Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
-
Upload
stefan-andrei -
Category
Documents
-
view
222 -
download
0
Transcript of Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 1/16
The political economy of place at thepost-socialist urban periphery: governing
growth on the edge of Moscow
Oleg Golubchikov* and Nicholas A Phelps**
What economic and policy conditions and power relations govern the transformation of
the metropolitan periphery in post-socialist nations and to what extent do these con-
verge on those observed in similar locations in the United States and Western Europe?
Drawing on original empirical research conducted on location, we consider the case
of the rapidly growing city of Khimki at the edge of Moscow in order to expose the
post-Soviet variety of the political economy of place on the metropolitan periphery. We
analyse both a broader institutional context of post-socialist urbanisation (ideology of
transition, Soviet legacy, urban planning, relationships between stakeholders) and more
specific aspects of local growth and placemaking in Khimki. Superficially, recent devel-
opment in Khimki includes elements that resemble those apparent in edge cities in the
liberal market economies and even appear to be promoted by a post-socialist variety of
growth machine politics. On closer inspection, however, the post-socialist local growth
regime operates as specific political-bureaucratic processes that question the relevance
of the Western understanding of place-centred coalitions as the key elements of a politi-
cal economy of place. Accumulation strategies in the post-socialist case are found to be
less cartelised and localised than in the West and seen to be largely decoupled from
any collective placemaking or growth agendas. We argue for the need to de-emphasise
the word ‘place’ and to accentuate the word ‘political’ in notions of a political economyof place when speaking of the post-socialist metropolitan periphery.
key words growth machine placemaking transition edge city Moscow
city-region Russia
*School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15
2TT
email: [email protected]
**Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, London WC1H 0QB
revised manuscript received 13 September 2010
Introduction
It has long been argued that the logic of socialist
urbanisation in Eastern Europe produced a some-
what different type of city from those in Western
regimes (Andrusz et al. 1996; Bater 1980). It is little
surprise, then, that the introduction of the market
economy resulted in a flood of new urban processes
that have been rapidly changing the function and
morphology of post-socialist cities. This has been
apparent in the likes of gentrification, redevelop-
ment, the rise of central business districts (CBDs),
and a rapid pace of commodification of urban space
within the cores of major cities (Badyina and
Golubchikov 2005; Enyedi and Kovacs 2006), but is
perhaps most conspicuous at the post-socialist
metropolitan periphery because of the sheer scale of
land use change resulting from suburbanisation
(Boren and Gentile 2007, 103; Golubchikov 2004,
233). As a result, many scholars have pointed to a
growing degree of convergence in the form of urbani-
sation in post-socialist and liberal market economies
of the West, including at the metropolitan periphery
(Nuissl and Rink 2005; Rudolph and Brade 2005).
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
ransactionsof the Institute of British Geographers
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 2/16
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 3/16
involved 50 semi-structured interviews. The body
of interview material collected inevitably reflected
some of the serendipity that results from ‘snowball-
ing’, with some actors well-represented (notably
the development community and local and regional
government) and others less so (civic and environ-
mental groups and the general public). Neverthe-
less, our informants included local officers in
Khimki, planning and development supervision
bodies at the Moscow Oblast regional level, Federal
authorities responsible for urban development,
land use and housing, private developers, realestate and other relevant businesses, chambers of
commerce, academic experts, as well as representa-
tives of local environmental groups concerned with
the preservation of green areas and resident anti-
development campaigners. We draw on observa-
tions and use some quotations from these interview
sources, the majority of which were conducted in
Russian (and translated by us into English) and
some in English.
