raises wheat and pigs in fact been built in parallel, gradually taking away in one of the black soil regions. In the business season of spring, he is required to buy fuel, fertiliser and feed the country was again united unitarily, retaining its formally democratic shell. With this method of taking power, the absolute number of officials increased 40

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

threefold compared with the Soviet Union while and telecommunications. The sunny side is not too reducing the population by almost two. The latter is far away. due to the increase in mortality and emigration.

Most importantly, we can change the purpose of the While living in Moscow, the largest of the centres, we see a deepening political darkness, but the law of of control into a system of enrichment. The Central conservation of energy says: excessive concentration Committee of the Communist Party dreamed of in one place indicates the appearance of a vacuum in control over the territory. Current managers dream the other. The area previously occupied by a uniformly planned administrative system of the Soviet Union of confirming their status and wealth. The area of is systematically released. A political winter in one interest is reduced on the basis of the absence of hemisphere indicates spring on the opposite. Judging by the map, the distance that the modern world sticks to administrative centres. covers is less significant due to high-speed transport

System of governance in Russia: existing horizontal connections between branches indicate closedness of the system for outsiders

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

41

OWNERSHIP

BY POLINA FILIPPOVA

I want to tell you about how the boundaries that appeared in the world a thousand years ago have become the most important institutes of our days.

In order to clarify this topic, which might be found they’re wrong, it would be logical to start from the very essence of land relations.

Brief history of land relations The need for ownershi p appeared as soon as one human encroached on the piece of planet considering by another human as his property.

The emergence of the state and governance brought a new perspective: since the land was formally the main resource of the state and at the same time it didn’t bring any value without a human, there was a crafty solution created: land was sort-of rented out or given away in exchange for payment costs in the face of taxes.

The transitional period from being a feudal to a centralised state increased the need for tax collection: in these terms, tax was a means of sharing the costs of war, of ambitious projects and common good (such as roads) among all the country’s citizens.

As a consequence, there was some order needed in records of land in order to know precisely how much each citizen owned and how much tax he had to pay.

The more territory one owned, the more he or she had to give back to the state. In order to consider land’s difference in quality and fertility, land use categories appeared.

This is all found reflection in the system called Cadastre. The very first cadastres appeared in ancient Rome and then were invented again in the medieval Europe of 15-16th Centuries.

CADASTRE a register of THE public survey of land for the purpose of taxation showing details of ownership and value. registration of land is a major institute of land ownership

Old russian cadastre map accomplicshed during general surveying under queen elizabeth (xvii)

42

Major function of modern cadastre is to show boundaries of the plots and parcels.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Land registration and cadastre As far as boundaries had appeared before any registration, the first systems of measurements (e.g. metes and bounds, used for centuries in England) from a stone rock one mile until the apple tree and then two miles to the North’. The USA brought in its own specific system. Not suffering from lack of territory, on the contrary, the country required land development. A different system was created aimed at firstly forming huge plots of land, then sub-dividing them into smaller ones: this hugely influenced the appearence of American cities.

In Russia, the first significant surveys were held under Peter the Great and then Elizabeth (General Surveying). It was accompanied by many arguments for boundaries and there was a whole list of difficulties between landlords and peasants.

The primary functions of the modern cadastre include, along with taxation purposes, facilitation of the land market increasing its transparency and making information accessible for everyone.

to escape from the city. Actually they hasn’t lost their value even today and maybe also caused the Dacha

Apart from the main reasons that made dachas so popular in Soviet times, it was also about having a citizen, used to relying on air and walls.

restricted around the cities. land repurposing Talking about practical issues of Russian reality, I can’t ski p the curious process of land repurposing. There are certain restrictions of land use in the face of land In order to repurpose land one has to go through a complicated process.

To find out what is generally permitted you have to get make sure that there isn’t any archeologically valuable stuff and that you won’t be obliged to build a new electric plant (which costs more than all your projects).

in Russia. start it. But please stop for a while. You have to make the circle again and it’s going to last longer than last time. The problem is not even that the approval period

OWNERSHIP IN RUSSIA The relationshi p with ownershi p is painful in Russia.

slightest mistake in your documents they will be returned of communal ownershi p, but then 1993 came and again (the scheme is given on the picture below). drastically changed the whole picture: the notion of Of course, that is not how business is done, so you hire a private ownershi p was adopted again. The country literally divided all that was communal before between mediator who may guarantee (not reduce) the period of approval, and finally it happens.

During Soviet times, when people couldn’t fully implement their feelings of ownershi p in their apartments, they rented out dachas from the government, which bore the brunt of people’s desire to create. Dacha was a partial freedom, a possibility

30days

data shows that agricultural land in Moscow region is shrinking. The conclusions that can be drawn out of this are elaborated upon in the next chapter.

30days

agricultural

2000 2007

30days

30days

30days

settlement 30days

2000 2007

30days

Scheme of land repurposing: list of departments an owner has to go through in order to change land category

Dynamics of land use types in Moscow Oblast: agricultural land shrinking while settlement lands grow

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

43

EMERGENCE OF THE VOIDS

BY POLINA FILIPPOVA AND ARTEM KALASHYAN

Lack of ownership

Lack of governance

The main thing about the land repurposing mentioned above is that despite being complicated, this process and the restrictions serving as a base for it were not initially adopted by chance. Land category is a regulation primarily aimed to balance land where people can live, land where they can grow food, land of forests, water, etc. So what changes in the picture when so much reporposing happens?

Centralisation policy pursued during Putinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s era resulted in a disproportion in appearance of a governance system.

After the collapse of the USSR, migration from villages and small towns to bigger towns and cities has become common. It has mostly influenced bigger cities since they had a lower loss of population. As a result, lots of housing was demanded and built accordingly causing huge repurposing of agricultural land around cities in order to create space for new construction.

It also caused a decrease in food production around Moscow: there is not economic sense to do low marginal businesses on such expensive land. At the same time, whilst agricultural land around centres was shrinking, some places became completely abandoned,.

Evenly spreaded before (government system in USSR was focused on ubiqitous spread of governmental bodies, covering all layers: from a federal region to a small village), the power started to concentrate in the centres at all levels: from regional to federal (schemes on the right page).

It left the lowest part of the system empty, causing the appearance the voids at the level of munici pal entities. Outflow of population from non-centrally located munici palities also added to the general decay of governance: a lack of people to govern means a lower budget and, as a consequence, lower interest.

Some munici palities merged together and the result of that process was a shift of a regional centre towards a bigger one: actually taking the centre away from this weak munici pality, making it even more empty.

I tried to reflect this process on the images below and marked voids of ownershi p white. What is remarkable about this void is that it still possess particular intangible resources such as land of settlement ready for construction or any other projects.

Centre-directed migration processes happening after 1991 left much settlement space empty

44

Disharmony of migration resulted in overcrowded centres with voids around them

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

The government system in the USSR and in the 1990s was focused on ubiqitous spread of governmental bodies, covering all layers: from a federal region to a small village

Centralisation of power after 2000: a new division into federal districts was adopted in order to diminish the power of local governance: this served as one of the reasons for the centralisation of the whole system

overlapping: the void Two types of voids have appeared: one in governance, which we have defined as places where a weak presence of current power can serve a platform for a new sort of self-governance; and the others are voids but left by people.

It turned out that both researches have merged together in these voids: places where a lack of ownershi p have caused or intersected a lack of governance (image on the right). Theoretical and practical correlation between these two directions allows us to say that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uncovered value stored in the places where both are lacking.

We see that a place where control is lifted and at the same time all prerequisites are ready for new creation posseses new potential.

Overlapping of the voids: Centralization of governance and depopulation of the settlements.

possibility of influence or self-governance, means the presence of governmental obligations: social help and federal programmes should be available as soon as the first person makes a registration in this place.

parameters of the void In order to create anything new, one should have clear image of what he or she posseses.

The most interesting resource of the void we explore is intangible.

As far as it used to be inhabited and governed previously there is a legitimate base already. One shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t underestimate this asset in conditions of our country. There is registered land in particular categories: land of settlement ready for construction and one doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to make any repurposing. There is a registered munici pal entity, which apart from the

infrastructure represented by roads, water towers, electric plants and gas pi pes (this set may vary). They reduce a lot costs of entry barriers.

What is common in terms of both ownershi p and governance is that as far as the notion of ownershi p is inextricably connected with the notion of a man as an owner and so having the notion of governance, the outflow of population turned out to be the most important parameter in the overlapping of both.

We are going to explain further and more precisely, is what these voids look like, what resources can be found and what can be done there.

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

45

TYPES OF THE VOID We’ve found different types of voids, abandoned because of different reasons: villages that suffered in a general decay of agriculture, ex-workers or exindustrial settlements built in order to serve as some kind of infrastructure and becoming desolated as soon as their reason for existence expired.

about life outside MKAD, it was thrice more fascinating to reveal that some citizens moved consciously to the village, especially to those abandoned places.

Types of voids

And since our focus here is on Moscow, we went and explored who they are, these pioneers, what made them leave the city and exchange their cozy dacha in suburbia for a chaotic piece of nature far away.

- Abandoned villages - Former military villages - Former workers’ villages

The profiles of some of the pioneers we interviewed are given above. The main questions were about the driving forces that led them away from the city.

They are just ordinary people driven by the common values: a desire to have better air for their children, be closer to nature, eat real food and have possibilities What is happening in those places where people are for self-realisation and control of their life and gone, governance is gone and even ownershi p is gone? surroundings, which they don’t have in the city.

There are different types of life in them. These can be: - illegal migrants We’re not even talking about farmers here: these - special services who have training in the settlement, are people of different occupations, from doctors different illegal groups: nationalists, bandits, etc - homeless people, naturally working schedule and work out of the office.

- former citizens In terms when Muscovites seemingly don’t know Types of inhabitants

Abandoned village

Workers’ village

Ex-military villages

Workers’ village Shadeevo

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

THE pioneers

Mikhail Shlyapnikov Koliotovo, Moscow Oblast

Ekaterina Gritsevich Knyazhevo, Yaroslavl region

Boris Akimov Knyazhevo, Yaroslavl region

Roman Kulikov Tsapushevo, Tver region

Svetlana Kulikova Tsapushevo, Tver region

Occupation before: banker, financier, entrepreneur

Occupation before: doctor

Occupation before: journalist, artist

Occupation before: entrepreneur

Occupation now: entrepreneur (food farmer), farming promoter, artist

Occupation before: student (Masters degree in agriculture)

Occupation now: village entrepreneur and carpenter (wood furniture production)

Occupation now: doctor Occupation now: Farmer and de facto head of the settlement

Occupation now: cheesemaker

common ground Despite being different in occupation and backgrounds, and its economic benefits stay accessible: one might these people have many things in common especially concerning economic models of their existence. that many Muscovites have adopted in suburbia.

They all are: - ex-muscovites - keeping a professional connection with Moscow (clients, markets) - have sufficient income - work and spend most of the time in the village, rarely visiting Moscow - have some occupation directly connected with place where they live

They all are not idealistic followers of utopia, but are very practical and successful people. They have managed to build their schedule in a way that allows them to spend most of their time in the village and visit Moscow less than twice a week.

The places they live in are situated far enough away to have the possibility of buying huge portions of cheap land and gaining fresh air, calmness, nature and other benefits of rural life. At the same time, Moscow

Speaking in terms of voids, the pioneers act as agents of sorts who choose the weakest places in the country, obtain them cheap and get the opportunity to create changes.

Potentially, a pioneer can be a citizen who desires to create, to make his own choices, to take responsibility of his life and its surroundings. Those who want to change the proportion existing in the city between creation and struggle with the obstacles: documents, certificates, officials, regulations.

Previously, interaction between people living in one village made their life more significantly easy than the physical benefits of the place, its location in relation to natural resources and other factors. That is also why outflow of people caused a snowball effect.

back: one pulling another after him.

The more people gather together, the less risks a newcomer carries both psychologically and economically. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why presence of pioneers significantly adds value to a place.

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

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PORTRAIT OF THE VOID THE NEW VILLAGE

Places that attracted the pioneers: what do they look like? What is this void and what are its basic parameters?

- Absence of inhabitance (lack of ownershi p) - Lack or weakness of munici pal governance (lack of governance) At the same time the place used to be inhabited before and it posseses all necessary legislative bases.

So we wondered whether it is possible to build a selfgoverned, independent system within an existing one, using these voids as places where nobodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interests can be disturbing and existing infrastructure can reduce entry barriers in terms of costs, registration, legal status and land.

Self-governance Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s potential for self-governance and active actions that one can barely imagine in a city.

It can either be performed in the form of local elections (where a prominent local can easily be elected) or in

Resources As a first step regarding the assets of the void, we made a list of the resources which can be found there: - Land plots purposed for settlement - Agricultural land owned by villagers or local administration in form of pies - Abandoned collective farms with buildings and engineering infrastructure - Abandoned houses in satisfactory condition - Cheap massive land parcels Infrastructure: - Paved road - Electricity lines or its remains (poles and substations in a short distance) - Gas, water, sewage

the state: - Snow cleaning during winter - Electricity and gas supply (may be in the form of compensation)

by people over the territory where they live.

Abandoned water tower

House in a satisfactory condition in Vasilievo

Abandoned church

Land plot with a house

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

new model of living Regarding intersections of the pioneers and our voids EXISTING pattern

alternative pattern

apartment

MOSCOW

dacha

apartment

0.06 Ha

MOSCOW

There is different relationshi p with time spent on work, dachas and traffic, there is a different lifestyle and a different control of the surrounding environment.

new village

0,5 up to 200 Ha

In the image, there’s a comparison between traditional model apartment + dacha, and the alternative one.

DISTANCE TO MOSCOW

differences 1

2

TIME SPENT IN THE CITY (%)

80%

TIME IN THE COUNTRYSIDE (%) WORKING AT HOME (%)

80%

20%

80%

WORKING IN THE OFFICE (%)

80%

TIME IN TRAFFIC (HOURS/WEEK)

14*

Among the important factors in how this model has become possible are the development of transport and technology: on the one hand, people are technically able to reduce office visits, on the other there are new means of transport, such as the Sapsan

20%

20%

DISTANCE TO MOSCOW

20% 8*

*TIME IS CALCULATED 1) according to moscow minister of transport maxim liksutov http://www.itar-tass.com/c15/752929.html 2) according to interviews

allowing people to go there and back in one day (on at least a few times per week basis)

Scheme of models of living: comparison of existing pattern and new pattern

PERSONAL CONTROL overregulated city and personal control DISTANCE TO MOSCOW

DISTANCE TO MOSCOW

dacha COOPERATIVE 0,5 up to 200 Ha dacha

FULL CONTROL

SHARED CONTROL 1

: 200-500

SHARED CONTROL MUNICIPAL DISTRICT

MUNICIPAL DISTRICT

1

: 5000-50000

Scheme of personal influence: comparison of dacha and new village

And here we approach the question of regulations in the city and city surroundings.

In a dacha you have full control and ownershi p only of your package and shared co-operative governance

settlement of Tver region it costs as little as € acre) the land plot in property can be a lot bigger

There’s also formally shared governance at the level

order to prove potential of activism we explored side factors indicating its growth in the city such as

barely have any influence.

growth of communities of property owners, growth of protest activity, rise of internet services supporting partici pation in governance etc.

But when we talk about the village, that is a place

landlord on a local scale.

number of stakeholders is low and you can have more The system of the city is planned in such a way that a influence at the level of munici pality, too. Moreover, in person is not supposed to do any active independent as far as land is extremely cheap (e.g. in Bogatkovo Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

49

Yaroslavl 3199 abandoned villages

Tver 4589 abandoned villages

Moscow 1080

<Smolensk 2208

Vladimir 726 abandoned villages

abandoned villages

abandoned villages

Ryazan 815

Kaluga 1195

abandoned villages

abandoned villages

Tula 1120 abandoned villages

= 100 abandoned villages

0

50

10

20

30

40

50

100 km

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

PROPOSAL

ALTERNATIVE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT 1 Identification of potential places 2 Implementation of pioneers’ experience 3 Consolidation of audience potentially interested in this type of territorial development Potential of the void Changing the perspective and regarding a place where everyone sees only decline and emptiness as powerful voids, we propose criteria and solutions to find and evaluate potential areas and to find people who already do something outside the city.

The practice of living in Russia shows that successful development of anything is a reason for unfriendly interests. Based on the intersection of the voids and pioneers, a network of communication should be developed. This network will not only share

using these voids as places where nobody’s interests can disturb and existing infrastructure can reduce entry barriers in terms of costs, registration, legal status and land.

The existing legislation provides a canvas for creating your own environment, the void parameters provide freedom to complete the project and there is some time to prepare it and to protect until they become visible for everyone.

Value of the programme

1 Suggestion of alternative pattern protection, because communities are better at fighting The city provides a certain set of scenarios for their property than an individual. dacha and traffic jams in between. The alternative scenario as another model is needed to provide why would it work? a means of choice that few people actually have at the moment.

Why would government and private investors be interested?

2 Economic sense for society: Recentralisation of wealth At first, this approach facilitates development of villages by means of private investors and individuals. Since our country is centralised in terms of economy and finance, this approach allows to redistribute Then, it may also reduce inefficient spendings on wealth from centre to peri phery. low-inhabited territories (through government obligations). At the moment, the Government has to 3 Economic sense for individual: low risk provide basic services (such as road cleaning and investments electricity provision), even to a single babushka in an Since land is extremely cheap in the peri phery it abandoned village, and this is very inefficient. is affordable for many people who can’t afford desirable life in the city. Moreover, it is low-risk We’ve talked to experts in order to understand investment which may pay off significantly in future. the business processes behind development. Briefly, the alternative approach we propose is slower, it 4 Emergence of sources for growing of takes more time, but it is more sustainable. On civic society this scale, some developers are already working The combination of legal freedom and interested people in the voids may lead to the emergence of munici pality and becoming almost its owners. alternative governance models.

They invest relatively small amounts of money and The image on the left illustrates the scale experiment with non-traditional (for Russia) longof abandonment in regions adjoining Moscow. after five or seven years, land value will grow as these areas will become closer to expanding Moscow. of abandoned villages is both promising and scary: the issue of selection comes to the scene. In the next So we wondered whether it’s possible to build a self- pages the methodology of place identification will be described. governed, independent system within existing one, Amount of bandoned villages in regions adjoining Moscow. Source: aggregated data from rosstat.ru

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

51

PRINCIPLES OF THE VOID 1 Connected but remote 2 Existing but not governed 3 Empty but reviving 4 Selected but abandoned

Connected but remote Following factors of economic connection to the centre, the void should be accessible: it is no further there for business and be back within one day. developers and any external users, to prevent abuse of the results of territorial development and disturbance of inhabitance, the last section of the road to a place should be hardly accessible: bad through for the dwellers but make the whole area seem unattractive.

Existing but not governed In our realmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conditions, we clearly understand that the absence of necessity to deal with governmental bodies (for any issues of legislation) increases the probability of a conceived project to happen.

That is why a powerful void should already possess a legal status and belong to a munici pal entity. At the same time, this entity must be weak which means it should conform to at least one of certain criteria: be abandoned in terms of people, underfinanced in terms of budget and/or consist of more than one merged munici pality as a sign of abandonment and physical shift of governance.

Empty but reviving The historically economic model of the peasants was hugely reliant on the community: there was

Selected but abandoned Since ancient times, people didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t choose places randomly. In order to exclude places founded in order to serve industry or as a governmental directive, which was common during Soviet times, we set a few criteria, and at least one of them should be performed: - Presence of the settlements, whose population years*, as evidence of decline.

- There is, or is used to be, a monumental bulding of cultural or religious purpose built before 1917**, as a proof of informed choice and desire to live in the area permanently, regardless of the state and industry directives.

- The existence of archaeological remains*** or traces of ancient settlements that existed here more of non-random selection of the site.

inclusion in the modern system of the munici pal division, the presence on the cards. **After 1917, the construction of cultural and religious purposes was a matter of governmental initiative. ***Based on the statement that sites for living were not chosen randomly. ****According to archaeological data, the most recent settlements belong to the 17th Century.

equi pment. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why first people leaving the village in search of a better life were immediately followed by the rest: the less inhabitants stay the harder their life becomes. It explains also why we include the presence of pioneers around the place as a huge positive addition to the void ranking: every newcomer has lower entry barriers and brings something into community.

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

METHODOLOGY

HOW TO IDENTIFY A POWERFUL VOID 1 Princi ples of the void 2 Ranking calculation based on system of parameters

a powerful void

The abandoned village here is defined as a village with

Not all the voids are powerful, some of the places are 3 inhabitants. abandoned for a reason: due to pollution, bad location, The first step is made according to aggregated data about abandonement. a potential place from a weak one?

We developed a methodology based on two parts: the Tver region has the highest rate of abandoned first is the basic princi ples a place should correspond to and the second is a system of parameters allowing Then we have to focus on a munici pal district.

Torzhok is the least inhabited district from those one to calculate a rating and get a final figure corresponding to the princi ple of transport availability describing the relative value of the place.

When we consider identification processes we primarily follow the notion of a potential territory as a place where the minimum amount of external interests (low Bogatkovo munici pal settlement risk) intersect with the maximum possible amount of third least inhabited in the district. resources, allowing the decrease in entry costs.

Despite being small in population, the first two districts on the list (Tveretsky and Tredubsky) do not possess abandoned villages and the dynamics of identification abandonment is lower.

Basing on our research, experts’ opinion and insights obtained in field tri ps, we framed the princi ples of such The final stage of the first step is analysis of a place and developed a rating system, which allows us demographic dynamics in the abandoned villages of to evaluate a territory by calculating a system of weights Bogatkovo. of different criteria, merging in co-efficient potential.

As a result of the first step of selection, Vasilievo village was selected and analysed according to criteria.

Assuming that developers are oriented towards shortterm income, regardless of the project’s impact, the approach we used in developing the princi ples was free from developers’ interests.

As centralisation has sucked the juice out of this territory, they are consequently situated at the outposts, far from the centre. The primary purpose of selection was to balance access to the centre’s economy and maintain sufficient remoteness: that’s how the first princi ple was framed.

All princi ples are given and analysed on the left page. process To give an overview of the identification process let’s see how the system works on an example: selection of an abandoned village.

Part of a spreadsheet used for calculation of parameters

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

53

meaning of dynamics Dynamics shows how significant the amount of people leaving the settlement was in the last decade.

Why that is important? Territories abandoned recently still possess houses, roads and infrastructure in reduce the costs of renewal and construction.

Population of the villages of Bogatkovo in 1996, 2002 and 2008.

Village with high dynamics (e.g. the one which decreased in population from 32 to two ) is more valuable as far as it posseses more resources in satisfactory conditions, compared to the village with lower dynamics (e.g. the one which decreased in population from 10 to 0)

Analysing the municipal form of Bygatkovo we found out that it is the result of the mergence that happened in 2005: the centre of one district (1) shifted to the centre of second district (2) weakening the influence of a municipal head (the more territory, the more vague the situation is).

agricultural

The assumption was that the void possesses certain features and land use type was one of them: however the cadaster doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have this information.

In order to obtain information about land use types, one can go to the municipality and make a request: the land of the abandoned village Vasilievo is, in fact, land of settlement

Map of all the resources located in Vasilievo Village (infrastructural objects, houses, roads, settlement land)

Example of existing infrastructure in Vasilievo: road in good condition, abandoned house

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

We’ve analysed the village from the perspective of governance and land use typology in order to make sure our assumptions were right.

The assumptions we made at the stage of hypothesis turned out to be true as soon as went to the field (images on the left side). That adds a practical argument to the general picture and weight to the thought that the project as a whole is possible.

the criteria. Another layer is about pioneers.

This website would serve a platform for gathering data about the voids and about existing pioneers, sharing of their experiences, facilitation of moving out from the cities and the promotion of the idea that something might happen outside the city.

Application of our rating method to Vasilievo resulted potential of the place.

