Exploring agency of change in small industrial towns through urban renewal initiatives

ABSTRACT

This article brings attention to the diversity of urban conditions, actors, agency, and development paths in contrast to the imperatives of urban entrepreneurialism and competitiveness. Rather than presupposing the critical role of exogenous sources of growth, the aim of the current paper is in exploring empirically the role of local agency in achieving continuity or change through the lens of urban renewal. The data is drawn from three case studies of small, company towns (monogorods) in Russia. The paper concludes that in small towns local actors and endogenous resources play a strong role in achieving positive change. For Russian monogorods there is a tendency to ‘merge’ different types of agency into an all-embracing local-based leadership which despite the hierarchical power relations allows for certain decision-making autonomy from the central government. The study indicates the need to better account for diverse forms of human agency in various fields of urban development. While conventional approaches tend to prioritize formal hierarchies and derive agency from static positions of authority and economic power, we demonstrate that actors may assume different roles that do not neatly reflect their positions in a fixed and pre-defined manner or narrowly determined economic interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban renewal
• urban development
• human agency
• small city
• company town
• Russia

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to all survey participants, as well as Katrin Grossmann and the anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments on the prior versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Monogorod (plural, monogorods) – A Soviet/post-Soviet company town. According to the official terminology this is a settlement where at least 20% of residents work for the same company (referred to as gradoobrazuyushchee predriyatie – ‘city-forming’ enterprise) or group of companies operating within a technological chain. As a rule, the company or group accounts for 50% or more of gross output. Since 2014, the list of monogorods is defined by the Government of the Russian Federation and updated annually.

2 The town of Pikalyovo, located in Leningrad oblast, is perhaps Russia’s best-known monogorod. In 2008–2009, it underwent a severe economic crisis that brought the town into the media spotlight and led to an intervention by then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (TASS 2013). In autumn 2008, protests and tensions followed the suspension of production at all three of the town’s large enterprises: Pikalyovsky Alumina, Pikalyovsky Cement, and Metachim, linked by a single technological chain. The suspension of production eventually led to mass layoffs. People not only ran out of money, but their homes were disconnected from heating and hot water supplies due to the dependence of local utilities on the continued operation of the three enterprises. Disgruntled workers and other residents organized a series of rallies. On 2 June 2009, 250–300 Pikalyovo residents blocked the New Ladoga to Vologda federal highway in protest, coinciding with a visit by Putin to St. Petersburg. After a number of consultations, the town and its industrial enterprises received financial support from the regional and national budgets. This helped resolve the local crisis, but the broader issue of unprofitable industrial enterprises and settlements seemingly losing their ‘purpose’ remains, (Rosbalt 2009).

3 The ‘Educational Programme for Training Management Teams of Monogorods’ at the ‘Skolkovo’ Moscow School of Management in 2016–2017 was one of several initiatives funded by the Russian Government within the framework of the Priority Programme ‘Integrated Development of Single-Industry Towns for the Period 2016–2025’.

Additional information

Funding

Field research by Maria Gunko and Kseniya Averkieva was carried out with the support from the Russian Science Foundation [grant number # 19-17-00174]. Elena Batunova, Maria Gunko, and Nadir Kinossian have benefited from discussions organized in the framework of the project ‘Cities after Decline’ funded by the German Research Foundation [grant number # KI 2257/1-1].