The paper is structured as follows. In the next
section we start by discussing to what extent the
transition to the market economy reorients the
functioning of institutions versus the persistence of
pre-transition elements. We then introduce the pro-
cesses of urbanisation and urban change on the
periphery of Moscow. We continue discussing the
case of Khimki in light of the edge city and growth
machine literature. First, we highlight some similar-
ities between growth in Khimki and the patterns
typical to the suburban ‘growth machine’. Second,
we consider the role of the post-Soviet institution of
urban planning in the politics of place and local
placemaking. Third, we discuss in more detail thepolitico-economic dynamic behind growth in
Khimki, its contradictions and limitations. We con-
clude with some further reassessments of the Rus-
sian case and the relevance of Western concepts in
the analysis of urban development at Moscow’s
burgeoning periphery. We argue in particular that
although the case of Khimki has some elements
characteristic of ‘edge city’ and ‘growth machine’
style development, its growth is largely ‘placeless’,
because it is driven by initiatives and institutions
that are essentially disconnected from local-centred
Figure 1 The location of the Urban District of Khimki
Note: Territory belonging to the city of Moscow is marked in white
Source: Drawn by authors based on data from OpenStreetMap
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 427
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 4/16
politics and active placemaking. In this and some
other respects, the political dynamic of the post-
socialist metropolitan periphery remains different
from that of many ‘post-suburban’ locations in the
West, both in the US and European context,
although the persistency of this ‘distinctiveness’ in
the longer term is less than clear.
Transition as convergence on the Westernmodel?
Transition can be viewed as one inescapable com-
pulsion that, while having originated at the
national regulatory level, has transformed life and
circumstances in all cities of post-socialist societies
– irrespective of the previous situations or aspira-
tions in these cities. In Russia, as in other post-
socialist countries, the appropriation of society bycapitalism has changed the very raison d’etre of
the city. Rather than being a socialist machine for
the propagation of communist ideology, of pur-
poseful evolution to ‘a fair and egalitarian society’,
the post-socialist city has become a machine for the
celebration of profit-making, of private wealth, of
individualism, of the ‘liberation’ of the self from
communal responsibilities and of the communal
responsibility from both caring for individual
selves and the necessity of building a better society
of tomorrow. The appearance and rhythm of citieshave changed accordingly.
However, the arrival of ‘capitalism’ was neither
uniform, nor had uniform implications in space.
For a start, the intensity of the ‘wind of change’
has been asymmetric and asynchronic. Larger cities
and inner cities were first and foremost bearing the
signs of post-industrial transformation, tertiarisa-
tion and commercialisation (Bater et al. 1998). Mos-
cow was a particular focus for such economic
restructuring, notably in its central areas (Badyina
and Golubchikov 2005; Kolossov and O’Loughlin
2004). Eventually the processes of change have alsofallen on cities further down the urban hierarchy,
as well as peripheries of the larger cities (Rudolf
and Brade 2005). However, while urban corners are
being penetrated by ‘propetisation’ and mercantile
urbanism, the capitalist logic of uneven develop-
ment means that these changes hardly bring pros-
perity to all (Round and Williams 2010). As a
result, as in other parts of the post-socialist world
(Tsenkova and Nedovic-Budic 2006), Russian urban
experiences have been characterised by great diver-
sification and fragmentation.
It is not only urban experiences that have seen a
fragmentation; the very teleological belief in a lin-
ear transition to ‘the western model’ has been chal-
lenged following the diversity of transition
pathways instead of the triumph of a universal
capitalism (Klein and Pomer 2001; Pickles and
Smith 1998; Roland 2001). This is of course becausethe wider forces of transition and globalisation
interplay not simply with a uniform societal ‘mass’,
but rather with thick and complex local institu-
tional assemblages and material legacies. Each
post-socialist society is constituted of a complex
combination of phenomena, with each of these rep-
resenting its very own format and speed of change.
This is not simply to mechanically distinguish
between ‘fast-moving’ and ‘slow-moving’ institu-
tions as Roland (2004) does, nor between ‘progress’
and ‘rigid path dependency’ as the neoliberalorthodoxy now likes to explain many failures of its
policies. But if we unpack the local ‘consensuses’ of
post-socialist societies for scrutiny, we will find
the contentious processes of institutional configura-
tions and reconfigurations with old and new,
socialist, pre-socialist and post-socialist elements
coexisting, interplaying and conflicting with each
other – where the ‘old’ does not necessarily mean
‘regressive’ and where the ‘new’ is not necessarily
‘progressive’.
This complexity notwithstanding, all emergingmarkets have very substantial ideological imprints
of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005; Peck and Tickell
2002). Transition has been part and parcel of neo-
liberalism. It is rooted in the neoliberal ideology
and is feeding this ideology. Thus, the idiosyncra-
sies of the post-socialist practices in no way imply
that these societies have opposed neoliberalism or
provided alternatives to it, but rather that they
have internalised neoliberalism to themselves
become one of its various ‘mutations’.