As far all the process was gone through manually, we allowing to crowd-source data about the voids and calculate ratings.

The major feature of the site will be a rating system of potential territory. A map will be based on munici pal division in order to facilate understanding of which federal subject is weaker and corresponds with

approximate layout of the site: based on the map of municipal division it aggregates data about the voids and pioneers

CONCLUSION

WHY DO WE BELIEVE IT IS IMPORTANT? We want to show with our project that there’s a possible alternative, that your free will can be directed towards your life, towards the environment you live in and the way of life you choose.

The void we speak about is a place where nobody’s interests can disturb and as a consequence the risk and entry barriers are minimum.

Beginning from deserted areas with rusty houses, in

We do not claim that city life is bad or unbearable but we pay attention at some distinctive features and constraints of it and propose an alternative scenario, which may be due in some way to a lack of consumer comfort, but bring in different values and endless potential for creation.

What we propose is an experiment aimed to create your own world. The existing system seems to be unbreakable: it can’t be overcome and it posseses huge inertia.

A smart person understands that the most clever way to struggle with a system of this scale is to grow

according to your sketches.

That is pro-active way of making things and the results will follow sooner than one may expect.

Our story is beautiful also because of its simplicity: it tells that a drop of courage and shifted perspective can help to approach your dream from a different angle.

The most important thing is that we believe that life outside the city is possible and moreover it can be attractive and serve a great opportunity for every man constrained by the city to break free.

is a place for that.

Polina Filippova, Artem Kalashyan: The Other Place

55

56

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

SECOND MIASMA MANIFESTO

We are still living in fear of disease, even though so much effort has been put to remedy our society from it. The cities of today only battle with one part of this enemy within, the infectious disease, even though the danger of the chronic is growing greater than ever. Our vivid image of disease is still the one of the pathogen, the infected body, by the virus or bacteria. We fail to incorporate the notion of our way as a cause. That our ways of living are the ones to blame. And not only ways of living, but the stages to our lives, our environment, our cities. We have been conditioned by the presence of gadgets and quick fixes to think that we, our selves, have the ability to change this path of disease. But the reality is that the surroundings effect on us and the systems that dictate our contemporary lives continue to overpower us. And to change the systems and our life styles has proven to be incredibly difficult and ineffective.

The focus must then be set on our urban environment and well beyond, where the effect of the chronic is the greatest. In them, the codex of unhealth is so far entrenched in the urban fabric that we immediately submit to its rule and follow the guided path set out for us. As soon as you walk out of the door the pre-guided route kicks in; walk to car/metro/buss, sit in traffic jam/stand pressed in crowd, inhale fumes, get stressed, constant white noise washes over you, turn off your conscious mind in hope of some relaxation, arrive to your destination, have a cigarette to dampen stress, have a coffee to pick you up, then have this experience at least once more during the day, for the greater part of your adult life, if you are lucky.

With the realization of these strong forces at work in our lives, we need to start hacking away at the old structures reinforcing the chronic diseases. Perhaps we are now at a turning point in our society and our way of living, where there can be alteration to the built environment as such, to stop the reign of these illnesses over our lives, to change these gridded patterns of cohabitation and to transform the fundamental building blocks of our cities. What must be said, is that this new way of constructing our cities has not yet found a fixed method or shape. It must be the task of visionaries to pursue and inhabit this new place in their minds then start imposing it on our environment.

What is of absolute necessity at this point is to fixate a notion that we can react upon, a unifying target that might be difficult to see, but we feel it's presence around us, every day. We need this target to be able to better understand our situation and what dangers lie within. Our situation is similar to the pressing times of the disease ridden 1850s. They were posed by the incredible danger of communicable disease. For us, it's the overwhelming presence of chronic disease.

In 2008, 7.3 million people died of ischemic heart disease, 6.2 million from stroke or another form of cerebrovascular disease1, and these are only the major killers. In 2011, 64 % of death2, globally, was attributed to chronic disease.

To put that in perspective, Spanish Flu killed between 50 million and 100 million, Bubonic Plague killed between 75 million and 200 million people. If only counting from 2008, chronic disease already reached 75 million dead in 2013, not even accounting for the constant rise death rate or previous mass death from chronic disease. In 2023 the numbers will match, but we can already consider chronic disease our time's Black Death, a new world suffering.

Again, this suffering needs to be articulated by a cause that we can work against, and in the vein of the societal reforms of the 1850 I propose to use the notion of Miasma, a vaporous exhalation (as of a marshy region or of putrescent matter) formerly believed to cause disease. This Second Miasma, that is upon our societies needs to be battled with the same vigour of transforming our cities as in the time of the Haussmann boulevard. It provided cleaner living, we need to provide healthier living.

Filip Mayer: Second Miasma

57

GLOBAL CHRONIC DISEASE ON THE RISE, WHO

CHRONIC /MIASMIC CLASSIFICATIONS Second Miasma, term. All factors reinforcing chronic diseases in our societies in regards to the built environment. The environments lack of, or complete inability to, mitigate chronic diseases.

Chronic disease, term. Chronic disease has been defined as illness that is prolonged in duration, does not often resolve spontaneously, and is rarely cured completely. Chronic diseases are complex and varied in terms of their nature, how they are caused and the extent of their impact on the community.

Encycl. Philos. Second Miasma is based on the belief that the environment is reinforcing the effect of chronic diseases on our bodies. The state of our environment is able to affect us and to affect our health. In regard to the notion of the Second Miasma, the damaging effect of the environment can be implicatively tied to the presence of chronic disease.

There can be a division of the notion as of how its effects in the environment:

asthma, heart failure, hypothyroidism etc. But there is also the threat of accidents that seems to contribute to emergence of diseases like Multiple sclerosis.

With long exposure to pollutants like fumes, smog, industrial waste, and fine particle emission we most certainly will develope respiratory problems and heart disease that greatly decrease our mobility and and stamina, and put us rappidly in a negative spiral thowards premature death.

Commerce in itself does not affect us greatly from the point of health. But what commerce does together with certain built typologies, like outskirt malls, high competition market places in low income areas or microrayons, is that it degrades the quiality of food products and very often creats so called food deserts.

Immobilizing environments like border highways, railways without passages and inaccessible vacant plots obstruct our pedestrian mobility greatly. A thing that is absolutley necessary to have any chance of battling chronic dieases.

t 1. Acute State

Stress, traffic, pollution, commerce and immobilizing environment are all in the same place.

t 4VC BDVUF 4UBUF When only one or two of above said factors are present in the environment.

t 4FNJ $ISPOJD 4UBUF When the built environment still is struggling with pathogens together with chronic factors.

This articulation of space according to the type of danger it poses to us together with a definition of the Second Miasma will give us the needed realm to operate in and a precise aim for our goal of health. But the way the city is constructed, exposure to above said environmental actors becomes a constant that reinforces chronic disease.

Stress, the most prevelent of the five, it is our figth or flight reaction to environments we instinctivly precive as treatening or harmfull to us. Studies from 2011 show that urban dwellers have a 20 percent higher risk of developing anxiety disorders and a 40 percent of developing mood disorders. Stress also leads to the shortening of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;protection capsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; at both ends of our chromosomes, at the same time it supresses the enzyme responcible for reparing these. When sufficient damage has been done to the cell and it no longer can divide and regenerate, this leads to premature ageing of the body.

As for traffic, the threat has many layers. Starting from the obvious ones like pollution and and noise, we know that these greatly contribute to the emergence of chronic diseas like

58

Another crucual factor to how chronic disease has gotten to be the main healh problem in the world is how it is connected to poverty, and especially poor areas. Intergenerational poverty is the mechanism that describes how poor living conditions, lack of education, bad health and voilent behaviour are transferred between generations and keep certain socio-economic segments of society in this perpetual loop. In the paper Biology as destiny? Short and long-run determinants of intergenerational transmission of birth weight, authors, Janet Currie and Enrico Moretti, argue that there is a correlation between being born into a family of poor health and the later socio-economic status.

What this means in relation to space is that, when you live in poor conditions that reinforce your bad health, give you limitied options of movement, both locally and regionally, and when you are a part of a community that has no access or relation to medical institutions there is a overwhelming probabillity of you following in the same footsteps. So to break this loop, one needs to attack all causes and in the case of Second Miasma, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spatial qualities.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

CHRONIC DISEASE IN RUSSIA In the Russian Federation, a staggering 81% of all deaths has been has been ascribed to chronic disease.

Alone in 2005 the total projected deaths were about 2,424,000, which means that 1,956,000 lives were lost to these diseases. And according to WHO, from 2005 and ten years onwards there will be over 19 million deaths from these causes.

Between 1950 and 2002, the heart disease rates in the Russian Federation reamained the same of increased. And this happened in opposition to countries that where effective programs to reduce heart diseae death rates were introduced. Countries including Canada, United Kingdom and the united states managed to decrese the death rates from cardiovascular diseases dramatically.

The economic impact of chronic diseases is their abillity to create large adverse, and underappreciated, economic impact on families communities and countries. This effect is especially present in low income and uneducated environments, and contributes to degredation the quality of life.

During 2005 the Russian Federation lost approximately 11 billion dollars in national income from premature deaths due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. And contrary to what one might think, the enourmous presence of chronic disease does not necessarily create sufficient awareness to make communities, municipalities or states to act activley against these health threas.

According to WHO the losses in the Russian Federation are projected to continue and increase, and during the period from 2005 - 2015 the accumulated losses due to premature death from chronic diseases would reach a staggering 303 billion dollars.

That is almost 100 billion more than the GDP of Portugal.

And even though normally men are ascribed to have a higher death rate due to chronic disease, this was not the case in the the Russian Federation. 7% more women died in 2008 even though they statistically seem to live healthier lives.

At least 80% of premature heart disease, stroke and type-2 diabetes and 40% of all cancer has the potential to be prevented through healthy diets, regular physical actyvity and avoidance of tobacco products.

Cost effective interventions exist, and have worked in many countries. And what seem to be the most effective strategies are to employ population-wide strategies together with interventions for individuals. And with estimates that an annual 2% reduction of chronic disease death rates in the Russian Federation over this 10 year period could have added up to a 20 billion dollar gain for the country.

But as simple as it may sound there are a lot of barriers that prevent from implementing any effective legislation or interventions, both on personal and societal level. Everyhing from socioeconomic status, gepgraphical position, lifestyle, genealogical background to the position of being able to actively purse your own health, figure-in in the complex mycelium that constitutes our unhealth.

With this in mind, looking a space as one of the contributing factors, we find that there are many spacial functions that work for transporting us around efficiently but work against our health.

And realizing that this is a systemic problem, it has to be adressed in a systemic way.

Perhaps the biggest effect of chronic disease can be seen in the societal costs and what the network of cause and effect leads to.

Usually this breaks down into three categories.

The direct costs are the costs to the community of diseases directly related to chronic disease. The visits to the general practitioners, consultations with medical speciallists, hospital admissions and medication.

The inderect costs are related to the loss of productivity caused by absenteeism and the spending related to disabillity pensions and premature death.

And the personal costs consist of earning less because of health discrimination, getting charged higher premiums from insurance companies exponentially to the nature of your situation. And perhaps the most obvious factor, the lack of mobility and stress one experiences.

Projected deaths by cause, all ages, Russian Federation, 2005, WHO

Russian Federation

USA Australia UK Canada

Brazil

Year

Filip Mayer: Second Miasma

59

CHRONIC DISEASES AND THEIR SPATIAL CONNECTIONS This catalouge illustrates some of the major chronic disease’s and how they emerge in urban environments.

As complex and unpredictable as chronic diseases are, it is imortant to understand that most of them have evironmental causes that either are directly or indirectly interlinked with urband dwelling. The grouping of them toghether shows how quite ordinary elements of everyday life together affect us and make us ill. As we examine the different diseases we soon find that all of them are also linked to poor living conditions and to social and spacial isolation. The general pattern that one can see coming from analysing all of them is that not only do they affect the people that have it the worst the most. But also seem to coincide with the periurban, not fully developed typologies where the harshes social and economical conditions are. Also

the poor innercity dweller is greatly affected, but still has the luxury of proximity. The only chronic disease that seems to have an greater effect on rural life, ex. dacha life, is Parkinsons.

What is important to see is the whole picture these examples paint. How the illnesses are linked together and how the spaces are connected. If you have asthma for example, and live in a neighbourghood that does not promote health care, come from a socio-economic background that makes you more prone to relaps into sickness and stress everyday on your way to and from work in congestion. It is highly likely that the cumulative effect of that life will make you sick. While if you had opportunity, like walking, less stress, a community dedicated to health and a safe environment that would likely make you more motivated to pursue your health.

Asthma

Chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Common symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath.

CKD also known as chronic renal disease, is a progressive loss in renal function over a period of months or years. The symptoms of worsening kidney function are non-specific, and might include feeling generally unwell and experiencing a reduced appetite.

The causes of Asthma are obviously complex, but include environmental exposures to allergens and pollutants, changing patterns of medication, and the psychosocial stresses of living in poor inner-city neighborhoods.¹

Three important components of the distressing or unhealthy social environments are (a) poor residential conditions, (b) economic deprivation at the household level, and (c) social stressors such as racism or discrimination.²

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Hypertension (HTN)

COPD is the occurrence of chronic bronchitis or emphysema, a pair of commonly co-existing diseases of the lungs in which the airways narrow over time. This limits airflow to and from the lungs, causing shortness of breath (dyspnea).

HTN or high blood pressure, sometimes called arterial hypertension, is a chronic medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is elevated.

Studies in many countries have found people who live in large cities have a higher rate of COPD compared to people who live in rural areas. Urban air pollution may be a contributing factor for COPD, as it is thought to slow the normal growth of the lungs.³

This phenomenon, which varies markedly across populations, is determined largely by environmental factors. We argue that the most important factors in the development of hypertension at the population level are calorie excess (as manifest by obesity), high salt intake, low potassium intake, physical inactivity, heavy alcohol consumption and psychosocial stress.⁴

Heart failure (HF)

Crohn's disease

HF can cause a number of symptoms including shortness of breath, leg swelling, and exercise intolerance.

Crohn’s primarily causes abdominal pain, diarrhea (which may be bloody if inflammation is at its worst), vomiting (can be continuous), or weight loss, but may also cause complications outside the gastrointestinal tract such as skin rashes, arthritis, inflammation of the eye, tiredness, and lack of concentration.

Extensive evidence indicates that environmental factors contribute to CVD risk, incidence, and severity. Several large population-based studies indicate that exposure to fine or ultrafine particulate air pollution increases CVD morbidity and mortality. Collectively, the data support the notion that chronic environmental stress is an important determinant of CVD risk.⁵

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If you live in an urban area or in an industrialized country, you're more likely to develop Crohn's disease. People living in northern climates also seem to have a greater risk of the disease.⁶

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Hypothyroidism

Parkinson's disease

Hypothyrodism can result from the lack of a thyroid gland or from iodine-131 treatment, and can also be associated with increased stress. Severe hypothyroidism in infants can result in cretinism.

Parkinsons’s is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system.

Stress's effect on thyroid function can be indirect, through its effects on blood sugar levels (dysglycemia), but it can also have more direct effects. Stress may cause hypothyroidism or reduced thyroid functioning by disrupting the HPA axis which down-regulates thyroid function.⁷

Epidemiological studies have noted increased risks of developing Parkinson's disease with rural living, farming, drinking well water, and exposure to pesticides.

Most of the pesticides disrupt mitochondrial function and generate oxidative stress, the two main processes implicated in degeneration of neurons. On the other hand, there have been intriguing and consistent findings of decreased risks of Parkinson's disease in people who smoke cigarettes or drink beverages containing caffeine.⁸

Multiple sclerosis (MS)

Diabetes mellitus

MS is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms.

Dis a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar. This high blood sugar produces the classical symptoms of polyuria (frequent urination), polydipsia (increased thirst) and polyphagia (increased hunger).

It has long been postulated that environmental events such as infection, emotional stress, or trauma play some role in triggering exacerbations, worsening of the disease, or even the onset of MS. There have been monetary awards by the courts based on possible influence on the disease following motor vehicle accidents.⁹

Ground-level ozone forms from the interaction of various air pollutants, including those found in car exhaust, with sunlight. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are among the most serious health pathologies worldwide. Stress has been proposed as a factor contributing to the development of these health risk factors.¹⁰

Schizophrenia

Coronary artery disease (CAD)

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by a deficit of typical emotional responses. Common symptoms include auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.

CAD is the most common type of heart disease and cause of heart attacks.

Neighborhood social interactions affect the wide set of affective, cognitive, and relational experiences individuals have in their neighborhoods, which in turn influence the psycho-cognitive antecedents of behavior and in the end shape health behavior.¹²

In adulthood different environmental stressors act—including social isolation, migrant status, and urban life—and this remains the case even when life events attributable to the incipient psychosis itself are excluded.¹¹

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566223/, Environ Health Perspect. 1999 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824501/, J Investig Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC, 2010 3. http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/28/3/523, R. J. Halbert, J. L. Natoli, A. Gano, E. Badamgarav, A. S. Buist and D. M. Mannino, 2006 4. http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/2/246.short, Br Med Bull, 1994 5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19119685, Rev Environ Health. 2008 6. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/crohns-disease/DS00104/DSECTION=risk-factors, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER), 2009 7. http://edrv.endojournals.org/content/7/3/284, Endocrine Reviews August vol. 7 no. 3, 1986 8. http://parkinsons.bsd.uchicago.edu/causes.html 9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7880765, Axone. 1994 10. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21181395, Diabetologia. 2011 11. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1914490/, BMJ, 2007 12. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.031308.100158, Geographic Life Environments and Coronary Heart Disease: A Literature Review, Theoretical Contributions, Methodological Updates, and a Research Agenda, 2009

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REGULATIONS (Microrayon Factbook by Dali Safiullina) To break the cycles of unhealth we need to attack the built space from the point of planning. The best way is to analyze the current socio-spacial situations and adjust them, so that istead of a efficensy (proximity) based city scape we get one that nudges us thowards healthier patterns of living. By taking the existing regulations and building upon them, the impact of spacial change will not make the environment an unfamiliar one but behaviours and experiences will change.

The alterations to the regulations either work as additions to or replacements for existing ones. Even thought the changes might seem straigh forward, there is an imense difference in planing from the point of view of health than from planing from the point of view of distance, and population density. What needs to happen is to change the DNA of the plan so that it first and foremost adresses the health issues of the low income population.

Immobilizing Space The main, and perhaps most obvious problem we face is the lack of everyday movement. To move naturally and constatnly doing some small physical activity is one of the things that the most healthy and longest living populations share among them.

Space should not be planned based upon close proximity and precived comfort, it should instead make us move without thinking about it. This walking should be experience based making inhabitants think about other things than how many meters it is between their door and the store or the metro.

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Stress Stress causes great problems in our society and is one of the major causes and reinforcers of chronic disease. The major reduciton to stress that can be made from the point of view of planning is to reduce stressors a loud environments, limit the commercial visual impact and recduce extreme congestion while maintaining a dense living environment. From the point of view of the microrayon, a main stressor is living next heavily trafficed road, social isolation and poor living conditions. Again these

Filip Mayer: Second Miasma

problems are interlaced with other factors and together create a vast network of interlinked causes and effects that ultimatley lead to our unhealth.

The limits and alterations are set according to how to maximize the health outcome from the space. For example, using dB levels, not just as a restriction but as a tool to shape the landscape will result in a quite different type of city and life.

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Community A healthy community is based on the interlinkage between young and old, poor and rich, healthy and unhealthy etc. The main characteristic of sucsessfull comunities are that they are mixed and have a lot of social interaction embedded in them. The group, as an entity, is much more efficient than the individual when it comes to dictate certain behaviours, and as long as health and caring is embedded into them, then people will live longer and stay healthier. Things like inheriate poverty and

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illiteracy are also contributors to systemic forming of populations health and this is why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s necessary to form space that will contribute to the mobility of people and sharing of knowledge.

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Morphology To make regulations that will have positive effect on our health we need to create a new morpology for the microrayon.

This morphology differs fom the previous ones in the way that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main building block are not based on distance or miximisation of transport by individual vehicles. The new morphology is based on time, experience and movement of people. Whilist all the previous development regulations had big advantages to the societies in which they were created, they have all digressed

Filip Mayer: Second Miasma

slightly from their historical predecessors based on some new need in society. The main need now is to help people to pursue their health.

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CASE STUDY: 90TH/90TH (A) BUTYRSKIY DISTRICT & (49TH, 51ST, 52ND) MICRORAYONS MARFINO DISTRICT Together the areas almost form a coherent and functional city entity, even though some functions are missing. The butryskiy district has a developed infrastructure and to some a largely established school system. Althogh the very estern part, the 90th/90th A microrayon lacks many of the benefits and functions of the overall district. It is somewhat defined by the main road and ul. Milashenkova and the lagre barrier created by the rail road tracks. Further they both isolate the area to the north effectivly creating an peninsula only accessible from the south, if you are a pedestrian. The (49th, 51st, 52nd) microrayons of Marfino are to a large degree sleeper districts, where little of the societal functions of the Butryski district are available. This area consist mainly of two parts, the domestic areas and the botanical gardens in the west.

The first reason why this combined area is chosen as a case study is due to the mutual inaccessabililty between the districts and that they are both lacking essential functions needed for regions with lagre amounts of inhabitants. They are both

MARFINO DISTRICT

surrounded by large developed industrial areas that are heavy pollutants and rails and roads that emit fine micro particles.

And the second reason is the already instigated open competition to revitalize the Marfino area, therefore a perfect target for improving health.

MARFINO DISTRICT STATS:

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Area: 2.26 km² People: 27140 / km² Residential: 12000 m² Population: 68700

Area: 5.4 km² 3HRSOH NPt Residential: 11000 m² Population: 68000

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PROJECT BRIEF The purpose for this project is to implement the miasmic reagulatory system on the area around Milashenkova street, particularly east of the street, the 90th and 90th "A" of Butyrskiy district, and the 49th, 51th and 52nd microrayon of Marfino district. Both of the areas have several well developed societal functions, one has many schools and the other has a botanical garden. But the larger problem lies in the environmental design and the enormous border created by the railways and the roads. And the acessebility and connection between the areas is not developed at all. There is already a call for change instigated by the Marfino district, an open competition to recreate and revitalize the area.

The Miasmic regulatory system is designed to provide all of these characteristics to a neighbourhood. Also connecting the two districts through this project, would be mutually beneficial, since they both have functions desired by each other. And establishing the new morphology here would not only provide the all of these desired characteristics but could be an experimental ground for how to improve peoples health through altering the environement.

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Filip Mayer: Second Miasma

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COUNTRY OF PUNISHMENT DEFRAGMENTED UNITY IZABELA CICHONSKA

My grandfather left behind 30 volumes of diaries, in which he described the details of his entire life: hundreds of people he had met including teachers and neighbours, and uncountable stories of childhood and family legends. In his diaries, however, there is a five-year gap, which starts from 1940, when he was forcibly deported with his family to Siberia. My grandfather was never willing to tell stories about that period of time. Therefore, this unwritten past remains shrouded in mystery and has become my motivation to do research and apprehend the Russian prison system, and what exactly had happened in the labour camps in that period of time.

But very soon it turned out that, just as in the memoirs of my grandfather, the information about the Country of Punishment is totally confidential, elusive and very vague. Moreover, the general public does not know much about it, and this subject is ignored by the mass media and press.

My investigation brought me to the conclusion that history and the present are intertwined and inseparable. I realised that the Country of Punishment refers not only to the history that affected

people decades ago, but it still concerns more that third part of contemporary Russian society. The Country of Punishment is a place we know almost nothing about, yet it is a place where anyone can be condemned. It is a place where the convicted begin to live a different pattern of cohabitation; a pattern that has not been created in order to rehabilitate or improve, but in order to punish, intimidate, manipulate and control. At this very moment, the understanding of the history of the CoP in Russia becomes extremely important, even neuralgic, because it is the root provenance of contemporary prison reality.

It is estimated that in Russian prisons today there are more than 800,000 people, which puts Russia second in the rankings of the world's prison population (in first place is the USA). But, it is worth highlighting that the prisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stigma affects not just the prisoners, but also their families and friends. It means that more than 30 per cent of society is affected by the neuropsychological, physical, economic or sociological consequences of this regime.

According to Professor Zubkov, one-third of Russian society has experienced, directly or indirectly, the prison pattern of

GEOGRAPHY OF COUNTRY OF PUNISHMENT CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - GENERAL REGIME (KOLONII OBSCHEGO REGIMA) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - STRICT REGIME (KOLONII STROGOGO REGIMA)

PRISONS (WITH CELLULAR ACCOMMODATION) (TURMI) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR FORMER PERSONNEL OF RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICES

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - SPECIAL REGIME (KOLONII OSOBOGO REGIMA)

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cohabitation. With this in mind, the question arises: why is the CoP so mysterious and why has the truth about reality on the other side of the wall been completely abandoned and not investigated at all?

Taking into account all these inconsistencies, research needs to be done to understand whether or not we can enhance anything about this system, or offer some other solutions.

One of the substantial questions is the role of punishment in society and the relationship between punishment and re-socialisation. For my research it is fundamental to find out if there is any actual relationship between these two concepts, 'punishment' and 're-socialization'.

Both techniques are a form of discipline and have their purpose in society; they intend to control citizens and decrease a criminality. Re-socialisation aims to correct and normalise the behaviour of criminals, making sure they can function properly in society when released. The punitive aspect has to remove the criminal from society; ensuring that the convict will pay for his crimes. Often it goes together with a will to isolate and humiliate him. The problem is that this two techniques contradict each other,

KP PENAL SETTLEMENTS (KOLONII-POSELENYA) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT WOMEN VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE BOYS (VOSPITATELNIE KOLONII DLYA MALCHIKOV)

and subsequently are often discussed in international meetings.

Re-socialisation of criminals is optimistic, but hard to achieve. On the contrary, punishment is negative, yet easily accessible, but in fact not effective at all. The system used in almost the whole world is punitive. It consists of destroying a convict's life, not giving them the chance of having a normal future when released. Russia is one of the hardest examples of this method; the system here is built on fear, inhumane treatment and regime. It not primed to normalise the criminal, but to frighten him, refusing him basic human rights.

I ask myself, how is it possible to build this kind of system, full of terror and injustice? Does it have its germs in the history of Russia? We live in the century that proclaims over and over again, equal human rights for everyone. The most significant article in the 21st Century is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this requires above all: freedom from torture, the right to a fair trial and above all, the right to dignity and happiness. All these rights are breached in the Country of Punishment. Therefore, I will allow myself a quick insight into the history of Russian Penalty System.

VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE GIRLS (VOSPITATELNIE KOLONII DLYA DEVOCHEK) LIU PRISON HOSPITALS PENAL ISOLATION COLONIES FOR PRISONERS WITH INFECTIOUS DISEASE

THE UNITY ONE HISTORY ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons’. Fyodor Dostoyevsky rooted in the history of the Russian prison system. The aim was to send prisoners to distant and uninhabited places of Russia and to discipline them. Exile in the name of prevention became a tool for both internal colonisation of the country, and forced labour, which put the fundamentals in place for the development of infrastructure and implementation of economic plans.

This model of punishment, practised at least since the beginning of 16th Century, has not been clearly defined since the reign of Peter the Great, who distinguished between two forms of punishment: katorga (penal servitude) and exile. Both assumed the penalty of forced displacement; however, penal servitude related to enforced, heavy physical work without payment, and compulsory settlement in special prisons for convicts. Without this, the penalty of deportation did not deprive the criminal of personal liberty, neither did it impose compulsory labour; in fact it allowed him to work in a number of different occupations.

For centuries, the Russian prison system has contributed to the problem of colonisation by the exile and imprisonment of millions of people in the distant regions of Russia. For instance, the population of Siberia, which has been colonised since the 17th Century, has reached 31 million people. Among the deported there were intellectuals, such as one of the most eminent Russian writers

we cannot claim that the camps were only a marginal phenomenon or that they were known only to a scarce part of society. On the contrary, they were fundamental to the Soviet system in general.

These days we can also comprehend better the continuance of the concentration camps. We have always been taught that Lenin built the first camps in 1918, during the Revolution, but the new documents explain better why Stalin decided to spread them out in 1929. In that year, he initiated his Five-Year Plan, which was cruel and extremely expensive, both in human lives and natural resources. This plan was implemented in order to force a minimum of 20 per cent increase in annual industrial production and to consolidate Soviet agriculture. The plan induced millions of arrests; farmers were deported from their lands and imprisoned if they declined to leave. It also led to a deficiency in labour terms.

Unexpectedly, the Soviet Union was deficient in coal, gas and minerals, which could be find only in the far north of the country.

Thereby, the decision and resolution was reached: prisoners were to be used to extract the minerals.

Otherwise, concentration camps were built to threaten, manipulate and dominate the population. The truth is that the organisation of prisons and camps, which were outlined and executed to the last detail by Moscow, were definitively invented to embarrass, diminish and humiliate the prisoners. Indeed, this ascertains to be an extremely deteriorating ideological combination – the oblivion of human values, negligence regarding the humanity and individuality of the prisoners, and the persuasive need to meet a centrally determined plan.

'History reveals that in the Russian extermination camps, millions of people died, millions more passed through this cruel system and gave rise to a new generation'1. It has to be highlighted

View from Google map – Solovetsky Monastery: the beginning of the history of the Gulag – the first labour camp in the USSR

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, sentenced to four years of hard labour as a political prisoner (1850-1854). Dostoyevsky is immortalised in the novel The House of the Dead, which depicts the modern situation and the circumstances of exile in the 19th Century.

Another writer who faced the same fate was Alexander Solzhenitsyn. His book, Archipelago Gulag, reveals the history of the concentration camp system. The testimonies and history included in this book were largely correct, but today we know that the documents, which were found later on, allowed a much more accurate insight into the history than was possible in the past.

Anne Applebaum in Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened depicts that thanks to the newly opened Soviet archives, new details about the form and functioning of Gulags come to the light. It was recognised that there were at least 476 concentration camp systems, each one containing dozens, even hundreds, of individual camps. The population in a Gulag was also very unstable; therefore as a result, between 1929, when the prison camps became a mass experience, and in 1953 (Stalin's death), more than 18 million people passed through the system.

Furthermore, about 6 or 7 million people were deported to some villages on exile. The entire number of people with any experience in forcible detention or forced labour in the Stalinist Soviet Union could have been close to 25m, which made up about 15 per cent of the population.

The distribution of concentration camps was dispersed. They were, namely, everywhere. In 1940s, when the concentration camps reached their apogee, it was very difficult in many camps to meet daily routine without taking advantage of the prisoners. Therefore 70

that the victims of the Gulag system became not only people forced to work, regardless of their education and social status, but also, as we can read in The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard by Ivan Chistyakov, their persecutors, who were trained to control and punish the inmates, and release food rations. They also lived in constant fear that maybe one day they might be sentenced to the Gulag thmselves for any mistake or offence.

It is inconceivable that this machine of annihilation was able to involve anyone, at any time of the day and night.

This country of terror burdened future generations with the shame and defects of the past; and the silence of the victims still cries out for recognition and justice.

ONE LAW – PENAL CODE The Russian Federation has a centralised political system where the president has the power to issue normative and non-normative decrees (provided they do not contravene the constitution and federal law). The Constitution of the Russian Federation provides for human rights and freedom of the citizen according to the universally recognised principles and norm of international law. It affirms that the fundamental rights and freedom shall not be interpreted as a rejection and derogation of other universally recognised human rights and freedom.

To accomplish these tasks, the present Code (which is based on Constitution of The Russian Federation) establishes the ground and principles of criminal responsibility, defines which deeds are recognised as offences dangerous to persons, society, or the State,

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and establishes the types of punishment and other penal measures for the commission of offences.

Crime is dangerous because it creates relationships between the offender and society and between the offender and injured party that differ from the legal order. Crime and punishment as legal phenomena represent the object of criminal law.2 Obviously the Soviet Russia that emerged and developed as a totalitarian power did not need to justify its intervention in criminal law or the imposition of penalties. No one could question the state´s rights regarding criminal liability. All these problems were to be solved in 1926, when the theory of the Russian SFSR Criminal Code cited the task of criminal legislation as 'The protection of the socialist state of workers and farmers and the law and order thereof … by applying the means of social protection prescribed in this Code'. Under Article No. 9, 'The objectives of punishment were to prevent people who have once committed crime from committing new crimes, influence insecure members of society and to adjust offenders to the society of the working people’s country.'3 The truth is that all of these theories were breached by the human dictatorship and proletariat nature of the Soviet system. In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reveals the truth about this brutal and hidden system, and the evil nature of human being. 'It is in the nature of the human being to seek justification for his actions.'4 A re-valorization of values, along with humiliation, torture, starvation, lies, intimidation and ignorance of the Criminal Code were the methods practised on daily basis in Soviet Penal System.

All were far from the principle of humanism and protection of human rights. Article No. 7, which constitutes the Principle of Humanism, proclaims that: Punishment and other legal measures applicable to a person who has committed a crime may not pursue the aim of causing physical suffering or debasement of human dignity.5 However, prison conditions even today are harsh and PROCESS OF INVESTIGATION

lamentable. The refusal of authorities to assure medical assistance results in at least one death per year.

In August 2011, the General Prosecutor´s Office stated that 90 per cent of inmates have health problems and there were more than 1.2 million cases of illnesses. The European Court of Human Rights has launched several judgments against inhumane conditions and illogical geographic distances. Additionally, it seems that there is no control over the abuses of prisoners. There are constant cases of violence, rape, child abuse, etc.

The Russian penal system now still faces great challenges.

The new directive is to achieve not only better human conditions in prisons, but also to change the penal infrastructure and the Gulag’s penal geography.

DETAINEES ARE HELD IN SEVEN BASIC TYPES OF DETENTION PLACES: 10 Temporary police dentention centres Pre-trial detention centres (SIZO – sledstvennyi isolator) Educational Juvenile Correctional Colonies (VK – vospitatel'naya koloniya) for boys and girls aged 14-18.

Correctional Colonies for Adult Offenders (IK – ispravital'naya koloniya) - An IK is a secure isolated institution. There are three types of IK: General (Obshchii) regime (minimum security) for all men and all women Strict (Osobii) regime (medium to maximum security), for first-time male offenders Special (Strogii) regime (maximum security), for men convicted of particularly dangerous repeated crimes, who have been sentenced to life imprisonment Isolation colonies for adults with infectious diseases (LIU – lechebnoe ispravitelnoe uchrezhdenie) Colony-Settlements (KP – koloniya poseleniya) - These are often called 'open prisons'. They are located in or close to civilian settlements, but the majority are in very remote parts of Russia.

Prisoners generally live in barracks but work outside of the colony.

'Prisons' - The term 'prison' (tyurma) describes Russia's strictest form of punishment for only 4-5% of Russian prisoners. Residential blocks are more similar to cellular accommodation than barracks, and there are severe restrictions on visiting, communication, and exercise.

Hospital Colonies (LPU – lechebnoe profilakticheskoe uchrezhdenie) - For inmates requiring serious medical treatment during incarceration.

PROCESS OF PROSECUTION

JUDICIAL SYSTEM COURTS

GENERAL PROSECUTORS OFFICE

GENERAL MILITARY CASES CASES

POLICE Main Military

Federal Districts

FSB

Regional

FSKN INVESTIGATION COMMETEE

Districts

Special Just for Prisons

Transport

CONSTITUTION COURT

HIGHER COURT

Regional Court

Regional Court

District Court

District Court

MIROVOY (court for small cases)

DIAGRAM – Structure of Criminal Procedure GOVERNMENT WALUES IMAGE OF THE COUNTRY INTERNAL

EXTERNAL

Building TRUST in society Respect and provide HUMAN RIGHTS Respect for the NATIONAL HISTORY EFFECTIVENESS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF SYSTEM OF PENALTY

SOCIETY WALUES IDENTITY understanding of the NATIONAL/CULTURAL ROOTS Respect of HUMAN RIGHTS HUMILITY towards HISTORY SENCE OF SECURITY

IMPROVEMENT OF PRISONS’ CONDITIONS: Respect Rules

ENSURE THE SAFETY to eliminate DISTANCES HIGH QUALITY OF SOCIETY Opportunity to work

DIAGRAM – Structure of Penal Institutions

HIGHER COURT OF BUSSINESS CLAIMS District Court for 5-10 regions Court of Appeal (II instance) Regional Court

ONE POPULATION

"One in every four adult men in Russia is a former prisoner.

The overwhelming majority of prisoners are not professional criminals, but people who found themselves in prison because of misery, unemployment, or homelessness. Thousands of Russian prisoners die every year from hunger, tuberculosis, or suffocation from lack of oxygen in overcrowded cells in pre-trial detention centres. Now the average man does live over the pension age: he dies at 57 years old, 14 years younger than the average woman."6

The penal system in Russia was established for, and built upon, male criminality. Corporal punishment, transportation, exaggerated, long and frustrating work – all these were basically the only male forms of punishment, whereas women played the role of 'accompanying person', although they were also sent to Siberia. In Stalinist Gulags, all women, men, adults and juveniles

740.558

2,300 CHILDREN 0.4% 57,200 FEMALE 8.4%

TOTAL

600.000 500.000

25-55

400.000

622 ,300 MALE 91.2%

300.000 200.000

18-25

100.000

55-60

5.248 2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

AGE OF SOCIETY

Population Characteristics – The penal system in Russia was established for and built upon male criminality; Photo: Max Avdeev

were imprisoned together and did not have any chance to contact the outside world. In fact, the main characteristic of the Stalinist system was the defragmentation of social networks, rewarding those who betrayed their own families. The Gulag system encouraged massive deportations to remote, hostile locations, which guaranteed the invisibility and total isolation of prisoners. In 1950, the prison population reached its climax holding more than 2.5 million people. After the death of Stalin, there was a reduction in the imprisoned population to 1.25 million people.

Ten years after the collapse of Soviet Union, there was a considerable increase of interest in crimes as a side effect of the post-Soviet-Union transformation. A new era of individualism, financial enhancement, and reorganisation of economic structures, norms and policy resulted in the increment of crime, homicide, juvenile crime, human trafficking, etc. In 2001, the prison population fell to 1.2 million, and in 2002 has been reduced by 20 per cent. The reduction of the prison population was linked with the operation of the new Criminal Procedural Code (UPC) of the Russian Federation, effective as of July 2002. Under the new UPC, putting the suspect behind the bars has become more difficult than in the past. Since then there has been a significant decline in the prison population.

Nowadays, the population of the Country of Punishment is 697,500 people, of which 91.2% are male.

According to the NGO prison.org:

72

ONE SPACIAL STRUCTURE Each colony has a very similar spatial structure. The distinctive feature of the architectural structure of a colony is zoning. It has an impact on the convicts´ routines because it determines the movement inside the colony. Each zone is separated by walls, and in the case of a zone being crossed, the inmates are recounted.

There are two main zones: the living zone and working zone, which are divided into smaller functional sub-groups.

LIVING ZONE This zone consists of barracks (where prisoners live), the administration unit, play area, common room, canteen and kitchen, rehabilitation area, training and education area, group therapy room and a church or prayer room.

MINIMAL STANDARDS OF LIVING SPACE IN PENAL INSTITUTIONS: Min. Correctional Colonies for Adult Man 2 m ², Correctional Colonies for Adult Woman - 3 m ², Educational Juvenile Correctional Colonies - 3.5 m ², Hospital Colonies - 5 m ² WORKING ZONE This zone includes a plant, factory or workshop, where inmates

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learn how to use machines. Sometimes a colony has its own allotments, where vegetables and fruits are usually grown for sale.

FENCE The most characteristic architectural element of colonies is the fence. It divides the strong territory of a colony from the surrounding landscape and consists of 4-5 layers. The surface that occupies the prison fence comprises 10-35 per cent of the colony's territory. The walls have different heights from 2 – 3.5 m, and are

special signs are written on the prisoner's patient card. After the examination, the convict is sanitized in accordance with regulation requirements and placed in the quarantine unit. Medical surveillance lasts 15 days. Diagnosed patients suffering from infectious diseases are immediately isolated and transferred to the prison hospital, which has anti-epidemic centres.

1st FENCE

“PRISONER TRIES TO ESCAPE”

2nd MAIN HIGHEST FENCE UNDER VOLTAGE with ALARM PRISONER CAN BE SHOT

4th FENCE

ON THE BORDER OF PLOT

3rd TRANSPARENT BETWEEN 2nd & 3rd ZONE FOR DOGS

ESCAPE FROM PRISONS

ESCAPES FROM PRISON Fence Characteristics, source:FSIN; Photo: Max Avdeev

made from either chain link, wire mesh, wood and concrete, and finished with barbed wire. At least one layer of the wall has a live wire. The territory is flanked by guard towers: the amount depends on the size and shape of the colony, but usually there are 7-8.

ONE ROUTINE The order of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation of November 3, 2005, N 205, reads: "On approval of the Rules of Procedure of Corrections"7 and Internal regulations of Corrections (approved by order of the Justice Ministry on November 3, 2005 N 205) contains duties, rights, and above all, regulations about the prison routine depending on the type of penal institutions.

PROCEDURE FOR ACCEPTING PRISONERS On first arrival at the colony, the convict is searched thoroughly and all his personal items are taken away from him. A medical

officer conducts an external examination, the results, as well as LIVING IN THE COLONY Correctional colonies have a size of 300–1500 people.

Detainees live in the barracks, where they normally share a room with 50 other inmates. Prisoners are divided within the colonies into platoons. The smallest social unit formed by convicts is called simieyka (small family), where 4-6 people build trust, share food and talk.

It is also important to mention that women are treated differently from men, which is related to gender stereotyping and sexism.

The Correctional Code points towards the support of maternal roles. Therefore, women with children under 14, or who are pregnant, can receive suspended sentences; and small children accompany their mothers in prison up to the age of four. Women in these conditions have the privilege of eating more and are not placed in punishment cells.

Daily Routine in Typical Colony described by Penal Code is design for the sake of prisoner, who works.

The spacial structure of a typical colony follows the historical pattern established in the 1920s

Information about special structure and designers’ specific plans for colonies are unavailable, which is quite understandable in the case of highly protected state facilities. However, it should be mentioned that the last centres and penal colonies were established in the 1980s, following the historical pattern that evolved in the 1920s. Since then, the architectural model of the colony remained the same, to the detriment of the present reality of the prison system. The daily routine as well as special structure are subservient and designed for the sake of the prisoner, who works eight hours per day and need to rest for another eight hours.

In cases where the colony offers jobs for detainees, this scheme works. However, in reality only 30 per cent of colonies provide vacancies for the prison population, which means that in 70 per cent of colonies, the logistic and spatial structure should be amended.

The prison system does not offer any regular education programme, which could be considered as the replacement for work.

defendants usually have to sleep for three changes. Pre-trial detention centres are places where the accused await the judgment of the court, without the possibility to undertake any work. They are held in cells where they can only eat and sleep.

Cells are normally equipped with a shower, toilet and small kitchen. When there is no shower in the cell, defendants are permitted to take a shower just once a week.

SIZO No 2 BUTYRKA – MOSCOW In the landscape of Russia, a rule has developed that the big cities do not possess penal colonies, in lieu they have pre-trial detention centres – SIZOs. Butyrka prison was another type of antihuman penitentiary, traceable back to the 17th Century, which had been built by Matvei Kazakov during the reign of Catharine the Great. Butryka prison was known for its merciless and violent regime. Currently, Butryka is the biggest SIZO in Moscow, where overcrowding continues to be a main issue.

Butyrka is located in the courtyard of the quarter building, surrounded by residential buildings which are very often rented apartments for relatives of detainees. It was designed to hold 1500 people, but the number of detainees now exceeds 2190.

The conditions in Butyrka are very deprived. Because of the lack of beds they have recently purchased folding beds and

On Butyrka's SIZO ground there is a museum of history, closed for visitors. The future of the building is unknown, although some say it will be transformed into a museum, yet due to recent rumours, they want to issue Butyrka for auction.

The situation of Butyrka shows the desultory attitude of authorities to the system of punishment in Russia, when the shameful history is ignored and facing it becomes uncomfortable, even unnecessary. Sizo number 2 is the Monument of Remembrance; which connects the past of penalty system with its present. The idea of building a museum in Butyrka, (a place which does not accomplish today´s standards of holding potentially innocent citizens, who have the right to vote) would be an act and the first step to confront the painful history of the Holocaust. It would be a chance to start a real, multi-level discussion about the national memory, and thus the contemporary situation of the Russian prison system.

74

THE DAILY ROUTINE CONSISTS OF:

the Butyrka menu for breakfast there is only porridge cooked in water, for lunch at 12:00 cabbage soup and porridge with fish. The last meal is at 17:00. after dinner.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

PATTERNS OF COHABITATION

CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS FOR MAN: CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - GENERAL REGIME (KOLONII OBSCHEGO REGIMA) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - STRICT REGIME (KOLONII STROGOGO REGIMA) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - SPECIAL REGIME (KOLONII OSOBOGO REGIMA)

The Country of Punishment is defragmented on a big scale.

Although this country is described by one law, its defragmentation over the Russian space is forcing these scattered penal institutions to adapt to existing conditions. Location plays a very important role here. Most of the colonies are located near the cities with a population of 100-250 thousand people, where the colony has a better chance for development of manufacturing and inmates of colony settlements have a better chance to find a job. An officially centralised system begins to resemble a decentralised one. Hence, for the development of all the colonies, dependencies on the local community and respect for prisoners' rights are the responsibility of 869 heads. Regarding their entrepreneurial abilities, it depends how many of inmates have jobs and if educational programmes are properly implemented.

PRISONS (WITH CELLULAR ACCOMMODATION) (TURMI) CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR FORMER PERSONNEL OF RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICES KP PENAL SETTLEMENTS (KOLONII-POSELENYA)

STRUCTURE IN REGIONS – LOCATIONS OF PENAL INSTITUTIONS The structure of Penal Institutions is uneven. None of the regions have a full structure of the prison system, which consists of 12 types of penal institutions. Even the Perm Region, which is the most saturated with centres of penalties (over 40), does not cover the full structure.

The severest colonies for prisoners serving life sentences are concentrated in peripheral oblasts, where 66 per cent of female colonies are located in the Volga or Urals Federal Districts.

DISTANCES AND TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS FOR WOMEN: CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT WOMEN

CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS FOR CHILDREN:

The punitive system in Russia is experienced in three ways: by exposure of prisoners to unfamiliar geographical environments with an endangered feeling of being out of place, by the disorientation of prisoners (they never know where they are going) and by the negative impact of distance on the convicts' private lives.

The practice of sending prisoners to distant colonies has its origins in the Tsarist system of exile when the prisoners were sent to distant regions of Siberia and forced into slave labour (deportation to kulaks, operations and mass operations and deportation of ethnic groups). Therefore, exile has the characteristics of punishment.

Gulag testimonies show the inhumane conditions of the vans, Stolypins and ships that transported prisoners to camps. Journeys could take months, which had a great impact on the psyche of the prisoners. Today, journeys are shorter and wagons are less crowded. But, still, there many mistreatments every day. One of the interviewees from the Moscow penal colony in 2007 said:

VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE BOYS (VOSPITATELNIE KOLONII DLYA MALCHIKOV) VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE GIRLS (VOSPITATELNIE KOLONII DLYA DEVOCHEK)

CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS FOR PRISONERS WITH DISEASES: LIU PRISON HOSPITALS PENAL ISOLATION COLONIES FOR PRISONERS WITH INFECTIOUS DISEASE

'We didn´t know where we were going. We were herded into these cells to wait for the convoy to arrive and collect the matrioshki.