In Russia, in particular, the new post-Soviet
elites seemed happily subscribed to neoliberalorthodoxy, requiring the market system to be cre-
ated in a ‘big bang’ rather than incrementally.
Here, as Nolan observed when comparing Russia
and China, there is a ‘paradox that in the transition
from a ‘‘planned’’ economy, a central condition of
success is the ability of the state to plan effectively’
(Nolan 1995, 4). The prevailing elitist visions in
Russia, however, were to break the planning of the
old system as fast as possible, no matter what
would follow. Such opinions are still widespread,
as reflected by one interviewee who complained
428 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 5/16
about the ‘market-perverse legacies’ of Soviet plan-
ning and development institutions:
Our mainstream strategy is to make a big step from a
regulated economy to a market economy. You cannot
do this in small steps but you must do it with a big
leap forward . . . otherwise you end up with the situa-
tion as in Moscow which is more or less like the Soviet
model of controlling and regulating development. (Dep-
uty Director, Reforms in Real Estate, the Institute for
Urban Economics, Moscow, 25 August 2008)
And yet, while attempts were made to eradicate
Soviet-era institutions and not to merely adjust or
‘superstructure’ them based on their utility, Soviet
institutions have not been completely marginalised.
Rather, given the absence of alternative capacities
and experiences, the result has been their reincar-
nation in new forms, which, although now oriented
towards different ends and often bringing quiteopposite results than in the past, still do not quite
fulfil the neoliberal script either. Thus, the inter-
nalisation of the neoliberal doctrine has been
blended with the persistence of socialist elements,
which may now play a very different role than in
the past (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). In short,
post-socialist urban societies need to be viewed as
hybrid juxtapositions of social forms, relationships
and trajectories, emerging from the struggles
between their ‘outside’, their ‘inside’ and their
histories. We need to keep this in mind whendiscussing the political economy of place in the
post-Soviet context. In the next section we turn to
the consideration of urbanisation at the edge of
Moscow in more detail.
Urbanisation at the edge of Moscow
In Moscow, as in other large post-socialist cities, the
processes of urban transformation have been
unfolding in a compressed time, obliterating the rel-
evance of common analytical separation of the pro-
cess of urbanisation into stages, as a linear outward
growth of the city. In the US literature, for example,
both inner-city regeneration and transformations on
metropolitan edges such as the growth of ‘edge cit-
ies’ (Garreau 1991), post-suburbs (Kling et al. 1995)
and ‘technoburbs’ (Fishman 1987) are sometimes
opposed to the mass suburbanisation of the 1940s
to 1960s. In Russia, because of suburbanisation, the
‘built-up’ category of land use had doubled in the
1990s; and still in parallel central urban areas have
been renovated and increasingly colonised by the
new rich – a recognisable pattern of gentrification
(Badyina and Golubchikov 2005). Thus in its
embodying several elements of urbanisation, which
in the West commonly have been seen to have
occurred sequentially over significant stretches of
time, the process of urbanisation in Moscow might
appear to have some superficial similarities withthe chaotic, fragmented and non-linear patterns of
urbanisation said to characterise contemporary,
post-modern, processes of urbanisation in the US
(Dear and Dahmann 2008; Soja 2000).
More specifically in terms of the dynamics of the
metropolitan periphery, suburbanisation in Mos-
cow has taken the form of second-home develop-
ments rather than permanent residences. People
continue to reside in their urban multifamily
houses, but have second homes of various stan-
dards in less urbanised settings. This is betterdescribed as ‘seasonal suburbanisation’ – a phe-
nomenon of some (although variable) significance
across Europe (Arnstberg and Bergstrom 2007).
This has been overlain recently by more ‘perma-
nent’ residential or cottage patterns of suburbanisa-
tion taking place in the nearest areas around
Moscow (Makhrova et al. 2008) and that has some
similarities with what in the US would be termed
exurbanisation, due to its extreme low-density and
as yet purely residential orientation. Finally, at
important junctions in the expanding Moscowmetropolitan space are a number of burgeoning
high-rise settlements which, as well as being sepa-
rate administrative jurisdictions, are home to a
diverse mix of activities and functions – old manu-
facturing, new retail, office, distribution and other
employment. In the US (Kling et al. 1995; Teaford
1997) and further afield (Phelps et al. 2006) such
settlements have been labelled ‘post-suburban’ and
are seen to embody an urbanisation of the suburbs
into cities in function but not in form.