They took us to the station, it was cold, winter, and we were left in these voronki in the freezing cold for nearby one and half hours waiting for the train. There was a four-person carriage but they put us ten of us in along with our cases. We travelled like that on top of one another the whole way… they gave us prison rations – a jar of dried potatoes and a jar of oats but no hot water… it was a nightmare… (Sonya, sentenced in 2001 to 8 years for drug dealing)'8 This form of humiliation and denial of prisoner’s individual and basic needs is classified as harsh punishment. The escorted transportation means that prisoners know nothing about the whereabouts they are taken to. One of the testimonies of former prisoner states: 'In the first place, they do not tell you where they are sending you… we were in the dark about it, and when they fetched us for the transportation, they didn´t mention it. It’s not talked about. I was told it was a secret. You get ready, and you go on the transport,

PRISON FACT SHEET

CANTEEN

men

76

woman

Wheat bread grade II Pasta Meat Fish

200 30 100 100

200 30 100 100

Vegetable oil

20

20

Sugar

30

30

Tea

1

1

Tomato paste

3

3

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

DETACHMENT BLOCKS

COMMON ROOM / TV

EDUCATION In February 2012, Media Manager Alexander Lubimov

LIABRARY

widely read books is “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

man

woman

COLONIES FOR FORMER PERSONNEL OF RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICES

VK FOR JUVENILE GIRLS

PRISONS (CELLULAR)

COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN SPECIAL REGIME

LIU PRISON HOSPITALS COLONY FOR FOREIGN CITIZENS

PENAL ISOLATION COLONIES FOR PRISONERS WITH INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Moscow Oblast – Structure of penal institutions. Lack of 7 out of 12; more than 40 per cent of prisoners sentenced in Moscow Oblast are sent out of the region to serve the sentence.

and that’s it.'9

3-5 day visits. Many colonies have a hotel converted for visitors, where they have to pay for accommodation.

This uneven distribution of colonies enhances the invisibility and seclusion of prisoners. Over 40 per cent are sent out of the region to serve the sentence. Male juvenile colonies seem to perform better, but female juvenile colonies are mostly held out of the region. After the releasing of the Correctional Code, the custodial sentences were to be assigned in prisoner's home region, however the paragraph highlighting this principle was removed from the Criminal Code in 2005/6.

Apparently, over three quarters of all prisoners spend at least 10 days in travel and 10 per cent more than a month. The best example is L'govo penal colony, which reveals astonishing data: 31.5 per cent of inmates took less than one week to arrive at the colony, 43.5 per cent between one and four weeks and 25 per cent more than four weeks. Prison transportation is a stressful experience for almost all prisoners. No one know how long the journey will last and where it ends. In addition, Stolypin’s wagons are windowless, which forces prisoners to focus their attention on the interior space (guards, dogs, bars). The final stop to the colony takes place at night. During transportation, inmates have no contact with their relatives. Than they are kept in quarantine for a fortnight and during this time families are informed where the detainees are lodged and are given details about the visiting timetable.

COMMUNICATION WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD LEGAL: VISITS The distribution of colonies enhances isolation and invisibility of Russia's prisoner population. This disjuncture provokes many problems for visitors. Convicts have the right to short-term visits lasting at least four hours under the control of the prison administration. The Penal Code also provides the possibility for

78

TRADITIONAL POST Convicts can receive an unlimited number of letters, telegraphs and postcards that are censored by the prison administration.

Duration of censorship lasts no more than three working days, although letters written in a foreign language take up to one week.

LETTERS TO MOSCOW In the Prison Reform Center (www.prison.org) in Moscow, a woman responds each year to 7,000 letters from prisoners from all over Russia. She writes approximately 27 letters a day.

E-MAILS There are also websites like www.rodnayasvyaz.ru that enable e-mail correspondence. Using the service 'letter from home' (cost is 50rub for 2,500 characters), the person who writes to the convict can immediately order a reply paying respectively for a quantity of A4 pages.

FSIN VIDEO-PHONE Prisoners have the right to one phone conversation per day to a maximum of 15 minutes. In the absence of technical possibilities this law is limited to 6 calls per year. Calls are paid by convicts or their relatives.

Relatives can have a telephone conversation via the internet (300rub) or by a special phone booth, FSIN, which is located in every major post office.

ILLEGAL: TRADITIONAL METHOD OF STRINGS In some pre-trial detention centers, prisoners use the old method of passing the information through a rolled up piece of paper with

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

a string and tying it along the external facade of the building.

CELL PHONES Common form of illegal communication between prisoners and outside world is having their own mobile phones. Although the Penal Code strictly prohibits this, there are many cases where convicts have their own private phones. Very often, prison staff are aware of it and are bribed by the prisoner. In that way, the prisoner has constant access to external information.

THE ROLE OF INFORMER (WHISTLE-BLOWER) Every prisoner who comes to the colony is offered the role of so-called 'informer' (whistle-blower) by workers of the colony´s operative service. Guards want to know everything about the inmates – their relationships with other prisoners and their outside contacts. The approval of being a 'whistle-blower' allows inmate to get a better job. On the other hand, it is very risky because being an informant is almost impossible to hide in the prison reality.

barracks for prisoners, administrative buildings, church and industrial zone.

The penal colony is monothematic creation, kind of prison-industry workplace, not only for the prisoners, but also for the workers employed by the FSIN. For this reason it contributes to the formation of economic relations with the neighbouring areas in which it appears. The creation of a spatial relationship with the environment is the side effect of colonies. They require an infrastructure for the delivery of indispensable products for the detention of prisoners, post office service, and accessible infrastructure for visitors (accommodation, catering, etc.) These

MONO-TYPOLOGIES The Penal Colony arises in the landscape of Russia as if it was an urban hallmark; and occurs in urban and not urban areas: large cities, towns, villages and forests. It combines the features of a

View from Yandex map – PUKHSINKA. A village based on prison industry

significant factors make the penal colony become an

View from Yandex map – MORDOVIA, ZUBOVYA POLYANA. Cluster of mono-settlements based on prison industry

massive urban area which is designed to have borders. It also possesses a functional zoning division, which clearly distinguishes

indispensable city-generator.

In the archipelago of the Country of Punishment, there are cases where the appearance of a penal colony in the middle of nowhere created a mono-typology structures.

VILLAGE-PUKHSINKA – IMITATION OF ISLAND Village Pukhsinka was founded in the 1950s due to the emergence of a labour camp. The population of the village has always consisted of prison staff and their families. Nowadays, there is a penal colony where convicts work on logging and timber processing. The distance from district center (Gary) – is about 60 km by road (only in winter). During 8-9 months of the year, Puksinka is inaccessible by overland routes, because of wetland areas surrounding it. During this time it can only be reached by helicopter twice a week.

REPUBLIC OF MORDOVIA – ZUBOVYA POLYANA The Republic of Mordovia is one of the two regions with the highest imprisonment rates in the Federation. Zubovya Polyana – based on the prison industry – is situated on the west end of Mordovia and comprises a cluster of 16 penal institutions. The origins of Zubovya Polyana stem from Stalin; where a prison for spies was built in the middle of a forest. Today, penal colonies are surrounded by a small number of settlements in which there live FSIN staff and their families.

View from Yandex map – TALITSY. Mono-city based on prison industry

ECONOMY IN PRISONS The economy of a prison depends on many factors: colony directorship and management (director´s entrepreneurship and ingenuity can avail inmates), facilities (some prisons have infrastructure of factory or production area) and location of prison. The last one has a crucial meaning, insofar as it constitutes the whole relationship between penal institution and the outside world. Close to 60 per cent of penal colonies are located near the city, which promotes the sale of manufactured goods and gives the opportunity for some inmates to undertake jobs embedded in

release a new Office of Procurement, due to more centralised and controlled production in all penal Institutions.

In the prison criminal zone, inmates are not allowed to have any money. However, convicts have access to their personal accounts; they can consent to have credit cards and transfer money between accounts or to their relatives. Cash transfers to other people's accounts are restricted by intern regulations and allowed only beyond the control of the prison's administration.

The Country of Punishment is not just a place for prisoners, it is also an institution that employs 347,000 workers. A total of 257.1 thousand involve qualified employees trained in 74 training centres and eight institutions of higher education, including the

KP No.2 Manufacture of pallets Assembly of plastic products Assembly of wood products Vacant production premises to rent

IK No. 1 Linen Reflective clothing - jackets Towels Plastic cutlery Plastic tablecloths IK No. 1

VK Linen Towel Half-woollen shawls Flannel blankets Wool Blankets Area to rent: 3306.6 sq.m.

IK No. 5 Suits for Police Suits for military FSB Uniforms for FSIN Clothing for convicts: jackets hats shirts

KP No. 2

KP No.3 Pavement plates Steel structures’ elements Galvanized metal sheets Metal join-elements Plastic join-elements Supporting columns Sorting and recycling of

KP No. 3

VK IK No. 5

IK No. 6

IK No. 6 Elements for diesel generators Bags handbags Suits Transformers Bread Pasta

SIZO - Pre-trial arrest KP - settlement collony IK correctional colony

Antibacterial cat litter Children’s overall suits

Moscow Oblast – Colonies near cities provide more work opportunities for inmates. Colonies listed above have their own websites to promote sales.

colony settlements.

Despite the fact that the prison system of Russia due to its history was designed for labour work, actually only 30 per cent of inmates are employed and another 5 per cent have the opportunity to work for prisons, for instance, as a hairdresser, barber or cleaner.

Colonies are engaged in many branches of industry, but the overwhelming majority, up to 48 per cent, consist of mechanical wood processing and metallurgical and clothing industry, where convicts sew uniforms for the secret services and the police FSIN. However, from this manufacturing plants also go out for sale as dry basics: shoes, garden figures, food, calendars, disposable cutlery and knives.

Official information states that penal colonies produce about 100,000 different items. (If this is true, it means that in less than 30 per cent of employment, only two inmates handle the operation of one machine.) Due to the huge corruption, the system does not make money on the sale of goods which are manufactured; thus, from time to time new ideas emerge for promotion and improvement. Some colonies have their own website where they offer products for sale, services, and rooms for rent. Soon a Trading House will be released, where any Russian or visitor will be able to purchase products made near to their residence. In addition to the Trading House, the FSIN wants to 80

Academy of Law and Management. The average earnings of a guard serving in a penal colony is between 12,000 and 15,000 rub.

INTERNET SHOPS Prison industry and its imperfections become a gold mine for entrepreneurs who are able to work closely with the FSIN. Some websites such as: www.sizomag.ru, www.rodnayasvyaz.ru offer a wide range of products, which convicts and their relatives can order via the internet.

Sizomag is a supplier of Moscow´s SIZO. It is possible to send a detainee a three-course meal, the Bible and the Koran, as well as the Russian Criminal Code.

Rodnayasvyaz, apart from supplying products to the colony, also provides services of telecommunication.

BARTER When the Soviet Union collapsed, the prisons underwent some considerable modifications and reforms. Regions were allocated money from central government in order to improve the conditions and status of prisoners, but in reality the economic instability of the country constantly affected prison budgets.

The shortfall and basic deficiency in essential resources

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

resulted in a system of barter, which operates till today. It has become a form of survival for the colonies and their personell, as well as prisoners. The explicit use of barter, according to Pacentini ('Barter in Russian prisons') is the cause of financial crisis and corruption. Recent research shows that barter in Russia provides essential maintainence and reduces basic shortages of the state subsidy of the prison system. In this type of exchange, a local agricultor meets the Director of Prison Industries and exchanges foodstuffs or other goods (like soap, bedding, and furniture) for technical services or metal goods. When both parts agree, the exchange contract is arranged. Most of the agreements are legal; local people exchange, for instance, 20 dozen eggs for repair of farming equipment. Barter is also a form of community integration, it means that the local community is benefited by the

INDUSTRIAL ZONE: TIMBER INDUSTRY

IRON INDUSTRY

MINING

MACHINE FACTORIES

RAIL INDUSTRY

MORDOVIA - SEWING

regular purchase of whole range of products. The situation of barter gives a sense of trust and reliance between prison managers and local community. One client from Omsk who was interviewed (Piacentini, 'Barter in Russian prisons') said: 'they [colonies] always need foodstuffs, we need parts for machinery.

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.'

PRISON COULD BRING PROFIT In western prison structures, there is a practice of privatisation (the UK since 1992; the USA since 1984. In the era of Ronald Reagan, a private prisons Renaissance began – today there are 264 private prisons). The privatisation of criminal law has become a common phenomenon gaining in popularity. It proclaims

PENAL INSTITUTIONS:

KP PENAL SETTLEMENTS

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - GENERAL REGIME

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT WOMEN

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - STRICT REGIME

VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE BOYS

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR ADULT MEN - SPECIAL REGIME

VK PENAL INSTITUTIONS FOR JUVENILE GIRLS

PRISONS

CORRECTIONAL COLONIES FOR FORMER PERSONNEL OF RUSSIAN SECURITY SERVICES

Major Prison Industrial Zones in Russia. Colonies maintaining timber industry are facing economic crisis.

Economic Relations in a Typical Colony

the idea of restorative justice focusing on the needs of the victims and offenders, as well as involving the community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. We must say that criminal law goes back to the sources; because it derives from the civil law.

The prison system is a complex creature. On the one hand, the privatisation of prisons interconnects the change in the current understanding of crime and its persecution, manifested in the separation of the relationship between morality and punishment; and on the other hand, it only focuses on the problem of the mechanical system.

In Russia there were some attempts to privatise production.

It was when entrepreneurs made offers to prisons to employ convicted criminals, counting in the exchange of a cheap and efficient labour force. Usually, these attempts ended in fiasco because of the lack of regulations over the practices, which should indemnify the investor against the non-payment of bribes, as well as the prisoners from any form of abuse.

FOUR OPPORTUNITIES The Russian penal system, known for its non-progressive variation in comparison to the past, has an almost 200-year-old tradition of sending prisoners to distant places, where they live and work in prison communities. Judith Pallot (2012) remarks that the Russian penal system had lost, in the past, three moments in which the course of history could have changed.

The first was the brutal example from the 20th Century when the revolutions of 1917 and the First World War put an end to the monarchy. By order of Lenin's Bolshevik Party, opponents were persecuted. Aristocrats, nobles, wealthy merchants and peasants as well as members of other parties were imprisoned and murdered. Russian rulers could have changed the tradition of prison isolation of concentration camps when, in 1918-1921, they started to use former monasteries, factories and workshops as prisons. Unfortunately, in 1921 on the Solovietky Islands, the first USSR Gulag was built.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the economic crisis of labour camps was revealed, when in 1951–1952, any of the Gulag complexes accomplished their production plans. With the death of Stalin in 1953 came a huge amnesty, and about one million people were released from labour camps. At that point, the second chance to change the system of punishment appeared, when the insufficiency of economy had become a major factor of the revision of rules and principles of labour camps. On 25th October 1956, the Council of Ministers considered it pointless to put the corrections of norms for labour camps. So, in theory it could be possible to build the post-Stalin system in metropolitan centres and improve the penal code, but this alternative was not taken up. Instead, in 1959, territory of labour colonies was transformed into correctional camps.

The third opportunity appeared after the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the USSR. With the change of regime there were good circumstances for constructing a new prison system as well as to pay tribute to the Gulag victims, which theoretically could start discussions about this national memory, but the possibility was not acted upon.

In my opinion, the fourth moment is a vision appointed on 14 October 2010, as the focal point for the future, giving a new vision for the prison system for 2020. The enhancements would include: Replacing of existing correctional penal colonies (formerly, correctional labour colonies) with a network of new correctional facilities that tries to imitate the gradation from 'supermax' (abbreviation for 'super-maximum security'; the name is used to describe 'control-unit' prisons, or units within prisons, which represent the most secure levels of custody in the prison systems of certain countries) to minimum-security prisons found in the West.

The vision of the vast changes in the Russian prison system from 2010 seems to be further evidence of the instrumental treatment of the penalty system which controls the FSIN. The complexity of Country of Punishment, its diversity and spatial distribution that forces colonies either to adapt or not to different landscapes of Russia, and they create different relationships with their neighbourhood. Thus, one radical vision not necessarily helped by solving such a complex problem as the Russian system of penalty, which has struggled for almost 200 years.

One part of them, as formerly described Puksinka, would have no reason for existing, but there are also some other colonies which fuel the economy of a small town.

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All in all, I am convinced that the incredible complexity of this subject requires a vast research in many fields and on a big scale, engaging: economists, logisticians, sociologists, urban planners, architects, workers FSIN, and most importantly, former prisoners and their relatives.

Firsty, it is important to realise that the Country of Punishment only seems to be absent in Russian society. But according to Professor Zubkov, one-third of Russian society experience, directly or indirectly, the pattern of cohabitation. This huge number of people, who understand the rich prison culture, give us, to some extent, a picture of today's society. In this case, a thick and strong prison wall becomes a transparent border; and the isolated community along with its culture, language, and values, begins to affect those on the other side of the fence.

Moreover, prison culture that infiltrates into society exists beyond divisions and defragmentation of Country of Punishment, representing the country again as the 'Unity'. It becomes obvious that the first sub-culture acquiring prison norms are gangs, who copy the prison standards, lifestyle, hierarchies, and vocabulary.

However, the paradox of Russian society described by Dr. Anton Oleinik in 'Russia's Prison Subculture: From Everyday Life to State Power', lies in the fact that one can find similarities between the prison community and the outside-wall society. Modern Russian society replicates patterns, behaviours, language elements and gestures which come from the prison world. Prison slang 'fenya' – used among criminals – appears in everyday language, and has diffused into world politics and mass media. Therefore, it is a fact that both cultures interpretate mutually.

Oleinik said that the similarity between two societies was manifested even after analysing the surveys, made in order to investigate the level of confidence the population had in the government. As it turns out, both prisoners and society outside the wall show 10 per cent confidence in the government. And the inmate's creed of 'no trust, no fear, no questions' is reflected in the 'every man for himself' attitude that is prevalent on the outside. Oleinik observes that Russian citizens feel that they have no defence against arbitrary abuses in any encounter with the authorities.

On the other hand, the Country of Punishment is an uneven creature made under one law, but in fact completely decentralised and weak. One third of society is involved in this trap-structure and show many symptoms that cannot be healed immediately.

Therefore, the whole system needs structural reforms and improvements. But more importantly, what should be changed in a first place is perhaps the mentality and awareness of the whole society. Only by deep understanding of problems which has Russian penal system on its society, one can achieve some results.

As we could follow in the history, even if there were some historical moments in which substantial changes could have been implemented, but the society could not see or understand why that system should undergo changes, the opportunity was wasted.

Only by education and making available the truth about the Penal System, the next moment in history has a chance to succeed.

Finally, penal colonies require an individual approach to innovation proceeded through thorough research and discussion with local community authorities, with the director of the colony and the range of experts from the field of economy, sociology, architecture, etc. Only time will tell whether the continuing obstacles to reform will be overcome and finally the Gulag’s penal geography and penal system will be reduced to history.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

August 1918: Vladimir Lenin orders “Kulaks” (wealthierpeasants), priests, and other “unreliables”

1918-21: Process of swapping monasteries, factories and workshops into prisons.

17th-20th centuries: forced labour brigades in Siberia

1931: 212,000 people in prison camps

It is known that

This process could introduce cellular structure into

Vision for 2020

it could be possible to

there is no research and chance

of punishment and change imporisonment

of labour colonies

which supports concept

Timeline of Penetentiary System in Russia Photo: Max Avdeev

References:

country/7, Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (English version), June 09, 2013

1

A. Applebaum: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened, New York: Doubleday, 2003.

2

N. Tagantsev, vol. 2, pp. 856 et seq.

3

http://legislationline.org/documents/section/criminal-codes/ country/7, Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (English version), June 09, 2013

6

http://www.prison.org/english/index.htm, June 09, 2013

7

http://www.prison.org/NPA/doc001.shtml#a1, June 09,2013

8

J. Pallot (2012) Geography as punishment: continuities in the spatial choreography of penalti in 20th and 21st century Russia.

9

4

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation V-VII

J. Pallot (2012) Geography as punishment: continuities in the spatial choreography of penalti in 20th and 21st century Russia.

10

5

http://legislationline.org/documents/section/criminal-codes/

http://www.gulagmaps.org/data/, June 09,2013

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

THE PATH I CAME BY: A MODEL FOR A LOCAL MUSEUM VARVARA DEGTIARENKO

M

emory is not a preservation of the past - it is a development of the bodies that can interpret it. Recorded human memory, specifically, is a resource of incredible potential outside its traditional homes of museums, libraries, and the internet. Memories live and change each time that they are recalled, so the only constants are the containers that desire to keep them in this state, writhing and growing. This report explores the intrinsically creative energy of memory and its connection to time and the surrounding environment, and is based on a study of the Russian краеведческий музей (kraevedcheskiy muzei, hereinafter local museum). I will first suggest a new curatorial approach, look at the role of museums in a locality, and discuss the value of memory. I then propose an activity that could reactivate this creative energy and help discover rich meaning in the ordinary margins of life, the fragile spaces which are the most quickly erased by time and which are the most coveted relics in a future civilisation, because they are the human link.

One of Russia’s deepest troubles is how to reflect and communicate about a past rift with human displacement, war, economic and racial shifts and, of course, blindingly bright moments of solidarity, kindness, humour, and humility. The foundation of culture is memory, or if you want, the teachings of history – the documents, objects, ideas, and landscapes left to us from the past as well as the ‘new’ ones formed by those alive today that we can understand with our senses. But it is not absolute – we cannot and should not strive for the kind of utopia when man does not let go of a single moment. It is instead an inherently creative act. Perhaps it is because that utopia has never been known that our capabilities to filter this other junk is taken for granted – we do not need to know how every leaf on one particular tree looks, feels, and smells. But shuffling the heavy folds of Russia’s history indicates that both this existing memory and the cultivation of the imagination to communicate it was prevented from developing in a healthy way.

Over hundreds of years, moves made by the powerful (invaders, tsars, statesmen, religious men, merchants) of a given era, for better or worse, played major roles in its destruction and formation, resulting in a kind of regularly renewed common amnesia.1 Official history has its limits, because ultimately it is not immune to history.

Its proponents must also change.

In late 19th-century Russia a new kind of scholarship arose to tackle the problem of social and geographic study: краеведение (hereinafter, kraeveden’ye). An interdisciplinary study of sociospatial phenomena, it had a very strong primary-resource

educational museum component in a time when other countries only had single classrooms. But it was prevented from developing by Joseph Stalin’s systematic purges of the 1930s, which deprived it of its careful method of inquiry, honed during its coexistence with other fields in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Though it did not die, its strength over the years received the greatest blow possible – disregard – calling a grown bird amateur because it cannot fly, not realising that it has become unrecognisable because its wings were clipped 70 years before.

Its resurgence now reflects people’s desire to remember and to find meaning not only in past lives but also in the present. The children of the aforementioned bird are not going to be born with clipped wings. What I suggest here is that the special role of local movements lie in their ability to strengthen and empower people nearby to act and to know more about what is around them – their family, their town, themselves – not only historically, but in governance and economic power.

Interest in one’s own place is forward thinking in today’s sociopolitical situation. As with many other countries, Russia’s history offers consistent examples of when the search for her place in the wider world during big changes is connected to a particular move to study history and identity. The local museum is a characteristic socio-spatial phenomenon occurring in most contemporary Russian towns and cities. They theoretically, with perhaps the exception of geological or natural collections, display the many facets of the way people lived or live in a given place.

Local museums encapsulate display and promote the territory’s character. Analogous local museums do exist abroad, but not on the scale of Russia, where they have a very unique history and function in society. The scale of local museums in the country is massive, suggesting that the scale of this potential could be as well. As with all knowledge institutions, they are bodies that, without support from individuals, or, in our vernacular, the users, become the results of past issues and values and lose relevance over time. On the whole the tradition of kraeveden’ye and local museums are frequently dismissed as unprofessional endeavours with no method to contribute to a quality discussion of regional development. The joke is really on the accuser: a poor state of museums actually mirrors a

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poor society unable to come to terms with its past.

As museums around the world are drastically renewing their technology and programmes to become more people-centered and understand their collections, this little museum in Russia is poised for a revival. As I mentioned, the philosophy of it had been ahead of its time already because it already considered the local as a crucial part of its actions, and was widespread enough to be legitimised in the Imperial realm then, and government and philanthropic organisations now.

It is also a smaller context – it is easier to be people-centred in a community that has fewer people.

But the most beautiful thing about the local museum is that one realises that it can be absolutely anywhere (as shown by the magnitude of architectural typologies associated with museums) and can contain anything assigned a value. And what is more valuable than the ability to communicate memory, memory that carries in it a plethora of meanings and other links associated with place and people? It is rooted in its impermanence and gathers strength from being referred to, used, and talked about. Ultimately, I suggest here that this communication component of the local museum, combined with the fact that a museum is already no longer bound by its building, can be anywhere and composed of anything with meaning, is a deeply empowering concept on many scales. It is having a curatorial gaze on the elements, spaces, and clock of life which gives it meaning – a powerful tool for education and innovation, selfesteem and self-worth. In this paper I suggest that developing this gaze, the ability to see an encapsulated version of the landscape, people, objects and customs that permeate memory, provides an important new dimension for self-awareness and identity, individually and, for museums and cities, collectively. It can prepare us to see patterns in a different, complex future where the digital space will merge with the physical.

The future museum will involve the user in an atmosphere of memories, values, processes, and real things in digital and geographical space, and there will be curators, storytellers and experts who will understand how to make sense of it.2 But even before the technology of the Internet of Things or another is fully there,3 there can already be perspective on how to use it. A curatorially engaging place can help change the understanding of what a museum should be, the value of locality, the pricelessness of the ordinary, and the creativity of memory.

The research process involved a study of kraeveden’ye’s history, museums, importance of embeddedness and culture in a locality, museological theory, and theories of spatial ways of knowing – particularly cognitive mapping – as a way to represent space over a period of time. There are many other potential paths I could have taken or possibilities of research and which, in my view, still w a n t further attention concerning local

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museums and kraeveden’ye in general.

The first was to examine the former system of museums and to trace their development. The second was to study local museums as the border of an identity and devise a way to measure the distance of the radius of influence from the museum. The third was to study the administrative borders of locality versus the local museum collection’s sphere of influence. In many instances, especially museums and collections formed in the early years of the Soviet Union, the origin of collections cannot be confirmed, technically throwing the whole concept out of alignment.

Even now, local museums that are more supported are a filial of a larger, more ‘historical’ museum not necessarily in its territory.4 The fourth was to examine visitation and audience flow as an indicator of popularity and trace the pattern of influence shifts in Russia. The fifth was to trace influence of notable краеведы (hereinafter, kraeved, or people who study local context) on regional development.

The sixth could be to examine the origins of these kraeveds and to see if they are local, and whether their heritage determines their area of specialisation.5 Finally, the seventh could be a beautiful project to catalogue the abundance of building typologies – local museums are all so very different.

For me, kraeveden’ye was a new concept. Having only grown up in Moscow and in the United States, my point of contact with Russia was always the city’s museums, not local ones in surrounding towns.

My first instinct was that this is a contemporary idea. It would appear to be the responsibility of the local museum to keep track of the patterns of cohabitation we sought in the studio. For me it was a fusion of the mysterious, under-researched and imagined storehouses of things and knowledge of the everyday person, but it was a challenge knowing that they were considered largely irrelevant and similar. Diverse as Russia is, it was another daunting Pandora’s box waiting to be forgotten. What is so striking is that it is hard to tell the difference between local museums and contemporary art. They both play the media juxtaposition game.

Indeed, the world around these museums has changed so much that if before, an art and local museum were placed side by side, the difference would have been stark – the art museum is now ‘catching up’ to a concept already ingrained in these places, if only on paper. It’s the right moment, in this case, for them to come up with a unique response.

As the first step forward, I would like to attract attention to the importance of the small people that make up Russia. By addressing issues of memory and communication, we can use the opportunity of the tradition as well as existing local museums to reflect on the past and start a dialogue about the current state of things on many scales – personal, familial, community, city, country, and global.

As many historians are aware, a time of change

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

is associated with looking backward.

Nurturing the local context of Russia and the user’s engagement with it are key criteria for Russia’s future economic, creative, environmental and political well-being. I will suggest a new way that the cognitive mapping of memory in a locality can provide a source of new meaning, and what this changes for individuals as well as for contemporary museum practice.

A FEW TERMS A museum has undergone many definition changes over the years, but the International Council of Museums has decided that a museum is a ‘non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.’6 This responsibility continues to grow, and the technologies that will be available do as well – the museum’s success relates to how it manages new information.7 It will stay a ‘museum,’ only with more, different components, since many are relatively very young compared to the things and ideas they house. If in its earliest years it was once a microcosm of the heavens, it must now give and receive, and constantly learn how to engage a public not so easily convinced.8 Kraeveden’ye, as was briefly mentioned, means literally to deeply know a physical territory and its past and present condition. It is by nature interdisciplinary, with contributions made not only by specialists but also by a wider circle of people including the locals – a popular science, one could say, about the population, since it is heavily based on primary sources and existing material culture.9 The kraeved, as was mentioned, is the person who is doing the research.

It is a term first found in a Russian dictionary in 1916, which stressed the point of not only knowing, but the process of knowing, as well.10 It is a fusion of the words krai – the name of established areas of the then Russian Empire, and veden’ye – to know.

Kraeveden’ye, under its present definition, still holds a deep meaning but the word even among many scholars is considered dated and amateurish, and it sounds stuffy and boring to many contemporary Russians. Some areas have renamed it regionology, regionistics, or regional studies, as well the western local studies, local lore, or microhistory. However, there is neither an equivalent in English nor an adequate update in the Russian language that has as multivariate and deep a meaning. This is not surprising, given that during the Soviet Union, critical social study was, in a manner of speaking, banned. The Levada Center, Russia’s oldest (1988) and most respected non-governmental public opinion research organisation, has a great deal to catch up on in this sense.

From today’s perspective the original definition does not have a word to match, so I will not, in this paper, move away from it.

A kraevedcheskiy muzei (local museum) displays and explains the history of a Russian town through tools, crafts, clothing, nature, or geography of the area.11 The origins and current state of these museums are different due to the individual nature of changes in a particular place, and how well it was supported before. It could have been given a collection of objects collected by researchers who studied the territory, a given collection of the things looted during the revolution of 1917, it could be the possessions of townspeople, or it could be objects that are not necessarily original to the area or historic, but which have purely educational aims. Because of their tumultuous history and tradition of being supported by enthusiasts, they are not limited to an architectural typology and have, over time, been located in estate homes, churches, storefronts, homes, or village izbas. However, as I later explain, their systematisation

in the 1930s gave them clear divisions of subject matter on the inside. Though of course not always the case, since local heroes are also given the spotlight, the local museum in the context of the USSR became less a portrait of the locals and their lives, as it should be, but an abstract history of official events that become unimportant and irrelevant over the passing of time.

Locality and community. Both words stir up debate since it is now understood that the internet and the process of globalisation means that both are no longer confined by physical borders. The word ‘community’ is too vague12 a term unless referring to a specific group of people, so here it will be used only for this, and sparingly. Locality, on the other hand, is intrinsically linked to place. Constructed by modernity, it combines the individual with the social context of his or her existence, social structures and forms, and negotiates the layers of the interaction between private and public 13 realms. Far from limiting a user to a set of borders, it is freeing. It is tied to the concept of the modern State – our main structure for integrating people worldwide, and therefore requires participation at the local level.14 A community, on the other hand, can exist in a locality only superficially – the individuals inside will remain different.

Territorial identity and national unity. Russia has been historically governed with a strict, assuming, general understanding of some national unity of people, often resolving to a sentimental abstract concept of a nation with or against other nations. People are assumed to be similar in a given time. By contrast, territorial identity is the level of legitimisation of a community in a locality.

Without positive territorial identity, one cannot have effective branding, self-government, or effective distribution of resources.15 It is the perceptive manifestation of the genius loci, or the uniqueness of a place, quantified into a science, and therefore a synthetic expression of the tangible and intangible elements that form an identity. The existence of the intangible is what urges a deeper reflection on identity.16 According to Nadezhda Zamyatina, geographer and professor at Moscow State University, it is associated with the legitimisation of the community as an independent subject of economic and social action: it is the community as a collective awareness of the subject ‘we’ - as opposed to aggregate separate city residents who do not represent the whole. The most important tool for creating and maintaining a collective identity is a collective memory,17 and the most important institution of representing collective memory is a museum.18 The definition of the individual and the collective in the Russian context, especially during the many years of the USSR, was warped to such a degree19 that even after decades of supposed collective action, fixing the country together is a mammoth task. Public relationships in the USSR meant that a subject cannot function on its own behalf - in the public realm it transformed under the status and existence of the subsystem it fell under at the time. Privately, family ethics of course existed, but this did not touch the principles and foundations of public institutions.20

AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY: REMEMBERING THE PRESENT Studying the history of kraeveden’ye is an incredible opportunity to study history from the perspective of how common people in Russia saw themselves in the world or how they were studied – a history of identity. It is the history of what kind of media is created, used, and preserved and for what reason. While I am not pretending to have gone over all of history, let this be an incomplete summary to set the stage for why this field is historically extremely

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significant for the people who inhabit the territory known as Russia.

I have compared roughly the changes in official history, controlled by some power, with real people, who operated independently. The way that they each decide to preserve is unique to the time and circumstance. This cannot be done quickly and placed in a linear timeline because the changes are not nice and neat, and they don’t have a literal counterpart e.g. official identity versus reaction to official identity. The point here is that memory has survived in some format – the monuments of history are not only made of stone and bound parchment, but are also traditions of people who preserve it in habits, sayings, and customs. The ordinary – what is not valued at the time and what can only be seen from the outside, is what is most lacking in history, and priceless hundreds of years later because they are the human link to our ancestors. All that we can be sure about is that they are on two lines of identity that rarely intersect – we cannot only use official history to understand the customs of regular people just as much as we cannot only use local customs to understand official history. What this suggests, ultimately, is that while official memory is written and rewritten, the common memory of ordinary people has been regularly razed to the ground by attempting to forcefully change it for an idea from the powerful, while refusing to support the culture that is already there.

For example, we only know the Russia of many tribes and kingdoms that suffered under the attacks of the Mongol-Tatars – who on their horses, would routinely arrive, take what they wanted, and leave, during the 13th and 15th Centuries – in the form of manuscripts written by monks in fortified monasteries. Unofficial memory of spiritual and practical knowledge survives only in handwritten and oral songs, stories, epic tales of how things were, customs, interpretations and all of this. Also, since Constantinople was well becoming a cosmopolitan Islamic city and the Byzantine Empire was no more by 1453, Moscow succeeded it as the Third Rome, its patriarchy having moved from Kiev only a short time before due to these Eastern attacks. This Third Rome is a prestigious holy city freshly peppered with important official churches and knowledge, a status it has not yet lost. Ivan the Terrible, who, as a part of the Moscow kingdom, united the smaller kings of Russia in 1547 against this real threat, left, among other things, the monument of Cathedral of St. Basil on Red Square (1561). Officially, with this move, Moscow is the center of everything – state capital and spiritual capital. But this, I emphasise, does not tell us what kinds of changes were happening on the ground. Ermak Timofeevich (1532 or 15421584, also under Ivan) sketched the first map known about Siberia during his campaign in 1581, but it survives only in commentary.

The memory about his campaign still exists in songs and folk stories.

The first map of Russia was printed not in Russia, but in Holland in 1612-14.

Officially, we know that the end of the ‘divine’ Rurick bloodline of Russian rulers ended at the turn of the 16th Century and the relatively young tsardom entered what is known as the ‘Time of Troubles.’

Quickly, the Polish, Swedish, Russian courts all pretended to the throne. At this time, we have one of the first internal nationalist movements to expel the Polish with merchant Kuzma Minin (d.

1616) and prince Dimitry Pozharsky (1578-1642) uniting classes in leading volunteers from Nizhniy Novgorod to instill Mikhail Romanov (1596-1645) in 1613. We know this because there is (among other things) a monument to them, erected in 1818, still in front of St. Basil’s today. At this time the identity of Russia was closely connected with Christianity.

The Russian tsar was not only head of state, but it was understood that his power was given to him by God. Therefore, to support this image, the Romanovs paid close attention to suppressing both pagan customs and old Christian ones. Currently, we are fortunate to know about these old customs because of these old believers’ attempts to save books, manuscripts, and icons. At the time of Alexei Romanov (16291676), local cultures thrived – but now we have evidence of it being suppressed: by state and divine order – he passed creeds (1649) to stop ‘devilish’” holidays and games.

Officially, then, we know it was only able to survive unofficially. We also have a personal connection: we can see him, since Alexey’s was the first portrait in Russia.

At the turn of the 18th Century, Peter the Great (1672 – 1725), the first Russian emperor, made radical changes to the structure of government and culture, opening up the country to the west. Not surprisingly, his motives were not 88

accepted by everyone, including his son. The reaction of the crowd on his politics and changes can be traced in the folk art form called лубок (lubok) – or woodcut print. In the 16th Century in Europe, prints rose in popularity because of how easy it was to produce them, but the printing press and printed books did not officially reach Russia in full until the 18th century with Peter, who, knowing its popularity, used it as a way to disseminate information he wanted the public to know. This form of expression was first official, then lay because it was cheap, until the end of the 19th Century, and it illustrated folk tales, stories, and others. The first thing known to be illustrated was the Bible, in the same (‘the past, present, and future of the world and heavens are in this picture’,) visual language as holy icons. This style brings us closer to a cognitive map of people living in the age and how they thought about space. It inspired the illustration for this article, since prints, as they were in Western Europe a couple of centuries before, the earliest format one could

“The barber wants to cut the beard of a dissenter.” Woodcut. XVIII century.

call ‘mass media.’ Despite the official nature of these early images, slowly visual evidence of customs, vernacular culture, and subversive commentary on current events of the day appear.

As an emperor, Peter wanted to place his country in the context of European culture. We can see the introduction of artificial western customs in Russia, but also the beginning of the quest for knowledge within and outside Russia. The appearance of museums in general is associated with the 16 th- and 17thcentury formation of collections made by private scholars, aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and royalty in the west, who collected things from around the world they were so prolifically exploring, either in knowledge or by travel. When it comes to the Russian context, the story begins with Peter. Officially, he established the Kunstkammer (1727), as a ‘one of each’ museum inspired by his eye-opening travels, especially to Holland. In order to modernise Russia, he sent those he worked with abroad, unlike the sons of the wealthy in the West who financed their own children. It happened at a time when people thought they had a close relationship with the heavens – they wanted to create a microcosm of the divine in one place – natural and artificial, of the arts and sciences. This type of

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

museum did not have a long theoretical lifespan, since over the course of the 18th Century, private collections were primarily fine art, and other types of collections (natural, archaeological) became associated with universities or research places, as in the case of Russia’s Academy of Sciences (1725), which was linked to the Kunstkammer. It was meant to broaden people’s world view. The 18th Century saw the first archaeological expeditions into the ancient world – Greece, Rome, and Turkey. In Russia, they begin to study their own origins and compile archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg, slowly compiling information about geography, demographics, and economic potential. The first history of Russia from ancient times until the present day was written in 1768

by Vasiliy Tatischev (1686-1750), which, though meticulous and based on manuscripts, was not heralded, due, supposedly, to a conflict of interest from the German-blooded Russian imperial family. Since the royal lineage was no longer ‘divine,’ but German, it was only published widely a century later, during a century with a very different mindset.

At the end of the 18th Century, travel and research into Russia expanded further. The capital shift in 1712 to St. Petersburg and Russia becoming as of 1721 an empire, he received the title ‘father of the nation’ under the church and under the state. Officially, the exploration of these still largely uncharted lands for trade saw the development of specialists who studied the land and recorded it, bringing statistics and research back to St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765), founder of Moscow University (1755), himself was a kind of Renaissance man, and a major figure in helping to establish respectful studies of the Russian people and landscape, and who codified the difficult alphabet of the Russian language into a vernacular that could be more easily set to print and to learn. The development of these fields – recording the land – also fuelled movements to record local culture. One of the first instances of the study of people is народоведение (narodoveden’ye – literally, the study of people) at the end of the 18th Century at these universities. During my process of compiling actual data about local museums in the Moscow Oblast today, a point of comparison was the ‘founding date’ of a city. Many, I noticed, were given ‘city’ status around the second half of the 1780s, despite their existence long before that. It turns out that the Charter for the Nobility, and Charter for the Towns of 1785, passed by Catherine the Great (1729-1796), increased the power of the oligarchs in a locality, keeping them away from herself, while completely immobilising the peasants, who already had no rights under their control.

The shift at the early part of the 18th Century to the West resulted, in only 100 years, in Russians no longer speaking Russian as a primary language; it was French, the international language of the age, a paradox of identity all the more shocking during the war with France when Russians burned their own city – Moscow. Victory was a victory for Russian culture, but there was less and less of it left.

This is felt by Alexander Pushkin, inspired to write many of the stories of his nanny who knew local traditions. Nevertheless, a History of the Russian State, the first history of Russia, was published in 12 volumes by Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826), sparked interest on the part of the aristocracy and the public in what would be a very different century not only in Russia. In the early 19th Century, independence movements across Europe and government shifts meant that people wanted to reflect on the meaning of national and folk identity.

Locally, there was increasingly a movement of an intelligentsia to study Slavic culture, and the first archaeological society was begun in 1804, the Moscow Society for History and the Antiquities. The Imperial Society for Lover of Ancient Literature was founded during the reforms of Alexander II, with early members being public figures, scientists, and entrepreneurs, and under the patronage of the empress. Their goal was to reprint original works in great collections amassing in libraries and museums.

This society ceased to exist in 1932.

Called slavophiles, they argued for the merits of local culture for the future, while zapadniki, on the other end of the spectrum, thought that the West was still the direction to emulate.

Either way, an ever-increasing emphasis on the development of archaeology and ethnography, often in universities, paralleled the formation of museums because in their studies, this was the kind of evidence they would collect. There was an institutionalisation of the field, and many museums were formed in the territories where studies were conducted, particularly after the freeing of the peasants in 1861 by Alexander II (1818-1881), when many left for Siberia. Since they did not own land, this was a place where land was plenty. This shows early museum logic in the local public in these early years, where the development of local activities – trade and community development, etc. paralleled the formation of the museum. This was also when the dictionary of Vladimir Dal (18011872), which includes the differences of regional speech, came out, as well as the re-publication of the forgotten history of Tatischev.

These early museums were called regional museums, changing to kraevedcheskiy at some point at the end of the century. Indeed, they predate the Ethnographic Museum (1902) in St. Petersburg by as much as 40 years, which suggests that the continually expanding imperial collection of ethnography did not set the trend, but only joined one. The museums of the Russian institutions that appeared in the 19th Century continued to improve before the revolution, having scientific and educational functions, using diverse collections in museum-like classrooms. Some possessed funds, had exhibition halls available for the public, and were the best not only in Russia, but apparently better than Europe.21 This intent to educate and enlighten using the primary-source material evidence around them suggests an important moment – the beginning of the fusion between official and common memory. It is hard not to ignore a period of juxtaposition of the Avant-garde’s theorising on the role of space and a new humanity as kraeveds dug feverishly for its roots. Both ideas were forward-thinking.

Despite the political turmoil between 1917 and 1927, the number of local museums rose from 94 to 576,22 and the number of clubs and societies rose from 61 to 1112. Vladimir Lenin’s philosophy was to nurture culture and museums, supporting them as tools for propaganda and learning about areas for economic purposes.23 The local museum’s purpose over time was political, cultural, and educational – all heavy responsibilities expressed, as we can see, in ICOM’s current definition of a museum.24 The Central Bureau of Russian history was founded, an agency of the Academy of Sciences, headed by the academic C. F. Oldenberg. A striking fact is that the massive boost in museums, combined with the large-scale looting of estates and monasteries, meant that local museums often received objects that were examples of a time and not objects connected to the space.

The 1930s Soviet systematisation marked the beginning of a decline in kraeveden’ye as a critical research endeavour. In the 1920s, known as the Academic Period, kraeveden’ye flourished, when it was massively supported and was known as a science, and a part of larger academic discourse in history, geography, ethnography, and others. But from 1929-1931, it suffered a serious blow under the Case of the Academy of Sciences, when 115 of these scholars, active members of the Academy, were arrested under charges of counter-

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revolutionary activity, exiled, forbidden to do their work – and with this move kraeveden’ye was politicised, becoming an ideological exercise for amateurs. In 1927, the Central Bureau came under the leadership of Pyotr G. Smidovich, approved by the central party, and in 1931 was re-organised into the Scientific Research Institute for Methods in Kraeveden’ye, with clear economic goals for the fiveyear plan and a recipe for how local museums should be organised: Nature, History, and Building Socialism.25 After 1945, a fourth section was added: the Great Patriotic War. This structure lasted well into the 1980s26 despite three periods of resurgence.

The first came just after the war: a jump of research about Moscow in preparation for its 800th birthday in 1947. The second, after the 20th meeting of the Central Party Congress in 1956 that decided on the removal of the cult of Stalin; with the purges officially behind them, kraeveden’ye was able to gain some breathing room and begin to study more freely27 in addition to introducing the subject into schools and expanding museum work. The most important thing the kraeveds of the 1930s to 1960s did, according to Vladimir Kozlov, current president of the Union of Kraeveds (founded 1990, Moscow State University for the Humanities is their home base) was to at least preserve as much material evidence as they could for future generations to study.28 The last was the 1980s, when the real merits of glasnost and perestroika began to show themselves. The Soviet Culture Fund started and revived many kraeveden’ye programmes, although not concurrently with museums, since many still just sat on their collections. However, then, just as now, there was no unified method or model with how to work – it continued in a disconnected, supposedly amateur fashion, and professional kraeveds say they suffered from the fragmentation. A general theme in my discussions with experts, however, was that museums founded particularly during this time, like Podolsk (see below) are, on the whole, freer, more interesting, better managed, and have more ideas. In the early 1990s, a large number of local history publications arose especially in cities with an existing tradition of it – in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, and Kostroma. Also, there have been movements in institutions of higher education – Moscow (Moscow State University for the Humanities), St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Tver, etc. Museums also act as educators: in Penza, the museum is a leader in the study of the area. 29 In a 1988 museum theory and practice textbook, museums are categorised by type and by function. They were a part of a system that was between an ‘ideological and practical balance.’ The museum was then defined as ‘a closed system in a constant state of development, like in the territorial sense, like in meaningful relationships.’30 While these words skillfully toe the party line, they touch on a very important fact never lost under any regime – that the state of the place and its people can be seen, heard, touched, and felt in the story of the fate of its culture.

THE POST SOVIET SLEEPING BEAUTY Because kraeveden’ye battled with its status as a discipline and its museums were not considered part of the neutral ‘high’ culture of music, arts, film, and literature of the Soviet Union, it did not receive the kind of networkwide respect, preservation and support of the new democratic government after 1991.31 Culture in Russia over the last 20 years has been in an uncertain state.32 Left alone by the government in an act to force the private sector to activate only paying employees, they were left with limited means of production, dissemination, and promotion both within 90

the country and internationally.33 Lack of funding had forced museums into stagnation, so incentives happened primarily on the independent level – what some would call amateur. A small amount of private foundations provided funding and grants, but on the whole the fiscal incentive to do so was not high.34 The resulting actions were quests for meaning, not profit; a situation that has always forced museums to operate on a different logic.

But this was reasonable: meaning is rarely ‘official.’ Even great advertising schemes and political propaganda targeted values close to home.