Thus, along with quasi-suburbanisation, the
fringe of the Moscow metropolitan area is nowexperiencing some patterns of intensified growth.
Initially, at least, this was clearly driven by the
development of shopping malls along the Moscow
Orbital Motorway (which for the most part corre-
sponds with the administrative border between the
City of Moscow and Moscow Oblast – a separate
administrative region surrounding Moscow), as
well as the development of warehouses along the
major motorways running from Moscow. But,
increasingly, other forms of development, such as
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 429
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 6/16
major modern office-based employment, including
back-offices, emerge in the nearest cities to Moscow
(Makhrova and Molodikova 2007; Rudolph and
Brade 2005). These forms of development are also
paralleled by much intensified residential construc-
tion in and around the Russian capital.
Khimki was one of the first ‘satellite’ cities inMoscow Oblast to experience the combination of
these processes during the period of economic
boom in Russia between 1999 and 2008. The city
now hosts some of the largest shopping malls in
Russia, including by IKEA and Auchan (Plate 1).
IKEA has also diversified significantly by develop-
ing a large office project (Khimki Business Park),
which is envisaged to consist of six towers, two of
which are completed. Many other office and retail
projects of smaller scale, as well as huge new-build
residential sites in previously greenfield areas, haverecently changed the Khimki skyline. As a result,
while in the 1990s Khimki evolved to have mostly
a residential suburban character with most people
commuting to work in Moscow because of the
decline of employment in the local industries, more
recently it has become a sub-centre for employ-
ment, which leads to more complex work–home
relationships between Khimki and Moscow.
The property boom in Khimki is seen as being
preconditioned by the city’s favourable location
(Figure 1). First, it is adjacent to Moscow and is
well connected with it. Second, major transport
links cross Khimki, including the Moscow–
St Petersburg motorway (known as Leningrad
Motorway) and railway. Third, Khimki is locatednear and on the main route from Moscow to
Russia’s major international airport Sheremetyevo;
the airport also now administratively belongs to
the territory of Khimki. Fourth, the city is located
in an environmentally favourable zone to the west
of Moscow and near the Moscow Canal.
In January 2006, because of a municipal reform
in Russia, the whole area of what used to constitute
the Khimki District became amalgamated as the
unified ‘Urban District of Khimki’ (Gorodskoy Okrug
Khimki) with a total population of about 180 000.However, historically Khimki had been an adminis-
trative centre of a larger district with a few other
settlements and open countryside. In 1984, the
Council of Ministers of Soviet Russia handed over
a part of the territory of the Khimki District to
Moscow (even earlier, Moscow received Zeleno-
grad District further afield). As Khimki was an off-
limits city, Moscow grew around the city rather
Plate 1 The territory along the Leningrad Motorway in Khimki has attracted many new commercial and
residential property development projects
Source: Authors’ photograph
430 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 7/16
than incorporating it. With the collapse of the
Soviet system, various administrative borders,
which were previously easily changed by central
decisions, assumed importance as demarcating
political jurisdictions. The often ambiguous borders
of Khimki became the points of tensions between
Moscow Oblast and Moscow. Most importantly, along dispute in the court preceded settling the bor-
ders for Sheremetyevo in favour of Khimki. As was
noted, ‘It indeed turns out that it’s a very compli-
cated city as it is all interpenetrated by Moscow
territory, Federal transport junctions and motor-
ways – this is the specificity of the city’ (Deputy
Head of the Project Studio for Suburban Zone of
Moscow and Moscow Oblast, Research and Devel-
opment Institute for the General Plan of the City of
Moscow, Moscow, 26 August 2008).
A post-Socialist growth machine?
While travelling between Moscow and the Sherem-
etyevo airport within Khimki District, it is hard to
avoid superficial comparisons with the edge city
environment of the US. By now the heavy conges-
tion on the stretch of road allows one ample time
to gaze out onto what is a rather chaotic mix of
office and apartment blocks and retail outlets that,
at least until the recent effects of the global finan-
cial crisis, were being built at very rapid ratesindeed. It is tempting to consider this suburban
nodal point of car-based accessibility being subject
to the sorts of private sector forces apparent in the
US. Certainly, the initiative, as in the US, does tend
to come from the private sector, as one interviewee
from a commercial property brokerage described:
As for the government, there is no one good well
thought-out strategy of developing this or that Moscow
Region suburb or district. It is stimulated by developers
. . . IKEA, for instance, was being built without any per-
mission for construction. They just came out on the land
and started to build and got the [formal] permissions inprocess. If you imagine this kind of situation now, it
would be absolutely impossible to proceed. You would
lose all the money invested in the project. But six or
seven years ago it was okay. (DTZ property consultants,
Moscow, 20 August 2008, in English)
This particular account may involve a good deal of
oversimplification, especially given that the con-
struction of the IKEA complex at the end of the
1990s involved a number of conflicts both with the
local populace and the governmental agencies over
concerns that it might introduce damage to a
Soviet-era war memorial commemorating the place
where the Nazi’s advancement onto Moscow was
turned back in 1941. However, it rightly reflects the
practice of giving planning permissions ex-post,
following developers’ initiatives, which may even
be against formal rules. Here, government and its
planning and regulatory systems at all levels, andespecially the municipal level, respond to a newly
created market system that was ushered in, albeit
in a rather incomplete way, in the early 1990s. Leg-
islation in the early 1990s provided for private
property rights and, although incomplete, released
a huge suppressed demand for housing from indi-
viduals and for commercial premises from busi-
nesses. This time, lasting until new legislation
completing the market system in more recent years,
was considered by many in the industry as a per-
iod of ‘wild capitalism’ as one informed intervie-wee observed (Partner, Ernst and Young, Moscow,
28 October 2008, in English).
The pace and seemingly uncontrolled nature of
development take on the possibly peculiar features
of the Russian ‘big bang’ route to transition, pro-
ducing in appearance an exaggerated form of what
has been described in US literature as growth
machine development.1 Indeed, growth in the
peripheries of major post-socialist cities has
prompted Kulcsar and Domokos (2005) to invoke
the term ‘post-socialist growth machine’. The con- joining of the term growth machine is testimony to
the concept’s ability to travel, but, if taken for
granted, it may conceal more than it reveals. In
fact, the understanding of the ‘political economy of
place’ in this concept is a rather denuded one and
one recognised and critiqued as such by its progen-
itors (Logan and Molotch 2007; Molotch 1976). It
has been further exposed not only by other concep-
tualisations of urban politics in the US (Cox and
Mair 1988; Stone 1989), but also the practices of
urban politics in Western Europe, where more pur-
poseful and progressive strategies of placemakinghave existed. The growth machine concept explains
the continued growth of historic cities as driven by
speculative motives of the coalitions of landed
business interest and politicians that seek to pursue
the development with greatest exchange value
when set against concerns for social inclusivity and
interest in the use and amenity value of land (Clark
et al. 2002). Furthermore, the mutual interests of
municipal politicians and officials and the private
sector in the growth machine are place-based
because of what Cox and Mair (1988) have further
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 431
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 8/16
elaborated as the ‘local dependence’ of both
parties. The joint actions of the private and public
sectors coalesce over the profits and revenues that
attend the development patterns centred on uplifts
in the exchange value of land and property within
a particular jurisdiction. As such, municipal eco-
nomic development strategies and planning poli-cies become a focal point for coalitions of vested
interests.
And here important dissimilarities with the post-
socialist metropolitan periphery begin to emerge.
For a start, private sector interest in the exchange
values of land takes on a peculiar, heightened and
political-bureaucratically mediated form in that par-
cels of land that were developable, or might become
so, were released by authorities at the moment of
marketisation without anything corresponding to a
market value; this represented a reversal of a situa-tion under socialism in which the rights to own and
exchange property were subordinated to those of its
use (Marcuse 1996). Banks of such land represent a
huge reservoir of developable land whose exchange
value is at least decoupled from local market condi-
tions – scattered parcels were secured for nominal
sums, with little regard for the extant or future pat-
tern of development or neighbouring uses. Such a
situation would be unfamiliar in the US growth
machine. Moreover, deficiencies with the new legis-
lation and regulatory systems still promote veryrapid urban development in order to recoup out-
lays, by particular types of developer, using partic-
ular types of financing for development in the face
of uncertainties over enforceable property rights
(Partner, C ⁄ M ⁄ S Cameron McKenna, Moscow, 29
October 2008, in English).