However, Kozlov offers a striking anecdote about the effect of local history on a large scale, one initiative supported by the government. On the eve of the 850th anniversary of Moscow (1997), the administrative decision to introduce the history of Moscow into a half a thousand schools in Moscow made a huge effect on students who did not know the history and culture of the city and had no guides or books to their own city. Suddenly, they had a taste. They frantically searched their houses for old photos, letters, books, asked parents and grandparents. For many, kraeveden’ye must start with their family and region, and only then move on to more official history, which cannot easily explain the things closest to you.

The current scope of museums is massive – 1140 out of a total of 3000 – not counting potentially a 25 per cent margin of error (which would make it 1425) that they are all listed, roughly estimated from my count of the museums in the Moscow Oblast using three different online sources.35 Museums are also, largely, outside of any network between themselves. In times when everything wants to be a happy network and it is next to impossible to stay out of one, they are beyond it.36 For better or worse, this has given a certain freedom to those that have some kind of support base – a combination of the a good municipal government, charitable funds, or an affiliation with another, larger, more ‘historical’ museum institution that is typically not in the immediate vicinity, and enthusiasm on the part of locals.

This devotion has its downside, since it seems they are all too often regarded as amateur. The museum is also the main way ordinary people can apply to become part of municipal activities and receive funding from a public budget. While looking into the whole of them has been painstaking, it has also been fantastic because one realises that it reinforces action on the part of locals, showing immense potential for adaptability.

The system of power in Russia is like the branches of a tree.

Officially, one tip of a branch does not communicate with another.

The only way to see what is going on is to look at each one individually in the context of his or her structure of power. Given the uneven changes happening in Russian society, government, and bureaucracy, it is difficult to stay abreast of them all.37 There are political and governmental structural changes, but the constituency itself is also shifting, putting into question former needs and values.38 In 2004, unlike the previous 13 years, governors in municipalities in Russia were chosen not by locals, but by officials in Moscow, who often did not know39 the complexity of the place that they were about to serve, doing a severe disservice to local business and culture. Called назначенцы (naznachentsi – “assigned”) their interests often tended to be unpatriotic40 and sympathetic with those back home instead – with Moscow, not with the business, culture, or other issues of their new territory.41 With Putin’s system cracking and, as is often the case with informal channels emerging in places that need it, there is no belief that there can be any change.42 Indeed, the system worked at one time, but he well knows he must also reevaluate its effectiveness; there are problems that it cannot fix anymore. It is too simple to be effective and is incapable of quickly reacting.43 Economic growth has been too high for social problems to keep up, leading soon to political instability.44 During perestroika and the 1990s, the local initiatives did not get weaker but only stronger, especially in institutions that looked for new forms, methods, or practices in a new world. It became important, as it had 70 years before, to re-evaluate museums, especially local, and the memory they carried for places. Over the last 10 years, efforts have multiplied. Valentina

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Titova, now director of the Orlov local museum, in her 2003 dissertation on the use of these museums to reform government bodies, offered practical results in a new model showing that individual museums need support that is tailored to the locality.45 Viewing her work in the context of the last decade, it is telling that just a year afterwards there was a surge in private support for museums, such as, most famously, the Potanin Fund for Changing Museums in a Changing World (2004). Not long after, in 2006, the Federal Target Program for cultural projects begins to provide support.46 More and more, there is interest into the person, not only the preservation of knowledge, resources, or places.

There are many reactions in this vein and predictions that it is this kind of approach that will work in the future.

It is exactly this meaning that memory and communication can find that invigorates a society, a fact understood by museums and individuals who operate on this grass-roots logic. But perhaps it is not an understanding of what works ‘best,’ but the trust that it will ever happen – an optimism. Even Putin said this past April that, in support of youth programmes in the Russian Geographical Society, he believes they should merge caring, active young people with really useful and meaningful initiatives.

Of course people want meaning in life – but what then? In order to determine what is really useful, one must find the smallest kernel of it first; assumptions or prejudgments are, at least, ineffective.

A museum that was recommended to me to visit on numerous occasions is Podolsk Local Museum, a short train ride from Moscow to the south. It has a great reputation outside Podolsk and is perceived as a successful museum due to the passionate work of its employees and director, Lyubov Mikhailovna Slasheva.

When I visited, my guide, Irina Vladimirovna Nevskaya, provided me with such an excellent tour that I often lost my critical gaze on the process and instead just learned about the uniqueness of Podolsk.

Their recent renovation (2011) and move into the central building in town, the former seat of the city’s municipal government, gives this museum physical and historical prominence. The mayor’s, as well as a board of CEOs and directors of businesses’, continued support indicates a standing desire from many sides of the community to see its many activities and collections thrive.

The grounding bronze meridian-like line embedded diagonally into the entire length of the exhibition’s second floor geographically indicates the museum’s position on the former central road of the city. The exhibition style plays with the juxtaposition of time and space by allowing the viewer to come into contact with every period at once. Attempting to describe this museum to colleagues back in Moscow, I realized it was futile: they were still stuck with the stereotype that they expected to hear about, one that I fear will continue to surround these museums for a long time yet.

But on the other hand, locals discover a treasure under their feet, one by one. ‘Before coming to work here, I never set foot in the museum,’ a guard told me, a resident of Podolsk who calls it her hometown.

She said that now that she is here, retired, she listens closely to everything that the tour guides say because it is so interesting.

Incredible projects with clever, memorable names

are happening in other museums in order to update missions and exhibitions, or make something new.

There is a river of ideas, food for the soul and pragmatic initiatives. Thirty-three local museums out of a total of 207 participated this year in InterMuseum, which, since 1999 has become the most important museum festival in Russia, where professionals exchange concepts and technology. The theme this year is public education – indeed, educating the public starts with one person at a time.47 Oral history in museums, schools, universities, radio shows and journals are also coming up with innovative ways to capture memory, given the resources and will. Online networks are attempting to broaden the museum’s base and test new theories, like the Laboratory of Museum Design.4849 The Potanin Fund for Museums has every year helped a handful of local museums get projects across like ‘The Museum: Sharing Vision’ with the blind in Novosibirsk, or this year’s brilliant ‘Atlas of Rome’ in Saratov, which researches the city’s time-honoured water system.

But not everyone can win and not everyone knows how to begin. The line becomes blurry considering the majority that are not classified as ‘local’ also complete great projects, but the category of museum is besides the point if it or other initiatives are doing different things, starting dialogue with the locality, breathing life into a place, making it trendy, actual, and valuable without dipping into the confetti of pop culture.

INTRODUCING THE NEW MODEL “Ask … the older generation what he or she most clearly remembers and cherishes about their home town and the answer will rarely be the public square, the monuments, the patriotic celebrations. What brings us together with people is not that we live near each other, but that we share the same timetable, … habits and customs …We attach too much importance to art and architecture in producing an awareness of our belonging to a city or to a country.”50 – J.B. Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time.

The urge for a better functioning system to emerge is not only manifested in introducing something new and different, but also by finding the value in and repurposing the old. Connections in the system are not necessarily the museums themselves, but a fluid interaction of other components such as individuals, businesses, hospitals, transport, and educational places, ones that interact on the same platform and on the same timetable. There is

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evidence of activity already, and complex underlying factors occur on several scales.

Absurdity and juxtaposition are facts of everyday life; they are always mixing with memory. The term kraeveden’ye is broad, and it speaks to a more important issue in today’s global world to engage, to learn, to react, to change. It is a contemporary idea to have a museum that is devoted to ‘discovering a place.’ If the museum is largely unpopular, it simply no longer fits into the context it was at some point a part of. Like the Avant-garde, which also flourished during kraeveden’ye’s peak in the early 20th century, it had a lot to do with the battle with present illusions in order to create solutions moving forward.51 Why should we need to care since it’s clear that moving around has become a necessary part of our increasingly mobile society?

There is a balance to strike in the changing complexity of local in a world increasingly global. I want to clarify that I am not arguing that staying in one place is what we need, or that somehow globalisation is a negative process in praise of some identity that must be protected.

Locality is, on the contrary, the freedom to move – it is a better functioning system. Locality in Russia is ready to be accented to support national needs.

‘Do you feel this tension in the room? It’s called multiculturalism,’ says Brian Kooyman, American psychologist and professor of English at the International Institute for Humanities and Linguistics, Moscow. Kooyman’s classes do not stop questioning the nature of relationships and emphasise the lack of an absolute truth. The air in the classroom can be thick, and it’s not only a question of saying the right words in the right language.

Education, cities, politics, culture, gender relations, immigration, and ecology are just some of the sensitive subjects that are discussed – diplomacy is as important a tactic as vocabulary. To his students he says: ‘You are ambassadors of Russia whether you intend to be or not.’

The problem is not any disagreement; it’s how to move forward.52 It’s a risk – the tension is a stretch of the imagination. The imagination is really what can help to focus on the valuable and not on the details of the conflict. It can help to see past it; we can remember our own place, but we must imagine another’s – a great imagination can grow a sense of empathy. Brian breaks the awkward silence in the classroom that came on as a result of a misunderstanding: ‘Avoiding the things we fear only prolongs are cultural dysfunction. Getting to know people is naturally uncomfortable; however, over time, we can at least learn to be tolerant of each other.’

According to Zygmunt Bauman, the locality is tied to identity.

As a construct of modernity, discussions about locality and identity occur as a result of not understanding whether we really have it and not understanding how to be in order to move forward.53 Locality in the post-Soviet context suffered in the wake of changes from the top, which destroyed local structures of influence and the social landscape: most importantly, these changes did not provide the local powers the resources to develop themselves: ownership, material wealth, etc. Out of this arose difficulties in forming political, economic, and cultural context for national development.54 Not only this, but the legacy post-Soviet transition economies suffer from is an image made during a very different political era, and which now constantly obstructs their future aspirations.55 Nadezhda Zamyatina, as mentioned previously, has done field research that supports this concept in the Russian context. In her work, she examines the connection between territorial identity and locality with economic potential and satisfaction in what she calls ‘embeddedness,’ or ‘rootedness,’ of a person – a large role in which plays the museum and quality culture in a locality.

She explains that in Russia, the following factors affect the ‘roots’ or health of a place.

The first is economic and geographical location; the second is the harmony of power, ownership, and community, the third is local capacity for innovation, and the last – socio-economic development. Where is it located is extremely important, especially the distance from an administrative centre and the 92

power of its industry: the farther the better, usually. The harmony of power, property/money and community allows diversification to happen. The education and creativity of the local population leads to innovation, irrespective of the kind of industry present. It provides a good reason to live there.

She looks at the case of two oil towns in Yakutia: Muravlenko and Gupkinskaya. Muravlenko, which was dependent on the administrative centre, did not develop independently. It was like a colonial periphery, while the one farther away, Gupkinskaya, had to be creative to support itself. Muravlenko looks to the central local centre, living in its shadow and becoming subservient, a phenomenon not good for direct democracy. Gupkinskaya, however, has many committees and groups that help to organise the community for its proper needs: ‘The formation of local identity and culture is a necessary factor “rooting” the local community – along with the formation of favourable socio-economic conditions, the “fixing” of the population of the city occurs by promoting creativity and innovation – entrepreneurship, not negativity. Between Gupkinskaya and Muravlenko in this respect there is a huge difference.’ Participation in the political process is improved due to the rootedness of officials, and that officials know their territory to be able to serve as informed citizens.56 The museum often becomes the most important active institution integrating the cultural life of the community and is the main communication platform.57 What many cities have as heritage from the Soviet era are mono-cities. This is a problem because the system that created them has fallen apart to support them. Now these regions need to be developed to diversify and learn to produce many different things – so with industry, so with museums. Attendance at the Gupkinskaya museum came as a result of the museum’s integration into the life of the urban community is an informal communication platform. Unlike a monopoly, widening the sphere of activities and the offerings that a museum must have is a healthy business plan to involve as many people as possible.

Therefore, the local ‘context’ is just the beginning of a thought process done on many scales; the tension is a balance of the local versus national and local versus global. Globalisation underlined the fact that any territorial changes are not only physically territorial or geographical, but before that are cultural, social, religious, and political.58 National unity has persisted in Russia and has been very important for a sense of pride, but it’s through supported local movements from which changes filter up to modify the system, making connections with administrative powers and business leaders. And in any case, whether a countrywide web of intense solidarity is relevant59 or necessary is debatable – the distribution of money and influence is changing worldwide anyway. We can compare with Europe, where regions in many places are more networked and have more leverage than nations.60 Indeed, local organisations and movements like Realnost, Memorial, Chto Delat’?, the ArchNadzor group (SovArch, archi.ru, Moskva Kotoroy Net, MAPS, Protiv Loma), Archpolis, the reading cafe “Chitalka,” LavkaLavka, Land of Children summer camp, secret celebrations of pre-Christian holidays like Maslinitsa, etc., are already making tracks to pull back the curtain to reveal the real Russia that has been buried in distrust, secrecy, and manufactured truth. Preserved for 70 years in ordinary lives, the revival of the search for meaning is not guided by a desire for ‘unity.’

Like a bank account, when creativity and innovation are provided for – in education activities, enthusiasm, people, money, and knowledge – the gains come back in other forms organically, unexpectedly, and strongly. Museum work, on many scales, is not just the playground it is often assumed to be. When there is support, there are people to make great projects; the effect reverberates. Three years ago, IBM published a global poll of 1,500 CEOs, who identified creativity as the number 1 ‘leadership competency’ of the future.61 Three years ago Strelka opened its doors. Cultural advocacy groups in the west are researching and promoting the close ties between the roots of innovation and development. The same thread of his-

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

torical context weaves these things together. What can we do now on the move whose rootlessness has spurred individual enterprise, to emphasise the natural independent character of these places? We but only lately has the drive refocused to memory. Here are some can involve people, and what they are talking about now are prag- examples that are making waves in the States. Storycorps records matic interdisciplinary programmes to gather people from different interviews with everyday Americans, hosts them on National Public walks of life to bring better solutions to difficult problems and good Radio, and has collected more than 40,000 at the Folklife Center business plans to help cultural institutions expand their influence. at the Library of Congress. They have been organised by themes Competitive Identity, a term coined by Simon Anholt, is a projected pertinent to Americans such as military stories, Latin-American national reputation or brand of a country or city determined by stories, and approaching those who suffer from memory loss. Even relationships between innovation and communication between by virtue of the gesture to collect these stories and preserve their people, policy, culture, tourism, brands, and investment. The citizen legacy makes way for a better sense of trust in people, as well as in this case is essential. He states that people are ‘drops’ in an ocean also promoting such things as self-esteem, individual self-worth, of drops – their values influence each other.62 While there is a parallel stronger bonds between people, and fostering relationships.68 David line of the official and unofficial, maybe with a better system, this Lynch’s Interview Project, a road trip of interviews with ordinary border can become more transparent. But Anholt has the following Americans, has been hailed as extraordinary. While Lynch’s artistic suggestion: that policymaking should happen not in boring offices, direction gives these stories prominence, they are still the basis.69 The but in special places citizens value, and should be influenced not Sketchbook Project and Memoir/Project, the work of Brooklyn-based only by political experts, but by the artistic layer of society which Art House, has collected the art and stories of thousands in tangible has for a long time managed to comment on current events more and digital form. The tagline for Richmond, Virginia’s Secretly, Y’all efficaciously than politicians.63 organisation, sharing true stories in front of an audience,70 ‘Just Finally I would like to bring the attention to the importance of between us and whoever shows up’ reinforces the fact that it is still the individual. The five the small connections senses – vision, touch, that make the taste, smell, taste, all difference. influence memory, esSo it is about fospecially concerning tering storytelling and the particular relationcurating memory in ship with the atmosome form. Traditionsphere of a place – ‘… ally, museums have neurological investigacurators to organise tions suggest that our powerful stories out processes of percepof objects, editors and tion and cognition refilmmakers organise sult from the instantathem out of images, neous grasp of entities writers out of words, towards the details, and so on. However, rather than the other one missing dimenway around.’64 Reflectsion has been place. ing on experience is While performance not restricted to a logiand installation art are cal series of events, but known to successfully the whole package of create alternative atthe human condition. mospheres, and conThe value of the orditemporary architecnary cannot be underture itself has increasestimated. Indeed, hisingly placed greater torical collections ofemphasis on this mode ten prize common obof thinking, place as it jects because they have exists and morphs in somehow survived memory has not been the passing of time, explored. Places, like and habits, which are objects and stories, the hardest to change, are real – as is, debatshape life. Often, the ably, digital space, and common has more of the consequences of an influence than the our memory are seen 65 extraordinary. in our everyday deciAgain, locality is sions. directly connected Since we already with the concept of have in Penza, for exmodernity and stateample, the museum hood by negotiating of one painting, there the person with his or is nothing stopping us Memory and knowledge (the book) is acquired spatially (a place) through the senses: smell, taste, touch, hearing, and sight, and stored (the bookshelf book) this her societal context, from curating a museway. A curatorial approach to the spatiality of memory and knowledge can direct the and therefore negotium of one tree, or any approach to projecting it in reverse. ates public and private other combination of space. The small-scale components assigned legitimisation of an individual’s identity directly empowers him or a value enough, not only those that are a part of narratives. Furtherher as a vehicle for change. Individual actions are important ‘strate- more, if there are components in a locality to which many people gic’ economic moves in life, as small as the difference between how a assign a rooted value, then we can begin to see patterns of meaning person acts in the morning and in the evening.66 According to Alex- in a real place. The curatorial gaze around us on the living, always ey Levinson of the aforementioned Levada Center, the approach to aging people and things, fostering, again, a kind of empathy with a understanding a study is to understand a social process. In a process, world that is continually dying and being born again. In this way, change is the constant: ‘I am not a post-modern scientist, but there we can not only imagine anew the purpose of a local museum and is no difference between truth and lies.’67 The museum then, cannot formulate it as a place that facilitates the creative energy of memory pretend to know – it is a facilitation tool between individual ideas, in its community, but also to provide a sharp new tool to formulate processes, and memory. knowledge that is based on humanity’s spatial awareness. We not A couple of examples among many forward-thinking museums, only acquire memory in a spatial way, but we can also develop how memory initiatives combined with community action, are the to project it out, in reverse.

District Six Museum in Cape Town and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile. We can also compare with American ‘The “method of loci,” as first described by Simonides [the Greek memory actions that focus on the ordinary. America is a nation poet, 556-468 B.C.E.] (cf. Yates, 1966), is explicitly spatial. In this Varvara Degtiarenko. The Path I Came By: A Model for a Local Museum

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technique, subjects improve memory by putting to-be-remembered items into some place or spatial context. Retrieval is effected simply by “going” to that place in thought [...] Events occurring within separate contexts are efficiently recalled in those contexts and minimally confused between contexts, though the events themselves might be highly similar. The mental maps we have of our home town, our neighbourhood, and our house are all examples of the kinds of spatial contexts within which events occur, can be coded internally, and can subsequently be effectively retrieved or recalled: Studies by Smith, Glenberg, and Bjork (1978) and Bellezza and Reddy (1978) indicate that the power of the method of loci might lie in its ability to take advantage of this natural state of affairs.’71 Theories of memory having a particular architecture have existed, as mentioned above, at least since the ancient Greeks, though others later on have attempted to build a structure or mnemonic device for it either inspired by real forms or the different ‘compartments’ of the human skull, as it is shown in early phrenology. The concept of the ‘method of loci’ has lasted in the form of Memory Palaces, used since the Roman Empire to remember long speeches, and is used today to improve memory and in memory competitions.72 Giulio Camillo’s Theatre of Memory is another offshoot of this, represented in the form of a theatre hall, with the seats compartmentalised for different ideas that are remembered.

Taking this a step further, we can to attempt to include the dimension of a locality and to create a cognitive map of a real place. Because cognitive maps focus on the meaningful, they exclude the irrelevant.

MAPPING MEANING: REPRESENTING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN THE NEW MUSEUM ‘As the same thing in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these.’

‘Man is the measure of all things.’

- Heraclitus, 500 BCE

mind-map (a path) of the memories or issues that are important to them and to curate the components that illustrate these into a story, exhibition, or event.

This model is explained as a manual – an intervention in the form of a pop-up museum – that can be used to remember why a place and its people are unique, reinforcing the ‘extraordinary of the ordinary.’ The reflection upon everyday life and communicating it to others can foster a sense of respect for the meaning carried by the aging things we are surrounded by.

Through refocusing on what is close, we can understand that on a small scale, the mind is a body of components which, through all the senses – auditory, vision, touch, taste, smell – remember moments, landscapes, processes, objects, or people – in real space. In this case, the museum building is only one of these many components.

This can develop the expressive potential of the museum by connecting it with relevant, meaningful concepts sourced from the user’s values, which most often are traceable to memories made via the senses. Perhaps a combination of these ‘paths’ will show us what is missing from larger discussions, while fostering communication between individuals. It can provide a view into the mind of a small area. Or, if they travel, for example, it can show the distance covered mentally by people living in a small place. It can show what a geographical map is a very long way away from showing.

As we all know, memory is an extremely personal and valuable thing, but the hardest task is to understand how to use it even for ourselves. Because it makes us who we are, logically, it informs how we function with people at home and when we travel. It introduces a new way to qualitatively collect information about the local community – reimagining the depth of a space. As I mentioned, a geographical map is only one dimension of a map that is actually in living memory, and can give much clearer directions because it is on the same scale of complexity as the events in life. The intent is to facilitate communication and trust, encourage remembrance, while sending an invitation to discover or rediscover the treasure of the present ordinary.

Mind-mapping, because it concerns the way a person interacts with his or her environment, can help explain patterns. The user is a world in miniature, facilitating what is around them in some way by making actions or by doing nothing. The information that can be communicated is always somewhere – on a real map, but most importantly, in the mind, with spatial coordinates in real spaces and places. If a group of mind-maps in a particular area are analysed, we can potentially determine general value drivers in a place, and we can devise better-functioning systems – of governance, economy, BARBER SHOP

DUMP ARCHIVE

BRIDGE

STORY A DISTANT CITY

After Marcel DuMONUMENT CAFE WEBSITE champ said that his Fountain is art, we GRANDMOTHER MACHINE STREAM SMART PHONE OFFICE were freed to think HOLIDAY about the world LAMP around us as art.

Then just after the AIRPORT Avant-garde, the ANIMAL BUICK paradox of the conHOSPITAL CONCERT temporary art museum comes into beFOREST MAYOR ing. But long before, PLAYGROUND Heraclitus menPHOTOGRAPH LIBRARY tioned that change POEM is the only constant LOCAL MUSEUM and we are the only SONG GROCERY units that can help us understand it. Ev- The components of a museum are the objects, narratives, processes, ideas, and places that are given meaning and value and are stored as memory erything can become in habits, knowledge, and emotions. valuable, as soon as a value is assigned. The issues of museums worldwide in general apply and active culture that support innovation and promote an adaptable on a different scale to the issues faced by a local museum. In Rus- society. sia, however, there has been a tool to help find these answers that Because it contains everything in a very small capsule, it can was clipped of its wings early in the 1930s. Like reading is a tool to also become anything. It infinitely expands the amount and nature understand text, contemporary kraeveden’ye can help understand of collections, because this says that all collections are always context. Memory is a creative act because it is the ability to reflect, temporary – some just last longer than others, like those of larger not a collection of facts. established museums, for example. But even they are ineffective All museums must constantly change and to propose a single if they aren’t talked about today. If the museum is an experiment, solution for all of them is not my intent. My project aims to help collections are the experiment’s independent variables; the museum this dynamic process begin – by encouraging people to make a is the dependent variable - It does not change but it is always in flux.

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Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

I am not implying that everything is a museum nor am I suggesting that what one knows already is enough; only, in the words of Boris Groys, the museum ‘logic,’ expands far beyond the scale and content of what is stereotypically viewed as a museum.

We can start with one path from one person, done with another person. Then the map-makers can switch roles. It is also important that the map-makers keep the map – it belongs, after all, to them.