While private development seeks to capture sub-
stantial differences in the exchange values of
undeveloped and developed land presented in
locations like Khimki, one might assume that
Khimki ought to have a healthy fiscal capacity. In
fact, due to the tax system in Russia all municipali-ties are in a weak position relative to the regions in
which they sit. As a result, some of the chief possi-
bilities for placemaking that are evident at the
municipal level have come from the ‘planning gain’
extracted from developers rather than through
increased tax revenue (Consultant, RB-Centre Con-
sultancy, Moscow, 28 October 2008, in English). To
this extent, the municipality has a vested interest in
promoting development. For residential develop-
ments, the planning gain extracted was quite sig-
nificant at the peak of growth, with up to 25 per
cent of all units of flats constructed in Khimki
being handed over to the municipality as munici-
pal housing (Deputy Mayor for Building, Architec-
ture and Land Use, Khimki Administration,
Khimki, 30 October 2008). Beyond this, the plan-
ning gain extracted may be extended to the provi-
sion or refurbishment of public spaces and parksand the building of kindergartens and schools
(Head of the Committee for the Economy, Khimki
Administration, 30 October 2008). However, it is
far from guaranteed and the present financial crisis
promises to affect the contributions from even the
largest developers, who according to one intervie-
wee are now struggling to finance the amenities
and services promised for major residential devel-
opments (Deputy Mayor for Building, Architecture
and Land Use, Khimki Administration, 30 October
2008).While the relationship between the fiscal capaci-
ties of municipalities and development opportuni-
ties is less straightforward in Khimki than that
which conditions the US-style growth machine, can
this situation signify better possibilities for the pur-
poseful ‘distortion’ of development opportunities
via more socially-focused or place-integrative plan-
ning and government interventions? To be sure, in
the context of many western European countries it
is planning policies that play (albeit to varied
degrees) an important role in local social and eco-nomic development. Intuitively, urban planning
may be expected to be a major instrument for con-
structing places like Khimki and therefore a key
focal point for a local politics of place. In the next
section we explore whether this is so.
From plan-led cities to development-ledplanning
In fact, both the Soviet legacy and post-Soviet expe-
riences limit the role of urban planning in today’s
politics of place. For a start, the Soviet model of urban planning was inscribed into a centralised
institutional setting of the complex hierarchy of
national economic planning and was part of social
and economic regulation. Since the national priority
was production, plans largely focused on servicing
industrial enterprises. Social infrastructure in cities,
including housing, services and green spaces, was
allocated according to norms based on the needs of
production (Andrusz 1984; Bater 1980; French 1995;
Pallot and Shaw 1981). The implication of this top–
down economic planning process was that it
432 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 9/16
tended to be largely sectoral, where urban plans
were left to attempt to integrate different sectors by
the virtue of their applying to individual localities.
The stress of urban master plans was not so much
on urban design, but on the territorial organisation
of ‘productive forces’. The task for urban planning
was thus not to create a local sense of place to indi-vidual cities, but rather to build functional ‘com-
munities’ that would provide efficient living and
working environments based on norms for the pro-
vision of social, engineering, transport and environ-
mental infrastructure.
The new imperative of transition to a more fully
market-led system made many inherited principles
of Soviet planning for administrative-led develop-
ment practically ineffective, while at the same time,
in a context of significant deficiencies with legisla-
tion promoting the market system, a lot of opportu-nities were created for rent-seeking behaviour, both
by developers and local officials (Golubchikov
2004). A series of reforms have not solved this
problem but instead considerably emasculated the
institution of planning. Importantly, the 2004
Urban Development Code of Russia stresses the
role of legal zoning, thus re-orientating the accent
of town planning to land-use zoning underpinned
by narrower development rights interests. The
planning instruments, such as general ⁄ master city
plans still exist, but are assumed to be supplemen-tary in the new system and in view of most inter-
viewed planners are largely marginalised. While
new legislation obliges that from 2010 building per-
mits may only be issued once up-to-date rules for
land use and building (effectively, land-use zoning)
exist, it is still questionable whether these will
make the development process more transparent.