While this is an individual task, drawing a map together enriches the experience. The process of helping someone else understand how this memory came to be, in the place where they both are, anchors a thread of a root down for both about the present. Communicating this memory is a process that can have a therapeutic and deep effect on both the speaker and the listener.

Some benefits of this activity could be: VALUE. It reinforces the value and self-esteem of an individual by the time spent in communication. It strengthens bonds between people and promotes understanding and new relationships between them and the environment that makes those memories so priceless.

It preserves a heritage when constantly ordinary places are replaced and memories are forgotten during the destruction of a building or the death of a loved one.

DYNAMISM. It could encourage them to participate in museum activities, which might help also develop a drive to get involved in other initiatives as well. While exhibitions are the project of the curator, one about locality is nothing without the locals. It can diversify the kinds of projects that can be done, instead of monopolising on one type of product, exhibition, or message. It seems reasonable that we should be able to ask the local museum about the kind of people that live there and get a dynamic response.

ETERNAL YOUTH. Being an expert in something local is admired, modern, and necessary in our contemporary sociopolitical situation. In the age of multiple career choices that can be made, young professionals could feel the need to being an expert either in their own local history or even across the various micro histories that make up the fabric of Russia. As these young people get older, the freshness of constant discovery can’t be lost.

This curatorial approach to space and locality is a skill to foster now. The future is close when digital space spills over into the real – we adapt quickly to it already. Currently there is no Internet of Things connecting real objects for us except in technology-enabled objects as has been demonstrated by developers with, for example, SmartThings. This kind of gaze on space is so crucial for our future as a platform for discussion about issues on many scales. It could LOVE. The late Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt, founder of the Union potentially help us to make sense of the overwhelming number of of Kraeveds, and respected, prolific historian, and the son of the components (things, ideas, etc.) that continue to accumulate in real famous polar explorer Otto Schmidt, said that kraeveden’ye is a and digital space. science, and thrives under a combination of specialists, local input When radio or GPS-tagged objects can communicate with each and support from administration. However, the most important other because of enabled sensors, what will a future ‘collection’ look thing about kraeveden’ye is love – love of place and more importantly, like? Potentially, it would not look that different, since it is still we of people. History teaches dignity, respect, and love for fellow man who need to use the new information to make a statement. Because – not collective official memory, but through the small parts that as a rule, grass-roots movements only happen on a person-to-person make up the whole. basis, these museums could potentially be a portal from which we can promote, discover and track emerging patterns.

MEANING. On the smaller scale that local museums often The practical effects of this are many, and I imagine can expand work, this can help dispel the ‘boring’ or traditional approach to into diverse kinds of events, from an exhibition of a person’s life, to what a local museum is and help redefine it. The more people that a storytelling event, an artistic tour, or ideas for other artistic aveget involved, the less it will seem like a ‘museum,’ and the more nues. It can be carried out both by young and old. Some ideas: The interesting it can be. It is to be individual, original, and customised map and its encounters can be transferred into a digital format for to the space. map-makers to keep and share, but also creatively transferred into a real satellite map. The physical maps themselves can be added to the FORGIVENESS. The local museum can be a facilitation museum as a part of their collection. If this memory is really part of tool, a place of discussion and a locus of change. The power of a larger story that can be discovered in other memories, an organic communication and openness about memory is that it helps network can potentially grow. One could organise a workshop to democratise history and foster real, difficult discussions about do them together. If digital technology is not at hand, a constantly changing exhibition of maps is still possible. Map-makers could, sometimes, take a group of listeners on their journey.

The application of this method is intended to be universal – it approached cities and people of all ages. Newer settlements that have sprouted over Russia during the course of the last century due to the expansion of industry or other reasons are equally as strong, despite foreign origins. Areas that are ‘multicultural’ are especially rich, since by sharing These many “museum” components, belonging to people in a particular place or dispersed among different places, determine the value drivers in a memory, two differcommunity or particular locality. Aerial photograph of Verea, Moscow Region. ent cultures make issues in current events. The ordinary can be a process of intellectual memory together uniquely in the configuration of that place. empowerment, about diversity73, unity74, about place and space, While mapping is only a beginning, this act makes a case that about society, about politics, education, and other components.

I hope will work like an enzyme to shed light on kraeveden’ye as a BOUNDLESS. Activated as a system, we can explore the further way to push an individual to reflect on situations through landscapes, potential of the local museum, attempt to repurpose the community processes, objects, or people – using all the senses that influence system, acknowledge issues of residents, and potentially find new memory. In this way, they are acting responsibly towards themselves, purpose for local action. Short of calling life a system that has not and can encourage this relationship on other scales – family, been explained yet in diagrams or equations, the local museum is neighbourhood, town, region, country and world – and to pass it on. self-renewing because of constantly changing time, people, and I see it as the first step in the formation of a more ‘reactive’ museum environment. that is an active listener and facilitator of ideas.

Varvara Degtiarenko. The Path I Came By: A Model for a Local Museum

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THE PATH I CAME BY: A walk along a memory

A walk along a memory You are holding a blank map that was made for you to draw one memory, as it has shifted and grown over the years that you have had it. It is a simple activity you can do to record the space of the past in the present in order to see how you got to where you are today. Then, you can try to give directions to others about how you reached these places. It is a living, little, local, pop-up museum.

How can you map a memory? Follow the seven steps below, and use your imagination. Remember, remembering is a creative act. It is not about facts. There is no wrong answer.

It is the equivalent of discovering a dragon in your morning coffee, or a hearing a cow-fish bellow an aria as she sells you a ticket for the next train home.

STEP 1: Invite someone to think of a memory valuable to him or her. Agree on a time to talk.

STEP 2: Ask them to imagine the path that they took to make that memory.

STEP 3: Ask them where have they have gone since making it.

STEP 4: Write, draw, or audio-record each stop.

STEP 5: Together, mark them as directions on the map.

STEP 6: Celebrate. You have just made a museum.

STEP 7: Take it further. Use the labels included. Spread the word about what you are doing.

This is about the extraordinary of the ordinary. It is a small guide about how to think about time. After you finish it, it is the path of a memory that will continue to live as long as the map exists, though it would help if the original landscape stayed the same. At least, the main road is not likely to change.

We can make memories only through the senses we were born with: our hearing, our taste, our smell, our sight, and our touch. We make memories in places and remember them in places. A geographical map is only one dimension of a map that is actually in living memory, and can give much clearer directions because it is on the same scale of complexity as the events in our lives. The process of helping someone else understand how this memory came to be, in the place where they both are, anchors a thread of a root down for both. It pulls back the curtain a little on the mystery that is the present, and gives a hint about the future. It is an important memoir in a real place. It is an intervention in a local space. It is a way to put down roots.

When done together, it reinforces the value of the time spent in communication. Communicating this memory to someone is a process that can have a therapeutic and deep effect on both the speaker and the listener.

It is reassurance that someone wants to listen. It strengthens bonds between you and promotes understanding and new relationships between yourselves and also the environment that makes memories so priceless. It preserves a heritage when constantly ordinary places are being replaced. Memories are forgotten. Buildings are demolished. Messages are deleted. Loved ones pass away.

Local museums, you can use this to reimagine the depth of the space you interpret as a museum, and to learn what is meaningful to your audience.

But, it is also for you, reader, and someone you care about. The reflection on

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everyday life and communicating it to others can foster a sense of respect for the aging things that surround us and how much meaning they carry.

This activity encourages you to draw directions to memories or issues that are important, and to curate the stops that illustrate these into a story, exhibition, or event.

The points, explained: 1. This valuable memory, explained by anything â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a landscape, a pattern, a process, an object, a person, an old idea, a school, a holy place, a song, a monument, a hospital, a playground, an archive, a stream â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is your everchanging museum. A local museum can also be part of your museum.

2 and 3. When did they have to turn? Who did they meet along the way?

Where did they have to go? What tools did they have to use?

Why did they have to make that turn?

6 and 7. Transfer the map and the encounters into a digital format for them to keep and share. Add the map to your museum. Ask if this memory is really part of a larger story that can be discovered in other memories. Make more time to curate an exhibit together or event to communicate it to others. Ask people who are nearby or who the map-maker talked about and if they are interested in commenting. Make labels for each place marked on the map with a story, artwork, a play, a song or just an explanation.

Organise a map-making workshop. Make a constantly changing exhibition of maps in your museum. Organise a time when the map-makers take listeners on their journey.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Varvara Degtiarenko. The Path I Came By: A Model for a Local Museum

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NATURE 1 Preserved

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NATURE 2 Transformed

NATURE 3 Compound

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

THIRD NATURE Margarita Googe

Nature and human: tangled relationships The city as an urban space is usually perceived as the opposite of natural environment. ‘Nature in the city’ is a collocation that contains the conflict: urban with its infrastructure and density was constantly seen as totally antinatural environment. Simultaneously, the city has been constantly bringing nature back on its territory; with city growth there is an assumption that the need in nature was transforming. Therefore, not only the role of nature has been changing along with history, but also the object has been acknowledged differently. Thus, to understand the way the city can encompass nature in its structure, a certain overview on the transformation in perception on nature can be done.

Humanity today is quite all-sufficient with the equipment it has surrounded itself with, as an extension of our bodies, which now occupy almost the entire planet. Although, we still depend upon the physical environment – nobody has cancelled your biological component yet. Besides, there are disputes going about biophilia1 as a hypothesis about our deep affiliations with nature that are rooted in our genes, along with the concept on the Next Nature2 – an alternative vision of our environment and behaviour considering our experience with nature mostly as a recreational one. Still, many of us are concerned that we have never been so distant from nature than we are today.

today, did not perceive the world as something external from him: he was a part of surrounding nature; basically, the human was the world and he investigated it as if looking in a mirror.

Yet, human-nature relations have never been linear, rather they have been developing according to parallel storylines that can be tracked from various spheres. Here there will be an attempt to make sort of a sketch of how these relations have changed through history and how we can comprehend the existing state of human-nature bonds. The following contemplations are mainly focused on the events and symbols of lifestyle as the part of the Western world history and read through the lens of perception of nature in urban space.

Glorification and keenness

From union to disruption The pantheism and polytheism of ancient times3 depicted the situation when a man, as we can read it from 1 Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia 2 Koert Van Mensvoort and Hendrik-Jan Grievink, (2011). Next Nature 3 Around 2500 BC, http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/390101/monotheism

Margarita Googe: Third Nature

The first shift was evoked by the increasing influence of monotheism4: the idea of spiritual growth through life did not correspond with constantly changing natural cycles that remain the same order – nature showed no signs of spiritual growth. God created the World, thus, God is not the World. The contradistinction that emerged was amplified with the idea of original sin: nature that tempts the human and obstruct him from righteous life.

The next big shift was during the Renaissance5 when Petrarch and Dante glorified the beauty of nature, like the poets of Ancient Greece. Nature was being reinvestigated, alongside the changing role of the Church – the role of individuality was emerging along with a rising interest in nature that was the source of inspiration and experience.

Curiosity about the natural processes initiated the development of natural sciences: having gone through the break-up with nature, humanity appealled to it again, but there is a fundamental difference: a man never looks in the mirror to see nature, rather, he opens the window and watches the scene from a distance.

4 http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/390101/monotheism 5 http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497731/Renaissance

Challenge and distance The era of discoveries6 represented nature as a source of new knowledge: Columbus, along with other explorers, was gaining the knowledge about the world; Erasmus was developing the theory of humanism; while Luther nailed his ‘95 theses’ onto the doors of the church. The Reformation process completed the era of the religious domination and so began another round of the story of human-nature relations.

However, it is rather enthralling to look at other spheres, e.g. fashion: both men and women admired complex styles of clothing and hairstyles, pallor as a sign of belonging to an upper-class – applying an incredible amount of powder to one’s face and wearing multi-storyed wigs7. These elements, as a metaphor of the significant gap between nature and human in the mode of life, beautifully match attempts to bring nature back to the city in an extremely manicured and totally controlled form8, as if there was an agreement that defined the conditions of nature within the human habitat.

Comfort, scale and anxiety Humankind is totally absorbed by the process of investigation of nature capacities9 and while the city improves 6 time span of 100 years from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/196140/ European-exploration/25962/The-Age-of-Discovery 7 http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/98641/Notions-ofnature/#vars!panel=922191!

8 Château Vaux le Vicomte as an example of landscape architecture, http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/98641/Notions-ofnature/#vars!panel=932342!

9 Industrial revolution, technological and economic progress that stared in the late 18th Century in Great Britain and then spread all over Europe, http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/98641/

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ANCIENT TIMES

MONOTHEISTIC ERA

RENAISSANCE

AGE OF DISCOVERIES

ENLIGHTMENT

INDUSTRIAL REV.

XX

XXI

2500 BC

600 AD

1300

1450

1600

1750

1900

2050?

HUMAN IS NATURE

hellinism, poetry & observation

spiritual growth

organic whole

ORIGINAL SIN: NATURE TEMPTS MAN

the new world

individuality

God created Nature

polytheism & pantheism

INVESTIGATING NATURE, MAN INVESTIGATES HIMSELF

mapping nature

SEEING THE POTENTIAL

sripitual discovery of natural sercets new fashion PRACTICAL UTILITY OF NATURE

dared to enroach resources TAKE OVER

natural catastrophe new technology MASS PRODUCTION OR / AND DESTRUCTION

scientific economic

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS: REVENUE & HARM

Fig.1 Timeline of changing human-nature relationships: from ancient times to the 21st Century, different perceptions of nature can be tracked. Originally bonded together, different events in history affected the affinity with nature. The link to the full timeline versioncan be found here: http://is.gd/IZuyND

its living conditions10, the gap keeps on growing: man deliberately eliminates natural presence. With this new knowledge, he realised his power: the exploitation stage had begun11.

First experiments on nature brought unexpected results and gave grounds for anxiety for the future. Catastrophes of the 20th Century12 created an image of fragile and innocent nature that had no chance to survive. On the other hand, this provoked serious thought about human impact on the planet, which gave a rise to new industry of ecological movement13: starting from manifestations and strikes, it turned into eco-products and a widely promoted healthy lifestyle. Behind the scenes, exploitation was only intensified by the mass market.

Tracing the pattern With the city growth and development it is quite tricky to examine the perception on nature of today. Comfort, scale and anxiety are the compounds of the lifestyle turned into a huge market industry: eco-products, sport as a way to health, product labels as a source of vital information about the origin of a product. The distance between nature and humanity is strengthened by Notions-of-nature/#vars!panel=937858!

10 First asphalt roads (1824) constructed, First cable car (1871), Refrigerator (1834) Telephone (1876), Wireless Telegraph (1895) and Light bulb (1879) were invented as well as many other things that hve changed life in the city.

11 Manufacturing and electrification of factories (1900) 12 Nuclear tests (from the mid of XX), Bhopal disaster (1984), Aral sea crisis (1960-s), Chernobyl (1986) 13 WWF (1961), UN Conference on Human Environment (1972), Waste management and recycling (1960s), ISO 14000 series of environmental standards (1993)

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design, and fashion has now capitalised on this with the trick of replacing labels: from facial powder and corsets, fashion is all about ‘the natural look’; buying a ‘closer to nature’ attitude and appreciating organically manufactured goods with the extra comfortable conditions of modern housing. City comfort is already a built-in human feature that bends the image of nature into the form of a fragile organism that needs to be preserved. It is also becoming a luxury product: in order to get access to nature, some people are moving away from the cities and proximity to nature is a great value.

Information and technology we possess in the combination with anxiety and scale are forcing us to develop a plan of saving the planet from ourselves. In order to create sustainable systems, modern man refers to areas of scientific knowledge, looking for inspiration from biology and physics, computer science and programming just as ancient man was applying to his gods for an answer: ironically, we experience dread that can be compared only with primal fear.

In Glorifying greenery in parks, we are expecting ecological miracles from the recreational paradise. Simultaneously, we more greatly appreciate technological innovations as a product of advanced human knowledge – younger generations hardly see at all the magnitude of complex natural systems that have existed for millions of years.

The first is based on the presumption that nature has a great economic value; there are useful and useless components of nature: the former should be supported and improved, the latter should be transformed or removed. The main aim is to maximise the profit in using natural resources. Areas that should be preserved are a sort of investment in future consumption. The second approach can be called spiritual and is based on ethical, moral and aesthetical aspects. Respect to nature is the main point; all nature is valuable – regardless of the possibility of using resources – this approach is central to environmental movements.

The scientific point of view is the result of the emergence of ecology and landscape planning. The aim is to study natural processes in terms of rational productivity; it combines the practice of non-interference to the natural processes and implementation of scientific basis to practical use.

It seems every notion of nature that ever arose in history never vanishes – with each subsequent generation it stratifies one to another; intricately combined, the reasons of human activity on nature are hard to disassemble. So far, several moments have become clearer: it will be much wiser of humanity to glorify not only a beautiful image of greenery, but natural design and perfect accuracy of its ecosystems: turning this mode into consciousness is long overdue.

Triple view In general, there are three main approaches to the environment today.

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Third Nature The aim of the research is to examine existing situation not in order to criticize current politics and attitude to nature but in order to create an realistic image of our perception on nature as set parameters under which it is possible to take action. This research is focused on nature, which can be found in Moscow.

I defined three types of nature and explored it from the location, statistics and also perception and value.

NATURE 1: PRESERVED? The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations14 This is certainly a presupposition of the presence of non-man-made nature in the city – almost each and every natural object has been transformed by man. Nonetheless, it can be classified as non-man-made, because selected areas have been subjected to minimal human impact. In this way, this type of nature comprises specially protected and protected lands – where natural complexes and objects of great special environmental, cultural, scientific, aesthetic and health value are located.

These lands are most valuable for their high ecological productivity, which results in the environmental regeneration that is extremely important for Moscow. As ecological productivity depends on biodiversity, so in order to reduce the negative factor of the urban environment, the biodiversity of natural areas should be supported.

According to the classification, there are seven types of specially protected lands: state nature reserves, including biosphere reserves; national parks; natural parks; state nature reserves; and natural monuments and sanctuaries.

Moscow currently has around 17 500 ha which is 17 per cent of the total area of the city. The first specially protected area is Elk Island, which got its status only in 198315.

14 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nature 15 The concept of targeted conservation programs and the development of specially protected natural territories of Moscow for the period 2011-2013. https://www.mos.ru/documents/index.

Margarita Googe: Third Nature

In general, policy on natural areas in Moscow can be seen as three stages that had different landmarks:

1970-1980: Paternalism in nature During this period there was a deeply embedded stereotype of urban planners and landscape architects: nature should be controlled and сonstantly improved in the city. Generally speaking, there were no distinctions between natural and green zones: some very specific views on natural areas that were intended for human purposes (or, exploited) can be illustrated by the task that was put forward in the 2nd General Plan for Moscow (1971), which was to convert almost all of the urban forest, even such large areas as Elk Island and Izmailovo, into parks and public recreation areas.

In the late 1970s there was a proposal for a new recreational park with the necessary elements of infrastructure for the entire area of Kuz’minskii forest park; city parks or squares instead Troparevsky, Teplostanskoy, Troitckogo and Golubinsky forest parks; there was also the project for improvement of the Fili-Kuntsevskiy forest park including drainage of wetlands, slope stabilisation, laying water supply networks, sewerage, water supply, construction network, catering facilities, etc. The Silver Forest (Serebryaniy Bor) was to be turned into a recreational area with cafes, restaurants and other public service institutions, a 4km ring road and advanced engineering infrastructure16.

php?id_4=121711 16 G. Morozova (Moscow Ecological Federation) , B. Samoylov (Russian Scientific Research Institute on Environmental Protection), Environment protection in Moscow 1990-2010, http:// www.mosecofed.ru/1265345870.php

Moscow profile: Constantly growing population1 Population density is higher that in other megacities – comparable only with New York and is around 106 people / ha (numbers of Moscow before expantion)2 More than 40 km of infrastructure to 1 m² of territory3 Pollution index: 94.69 comparing to Berlin – 27.904 Transport emissions extends up to 200 km around the town5 Relatively protected by green belt only from north6 About 70% of the city is in noise discomfort zone7; 33% of human health is directly related to the condition and quality environment8 306 days per year exceeded emissions of nitrogen oxides recorded near the major higways9

1 “The population of Moscow - not 12, but 20 million people”, 2011 ( http://www.nr2.ru/moskow/323710.html 2 http://www.riarealty.ru/news_ house/20120327/397482434.html 3 State Program of Moscow Environment for 2012-2016, 2011 4 http://www.numbeo.com/pollution/compare_cities.js p?country1=Germany&city1=Berlin&country2=Russia &city2=Moscow 5 Two large patches of high air pollution are marked on the Russia map, 2009 (http://ecoportal.su/news. php?id=38964) 6 http://www.ecolostudy.ru/eco-86-7.html 7 State Report on the Environment in the Russian Federation in 2007. Ministry of Natural Resources. 2008 (http://www.mnr.gov.ru/part/?pid=1032).

8 World Health Organization 9 State Program of Moscow Environment for 2012-2016, 2011

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1980-2000: Environmental Protection Renaissance The efforts of ecology and biodiversity experts within the city resulted in the establishment in 1987 of the first specially protected natural zones along with new legislation on nature, providing a system of protection and a long-awaited definition of the difference between natural and green areas. In the General Plan for Moscow and Moscow Oblast of 1988, a new section was included: ‘Environmental and recreational systems.’ Eventually, in 1999 and 2001, the laws about green spaces and specially protected natural areas were established accordingly.

Thus, during this timespan, the necessary legal framework and basis for the conservation of natural zones in the capital was created; large numbers of natural lands have been allocated under the special protection.

2000-2013: New old vision Legal adjustment here is characterised by a series of amendments to the law that decreased the total square meterage of specially protected natural areas; this time span is also described by a shift in priorities: now it is more important to construct sports facilities, schools and kindergartens (with infrastruction provided). As indicated by the authorities, this is due to the lack of areas in the city for the construction of these facilities. Also, the withdrawal of the land from the category of protected areas that were under garage complexes is now authorised with no environmental impact assessment and compensation.

Define the type of srecially protected land

Specially Protected area is a single object or natural complex with less than 500 ha square

NATURAL MONUMENT

NATIONAL PARK

Area has objects of historical and cultural heritage and/or of great value of aestethics

Does area meet the criteria of Specially Protected Natural areas for Federal level?

PARK

Area has a potential for ecotourism or recreation, has aims for keeping biodiversity, has conditions for mass visitors

NATURAL PARK

FEDERAL SANCTUARY

There are long-term residents or limited ecomonic activity, termination of which will bring negative effect on residents

Does area meet the criteria of Specially Protected Natural areas for Federal level?

SANCTUARY

REGIONAL SANCTUARY

There is no residents and no economic activity

Does area meet the criteria of Specially Protected Natural areas for Federal level?

NATURAL RESERVE

Good intentions There is an obvious acknowledgment of the value of natural areas for the city, in fact there are controversial methods of keeping these natural areas. A certain image of government activity is transmitted: confident statements of the authorities about plans of redevelopment within protected lands with an emphasis on the recreational component and recognition of the fact that Moscow is in need of greenery: ‘We have a very swollen area of protected natural areas of 17,000 ha, only about 10,000 ha of which are green areas. The rest are street and road networks, thirdparty constructions, infrastructure […]

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Fig.2 Algorythm to determine the type of a specially protected natural area according to The Federal Law of 14 March, 1995 N 33-FZ “On Specially Protected Natural Territories”. Start from the top to define the type of the land.

we need more time to conduct an audit of the Moscow areas, and define those that actually require a serious defence.’17 ‘The main problem of Moscow in this case is a shortage in greenery.’ – Anton Kulbachevskiy 17 Anton Kulbachevskiy, Head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection (Interview for Afisha from 13.11.2012 http://www.afisha.ru/article/power-reportkulbachevskij/)

‘We will build eight sports centres with ice rinks, football pitches and grounds for volleyball, basketball and other sports. Three of them will be built on Elk Island. Nature will be not threatened, as these objects will occupy only 850 ha of the current 17,000.18’ ‘These amendments are intended to 18 – Interview for Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 03.11.2011, http://www. rg.ru/2011/10/03/zavtrak.html

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

1970

Construction on natural areas allowed

2nd General Plan: the task to convert all natural lands in recreational zones

1980

1990

First specially Compulsory gentrification of protected natural areas natural zones established

2000

New chapter in criminal code: Environmental crime

2010

Temporal construction allowed Law on specially protected areas

Law on green areas and

Schools and kindergartens included to the amendment

Sport facilities are allowed to construction on specially protected natural areas

Pathernalism on nature: strong opinion Environmental Renaissaince: creation of legal New old vision: on that human impact on nature in the base on natural areas could have been a start ecological function is in less city is requied for new policy priority

Fig. 3 Timeline of major events on legislation in Moscow from 1970 to 2013 representing shifts in policy on specially protected natural lands. Three main stages can be defined: basically, existing policy on Nature 1 echoes the 1970s. The link to the full version of timeline: http://is.gd/tktHY9

further increase the involvement of protected areas in Moscow to various types of economic activity. This is contrary to the meaning of their creation and, from our point of view, is unacceptable.’19 Environmental policy in Moscow is currently showing the shift in the perception on natural areas: their recreational and economic functions now are prioritised regardless of its main purpose of having an ecological effect on the city, special terms of maintenance and better environmental performance. Despite the negative condition on the

1983-1991: 113 PAs have been established (7035.8 ha) 1998-2003: 11 PAs (10,174 ha) 2006- 2010: 36 PA(1,900 ha) 2011: None of the 183 planned were created1 PA – protected area, http://www.biodiversity.ru/programs/moscow/doc/Moscow_ecoproblems_2012.pdf

19 Michael Kreindlin,Program Manager for the Protected Areas of Greenpeace Russia. Expert in environmental law

Margarita Googe: Third Nature

environment in Moscow, specially protected natural areas do not work in accordance with its main function of maintaining the ecological conditions of the environment.

Despite the fact there is a legislative base on specially protected zones, this protection only works when the economic interest for Nature 1 arises.

NATURE 2: TRANSFORMED The physical world including living things as well as the land and the seas20 Under this definition, nature will be considered as green spaces in Moscow that are subjected to human interference, being the part of urban environment. These areas are divided into the following categories: – of common use: parks, gardens, squares, boulevards, urban forests – of limited use: green areas of medical, children’s educational and research institutions, industries, sports complexes, residential neighbourhoods – for special purposes: areas of 20 http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus/british/ nature#nature_4

sanitary protection, water protection, conservation and reclamation, fire zones, cemeteries, green areas along roads and railways, botanical, zoological and orchards, nurseries, flower and greenhouse farming21 In turn, green spaces of common use are split into different types according to the terms of use and estimated density. Urban forests are open to visitors for recreation, gathering berries, fruits, mushrooms and medicinal plants of the tourist, cultural and recreational activities. Forest mode is set at a density of recreation of 2-3 people per hectare. Forest parks also provide a free visitation regime. There is economic activity possible, but forestry legislation is rather strict for this, with a recreation density of 10 people per hectare. Gardens and parks are aimed to render citizens with recreational, educational, cultural and other public services in a green environment, with an average density of 100 people per hectare.

Boulevards and squares are designed for a short-term stays and transit walking in a green environment for more than 100 people per hectare.22 21 Federal law on the Green Fund Protection in Urban Settlements, http://base.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online. cgi?req=doc;base=PRJ;n=43302 22 Federal law on the Green Fund Protection in Urban

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ha, 000

around 15-20 per cent. A sick tree is an environmentally untenable tree, which exists only for its own sake: its photosynthesis is very slow and of poor quality.

50

45

optimal amount of green areas for Moscow due to regulations*

40

38,8

35

35

33,8

33,43 32,51

30

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 NUMBERS GIVEN FOR YEARS Moscow Comittee for Architecture, General Greening Plan General plan

30,12

31,04

2020

2025

time

PLANNED NUMBERS GIVEN FOR YEARS FROM GENERAL PLAN 1, 2

from 2007

3, 4

from 2011

* number given in SNIP 2.07.01-89 "Urban Planning. Planning and development of urban and rural settlements"

Fig. 4 There is intrigue around the amount of green areas in Moscow: according to official sources, this number fluctuated significanly. Despite the intenton of increasing total square of green spaces, planned numbers are far from optimal amount

‘Moscow is known as one of the greenest cities around the world, but it is not the result of purposeful activity of the city authorities, and just a historical reality, a gift.1’

Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of the Moscow City University of Management Haris Yakubov

Quantity Moscow Green Fund23 is approximately of 32 per cent of the city square, and the availability of green areas in the category for common use is 20.2 m2/ person.24 According to regulations, green areas should be at least 40 per cent of the city total square; availability of public green areas per person – no less than 16 m2/person25.

As the Green Fund includes not only Settlements, http://base.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online. cgi?req=doc;base=PRJ;n=43302 23 a complex of specially protected natural areas, natural areas, forest parks, green areas, urban forests and other areas where there are forests and green areas, water reservours, and other natural and man-made natural objects. Territories of the green fund perform the ecological, sanitary and recreational functions.

24 General Scheme of greening the city of Moscow until 2020 25 SNIP 2.07.01-89 “Urban Planning. Planning and development of urban and rural settlements”

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literally green spaces but all the lands that fall under this category (such as areas under construction and abandoned plots), there is less than 32 per cent of proportion: Moscow lacks at least 8 ha of greenery. For instance, total area of the Central Administrative District, CAD, is 6,620 ha. Furthermore, according to the report, there is no reserve for increasing the number of green areas in Moscow.26 Until recently in the CAD, the amount of greenery was 5.1 m2 per person – exactly the same number that was in Moscow in 1913, when the town itself was not much bigger than the existing Central District. According to the latest data, in the CAD now there is even less greenery – only 4.6 m2/person – just to compare: central historic district of St. Petersburg has 9, 6 m2.

Quality Greenery is not only about the total square area it occupies, but also it can be of different quality.

According to monitoring27 in the late 1990s/early 2000s, there were only around 30 per cent of trees in parks considered to be healthy; the number of healthy trees in the streets and along the highways was

Because of this, Moscow Green Fund represents 350 species of trees. There are only six main dominant species: small-leaved lime, Norway maple, balsam poplar, ash, Pennsylvania, ash-leaved maple and silver birch, which are the most vulnerable in the current level of pollution.

For the last 10 years, except for during times of crisis, there have been an average of 150,000 trees and 300350,000 shrubs planted in the cityevery year (1.5 million trees and 3 million shrubs in 10 years). Only half of them have acclimatised because of the current improper greening system. To develop a greening programme that would fit the environmental conditions of Moscow, a continuous monitoring and recording is needed.

Unfortunately, the Information and Analysis Center for City Greening, established by the Government of Moscow in 1998, which had been collecting and analysing statistics of urban green economy for more than six years, has ceased to exist due to lack of demand from the city authorities. So it was with the Scientific and Methodological Council on gardening in Moscow, which was also abolished.

Monitoring therefore stopped in 2011.

New prejudice: ‘There is no single ecosystem that can sustain itself without human involvment.’1

1Sergey Zagrayevskiy, artist, doctor of architecture From the discussion on ecology in Moscow for TVC channel: http://goo.gl/6CnRk

26General Scheme of greening the city of Moscow until 2020 27 Monitoring of green space in Moscow (interview with Haris Yakubov), http://www.ruspitomniki.ru/articles/page215.php

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

highest possible continuous chain of sanitary green areas. In this case, the effect can reach its maximum potential.

Small green areas perform more of a decorative function. Moreover, biodiversity of the area is also very important for the enviromental productivity – each species depends on the services provided by other species to ensure survival. It is a type of cooperation based on mutual survival and is often what a ‘balanced ecosystem’ refers to.

Fig. 5, 6 ‘Tsarytsino used to be a park, but now it is sterile lawn.’ From above: urban forest Tsarytsino before reconstruction and afterwards

Green deserts The prevailing trend in the world of urban greening considers it a priority to create large arrays that form the

A manicured grass lawn (which has a low level of biodiversity) results in the decrease in the biodiversity of insects and animals. Moreover, it has a negative impact on the condition and life expectancy of trees, suppresses natural regeneration and the growth of restorative forest herbs, and creates a sharp deterioration in the living conditions of animals. Furthermore, this type of primitive beautification causes not only ecological damage but also economical loss: significant annual costs for maintaining the ‘green scenery’ will be required.28 28 Galina Morozova, Why one cannot create grass lawns under the canopy of tree plantations, http://www.mosecofed.

A desire to ennoble the territory does not match with the way ecosystems work. This approach of greening came partly from European practice, which appreciated perfectly organised green space and not-so-natural technologies.

Actually, today’s international modern greening practice is based on the accounting on the requirements for keeping the balance of species; one can only hope this trend will one day reach Moscow.

Amusement or health?

Atlhough green areas are less ecologically productive in comparison with natural areas, they still participate in the process of environmental regeneration.

According to a survey, the main motivation to go to the park is a desire to stay away from the city bustle and transportation, to have access to fresh air (72 per cent). Twenty-eight per cent of the respondents go to parks to meet friends and three per cent to participate in sports or other different activities. ru/1312453664.php

Berlin Boosting Biodiversity Berlin, probably is one of the best examples of greenspace practice and conservation. In the University of Environment they develop programs of wildlife in the city and issues of biodivercity. Biotope Area Factor (BAF / Biotop Flächenfaktor BFF) and the Compensation Measure are the factors that included in program of greening the city where nearly 20% of its total space are in protected woodland, and less than 50% of total space developed. BAF is the proportion of green space that new development in Berlin must have in order to preserve greenspace even in dense urban areas.

Green areas can be of many different types, but are counted in the BAF according to a weighting system based on: evapotranspiration quality, permeability, rainwater storage capacity, connection to soil functioning, and provision of habitat. For example, a surface is counted 100% if it has vegetation connected to the soil below and supports flora and fauna. But vertical greenery (e.g. on walls) up to 10m in height is counted at 50%. The BAF must be followed where there are binding Landscape Plans (circa 16% of Berlin), although it is more widely used on a voluntary basis due to support for the measure.

The Compensation Measure (Ausgleichmassnahmen) works to compensate for green areas lost in urban development. It is legally binding, built into nature conservation legislation and building permits. In each case, the most appropriate compensation is found from the existing inventory of all areas in Berlin, prioritising where there is a lack of greenspace. After compensation, there is a legal obligation to check its effectiveness. 1

Fig. 7. Park at North Station, urban-seminatural park in the centre of Berlin

1 http://wwf.panda.org/?204591/Berlin-biodiversity

Margarita Googe: Third Nature

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Thus, the vast majority of park visitors are not looking for attractions, but for tranquillity and contact with nature.29 So one could say that current greening policy is skewed towards recreation and direct use; greening practices only destroy existing ecosystems – our care of green spaces is more likely a battle with nature. Whereas in fact, its maintenance or, conversely, reduction in interference, are actually the best ways to keep the greenery in Moscow.

NATURE 3: COMPOUND Nature is all those things that have an autonomous quality and fall outside the scope of human power30 In the urban environment we cannot consider nature apart from the city, as it cannot be limited by the borders of allotted specially protected areas, parks or fenced lawns. Nature 3 is not yet recorded by legislation or any other classification that would fully describe its features. Here is an attempt to comprehend this type.

As was said in the previous section, the condition of green spaces in Moscow is not of a high quality; in this case it was essential to examine Moscow from the perspective of biodiversity: I was looking for the areas that are attractive to species sensitive to a variety of environmental conditions. Obviously, the most well-studied species in Moscow are birds, so the selected species are the black redstart, barn swallow, meadow gavel and wheatear – they prefer areas of rich plantlife and insect diversity and a certain proportion of open areas and places that can be used as a shelter.

Target areas were found in Kapotnya and Pechatniki, 62 and 67 per cent of industrial zones of the total square of the districts accordingly.

These areas have rich meadows (hence a rich variety of plants – the main producers), which provide a high 29 “Demand by the different services in the parks of the city of Moscow”, the report of the survey Research Institute of Social Systems 30 Van Mensvoort, Koert; Grievink, Hendrik-Jan (2011) Next Nature – Nature Changes Along With Us. Actar. ISBN-13: 9788492861538

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GRADATION SHOWING EVIDENCE OF NESTING (ASCENDING)

<10 10–100 100-1000

AREAS WITH HIGHER PRESENCE AND HIGHER PROBABILITY OF BREEDING OF SPECIES non-industrial zones

NUMBER OF SPECIES PER SQUARE

industrial zones

Fig. 8. Nature in the city can be found not only in the areas that are controlled by incessant human care, but also in places that are absolutely unattractive from the citizen’s perspective. Map shows habitats of black redstart, barn swallow, meadow gavel and wheatear – species that can be a relative index of biodiversity of the area. Solid circles indicate nature presence in industrial areas, ignored by human attention.

presence of diverse types of insects (in terms of ecology, the primary consumers); these conditions, with the combination of abandoned plots around industrial zones that are inaccessible for visitors, are turning into zones of human non-interference and as a result, functioning ecosystems.

species resistant to the conditions caused by production areas: temperature is usually higher near plants and factories, there are also micro-elemental emissions in the atmosphere. Some of these microelements can be attractors for particular plant communities.

The combination of industrial buildings and human-unfriendly landscapes can be rather friendly for nature. New biotopes that are formed within the urban landscape have potential for new approaches to the ecological problems of Moscow and issues with biodiversity.

This case can find practical implementation: there is a greening programme for the industrial areas that was established in 1984; it provides proportions of sanitary greening and decorative planting. The list of recommended plants can be improved by studying the ecosystems that emerge on the outskirts of its territory.

The presence of black redstarts, barn swallows, meadow gavels and wheatears, which are attracted by high biodiversity near industrial sites, can actually be a sign that there are some

Natural hotspot The described area is situated in between the Mar’ino, Brateevo and

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Kapotnya districts on the riverside of the Moscow River, which has a total area of 349.2 ha. This area has a very high level of biodiversity: there are 163 species of birds registered during monitoring,31 which is a very big number for Moscow; also, the presence of 63 rare and endangered species from the Moscow Red Book was recorded.

There is a massive block of electricity lines and oil pipelines, special regulations of which form a corridor of intersecting sanitary zones. The proximity of Moscow’s river gives an additional protected zone: a minimal distance of 50 metres, where no permanent construction or activities that could have a negative effect on the water are allowed. This area is not widely used for recreational purposes by citizens, partly because its conditions are not comfortable for recreation, and partly because of the concern that electricity lines have impact on human heath. There are also illegal landfills that decrease the attractiveness of the area for visiting.

Authorities have already estimated the potential of the sanitary zones under the elements of infrastructure: there is 900 km2 under the electricity lines, which is 8 per cent of the city area32. Several projects were proposed: in 2008, the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkow, proposed to move them underground and use the land for construction; ‘Inteko’ was the winner of the competition for developing the planning scheme for the plot of 674,3 ha occupied by power lines. In 2010, the current mayor Sergey Sobyanin proposed to, again, move the grid underground and to construct new roads on the new routes. For instance, to remove 1 km of power lines underground costs around €2.5m33.

Although this territory has been transformed by human beings several times, now it is a huge territory that is basically protected from the major anthropogenic impact in the form of reconstruction, unreasonable greening 31 Research Program “Birds in Moscow and Moscow area”, leaded by Galina Volzit and Mikhail Kalyakin, http://www. birdsmoscow.net.ru/ 32 http://www.rg.ru/2010/11/30/lep.html 33 http://www.rg.ru/2010/11/30/lep.html

Margarita Googe: Third Nature

Fig. 9. Once transformed, nature rapidly restores the area that is now of limited human use: almost no activity is allowed because of the regulations on the sanitary zones under the electricity lines

Fig. 10 The coverage of the overlapping sanitary zones of electricity lines, oil pipes and Moscow River

policy and functioning preservation systems. The corridor of overlapping sanitary zones is turning into the corridor of nature.

What I can see here an alternative network formed by the power grid: green areas can play the role of a wildlife corridor, reconnecting the natural areas broken up by human interference and contributing to such factors as colonisation, migration and species’ interbreeding that are crucial for maintaining Moscow’s ecosystems.

This natural corridor is an external effect of the functioning system of sanitary zones of the elements of infrastructure. Thus, these elements are crucial for the maintaining the ecosystems of the area creating a unique biotope within the city borders.

Last year, it was proposed that this area be included in the category of specially protected natural areas, and adjacent territory came under the plan of the new park. Yet, a new system of regulations is needed.

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Such sites of natural hotspots are in danger of being built-up, as well as those that are adjacent to the territories of industrial and military zones, which are now being gradually re-oriented into shopping, recreational and business areas.

Conclusion NATURAL ECOSYSTEM

There was an attempt to record a new type of nature that is emerging in urban landscape as a result of conditions similar to natural but perceived as marginal and even dangerous in the city.

Fig. 11. Elements of urban environment are involved in the mechanisms of natural ecosystems by creating special conditions for species: anthropogenic factor here is a part of biogeocoenosis of the city along with such factors as climate and landscape. The exact interactions withing the natural ecosystems in urban environment are to be studied

So far, this type of nature is free from the human prejudice that has practically swallowed Nature 1 and Nature 2. Specially protected natural lands suffer a paradox: the most valuable and the most protected by law, in practice, are little by little being excluded from the privileged position and used along with other land types.

Nature 2, surrounded by the excessive attention, is not even allowed to perform its natural functions: becoming less ecologically productive, this type of nature during the process of transformation acquires new qualities that soon may only improve conditions in the recreational environment.

Behind the scenes (or, in some cases, fences of industrial zones) there is a new type that actually requires neither attention, nor special protection – as both these methods do not function as was intended. Although, still there is a stereotype about Nature 3: it is not yet understood and undervalued.

Uninviting areas are perceived as something negative – they are being read as signs of decay and dystopia – however, this has created special conditions of non-interference: non-implementation of existing approaches is the drive for Nature 3.

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This type of nature during the process of transformation acquires new qualities that soon may only improve conditions of recreational environment.

Potential for Moscow Nature 3 can be found mostly in transit and abandoned areas near industrial and military sites, and corridors of infrastructure. Islands of Nature 3 are characterised by performing ecosystems that result in boosting biodiversity. As ecosystems that perform ecological functions and are more environmentally productive that Nature 2 (green spaces), and are not the subject of such attention as Nature 1 (specially protected natural areas), they are considered the most valuable lands and are constantly under threat of being used for economic purposes, Nature 3 represents a big potential for being a consistent part of Moscow, a city that does not have best environmental conditions.

Nature 3 can also be viewed as an investment: over time these natural (which will become more sustainable, strengthened and attractive) plots will bring additional value to city objects nearby, because new parks and green spaces do increase the attractiveness of a certain area.

During the research, several cases of new natural ecosystems were found, where sanitary, industrial, abandoned areas, strips along the motorways, buffer zones and disturbed areas were read from a ‘species-eye view’ (Fig.1116). These cases are of different geographical locations and are another example of spontaneous ecosystems in an urban environment.

The research is not yet finished. It is estimated that these cases are evidence of the presence of Nature 3 in urban landscapes: it has the right to be an acknowledged part of the city, therefore, an interdisciplinary team of specialists in ecology, biology, chemistry, wastemanagement, city planning, design and architecture should study the way Nature 3 appears in the city, and what elements provoke these new urban ecosystems to emerge.

The typology of Nature 3 should be highlighted: for now, I can mention the following reasons that lead to it: – the area has been abandoned – the purpose of the area has changed – once-disturbed land is generally no longer occupied by built objects or is an area that is not heavily used (as in case of a power grid) – the land is contaminated by humans; new micro-elements are attractive for specific species that become dominant in the area.

There is a lot of work to be done in defining other possible combinations that can be evidence of Nature 3.

Thereafter, a system of regulation must be developed as to how we can deal with this type – at the moment I see it

Another Place: Towards the New Patterns of (Co)Habitation

Fig. 12. Metal contaminants in soil influence plant populations; research made on species around Nullah Leh, Pakistan, has shown presence of Atriplex crassifolia and Trifolium alexandrinum that are tolerant to conditions of polluted water of Nullah Leh (Department of Plant Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan).

Fig. 13. In cold climates where de-icing salt is used for cleaning the roads, roadside vegetation can become very scarse.

Although it brings an interesting effect: salt is accumulated in soil, that in turn can attract halophytes and salt-tolerant species (Characterisation of a halophytic community in a roadside verge of Quebec, Étienne Paradis, Stéphane M. Bailleul, Frédéric Coursol & Stuart G. Hay).

Fig. 14. An artificial island that appeared after a change of the river flow has become a habitat for beavers as there is rich plant community and the area is not widely accessible for people (Waters of the southern port, Moscow, 55°41’30”N 37°41’51”E).

Fig. 15. In the buffer zone between the rails, ecologists have recorded rare species of plants that had appeared in the area as a consequence of a combination of high concentration of oil, iron and salt (there were no public toilets on the platforms) in the soil. As it was important to keep these plants, the only possible way of preserving them was the maintenance of this formed ecotope (Environment and Natural Resources Research, Czech republic).

Fig. 16. Research on urban nature, the Wild City, reveals islands of nature within the city on the very small scale. On the square of 114 cm2 such species as Aelia acuminata, Tetramorium caespitum, Annelida, Poa compressa, Poa annua, Elytrigia repens and Agrostis capillaris were found (The Why Factory, Amsterdam).

Fig. 17. Another example from the Wild City report: in area of 112 cm2, Helix pomatia, Chorthippus parallelus, Aelia acuminata, Tetramorium caespitum, Annelida, Tegenaria agrestis, Mus musculus, Inachis io, Lacerta agilis, Agrostis capillaris, Lactuca virosa, Lathyrus tuberosus, Pseudofumaria lutea and Orobanche hederae were all found (The Why Factory, Amsterdam).

as a programme of ecosystem protection that consists of two parts: 1. Maintenance of new urban ecosystems in existing conditions with those elements that are crucial for keeping the system 2. Support of these ecosystems in a situation when some elements of biogeocenosis is removed/changed (reconstruction, demolition, etc.)

Maintenance is based on the principle of non-interference: direct impact can only be applied to anthropogenic elements of ecosystems. It includes a monitoring stage that studies the area from the following criteria, allowing it to define the biodiversity level and: – the size of the area – the amount of species in the area; – the amount of species dependent on the anthropogenic elements of the ecosystem – connections with other areas of natural species present in order to keep Margarita Googe: Third Nature

communications strong between them – changes in the dynamics of ecosystems in order to track correlation with urban environments

programme should be wisely adapted according to the new habitat that might appear in the area after changes in the elements of ecosystem.

Support is the second programme that can be implemented in the case of demolition, reconstruction, or any transformation of the area, where also prior analysis should be held: – studying the conditions that have led to prevailing ecosystem – providing species with necessary elements that are going to be withdrawn from the area

This preservation programme that, of course, should be much more thorough, would affect the city planning in general: designing free lots for Nature 3 in the city or intentionally neglect areas and thus invite natural ecosystems to perform.

Here another phenomena should be articulated: ecological succession, that is a continually changing mix of species within communities as disturbances of various intensities, size, and frequencies alter the landscape34. Here the support 34 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/178264/ ecological-succession

For me, Nature 3 symbolises the new understanding and perception of the urban environment: the city was created outside of nature and is designated as a human area; preserved Nature 1 and transformed Nature 2 represent the gap in relationships with nature; it seems that new type of compound Nature 3 will be a step forward to a new stage of perception of nature in the city: functioning natural ecosystems along with man-made objects.

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REFERENCES

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FOR NOTES

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Институт медиa, aрхитектуры и дизaйнa «Стрелкa» Берсеневскaя нaб., 14, стр. 5А Москвa, 119072, Россия www.strelka.com

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design 14, bldg. 5A, Bersenevskaya Emb. Moscow, 119072, Russia www.strelka.com