Overall, planning in modern Russia has increas-
ingly taken development-led and opportunistic
forms. Indeed, in contrast to planning, develop-
ment control has become a more persuasive
machine. Today, before making an application fora building permit, a developer has to obtain
numerous technical approvals from local and regio-
nal sectoral authorities and ad hoc agencies, which
require developers to conform with their sectoral
infrastructural, environmental and social services
norms and policies. Even if developers’ proposals
are in accordance with local plans, they cannot be
sure about the result until the end of administra-
tive negotiations. On the contrary, if authorities are
interested in development and forming a kind of
partnership with developers, or are forced to
accept development by other pressures (see the
next section), existing plans may be easily violated
and updated ex-post (Golubchikov 2004). Appar-
ently, such a system of ‘opportunity-led’ planning
is familiar to many other post-socialist cities in Eur-
ope (Tasan-Kok 2006).
This new system results in the lack of a reallycomprehensive approach to territorial planning and
the sorts of municipal ‘place-shaping’ actions taken
for granted in Western Europe. When asked
whether there were any visions at local or regional
government of how individual cities in Moscow
Oblast should look 20–30 years from now, Moscow
Oblast’s chief planner replied that such ‘visions’
are not according to the market regime: ‘people
who will live in those places in 20 or 30 years time
will have their own vision about how they want
those places to look like and we don’t have theright to impose our views on their wishes’ (Head
of the Main Department for Architecture and
Urban Planning of Moscow Oblast, Moscow, 29
October 2008). It might seem paradoxical to hear
such discourse from a bureaucrat responsible for
coordinating local and regional planning; however,
it reflects well the state of incorporating some of
the inherited practices into the prevailing neoliberal
ideology. As in the Soviet past, urban plans are
considered not as instruments for ‘making places’,
but rather as the technocratic tools to provide forand protect the basic functionality of places, mostly
in terms of transport, water and energy infrastruc-
ture, as well as social amenities (such as schools or
hospitals). The sector-based planning of the Soviet
era continues to have an important legacy in that
there remains little appreciation of the value of ter-
ritorial planning at the municipal scale among
political leaders and local officials. However, while
the Soviet territorial planning in its top–down total-
ity did provide each place its sense as a part of the
overall system of the national economic organisa-
tion, in modern Russia planning has not embracedthe bottom–up and socially inclusive ‘placemaking’
element to compensate for the destruction of the
system of vertical integration. As a result, fast-
growing places like Khimki have seen a fragmenta-
tion of the urban space into poorly coordinated
land uses and a chaotic mix of old and new, resi-
dential and non-residential developments.
Furthermore, the capacity for municipalities to
integrate aspects of planning for their jurisdictions
is also compromised by planning responsibilities
and financing that remain fragmented between
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 433
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 10/16
Federal, regional and municipal levels. Here, the
situation contrasts, for example, with China where
the State is seen as a coordinator and promoter of
development as part of place-building at national,
provincial and local level. While development at
the metropolitan periphery in China is every bit as
rapid as that described in the Moscow periphery atlocations like Khimki, it is also territorially more
integrated by virtue of the entrepreneurial actions
of local governments seeking growth through new
townships, and through special purpose vehicles
for territorial and economic planning associated
with industrial and technology parks (Wu and
Phelps 2008). Although similar examples can be
seen in larger and stronger cities in Russia such as
Moscow or St Petersburg (Golubchikov 2010), the
Russian local state in smaller jurisdictions has
rather become an unpredictable holder and releaserof developable land.
In one other respect the legacy of Soviet plan-
ning and land use represents limits for comprehen-
sive planning today. As Gentile and Sjoberg (2006)
describe it, Soviet planning created ‘landscapes of
priority’ across the city. Military-related industry
in the Soviet era was perhaps the most prioritised
of sectors in the planned economy (Boren and Gen-
tile 2007, 100). Contemporary development, land
uses and territorial planning in Khimki continue to
be conditioned as a former special case ‘landscapeof priority’. Khimki, along with many other com-
pany towns around Moscow, was a location for
key state enterprises – notably in Khimki’s case,
production related to missiles and aerospace. Being
the key functions in the city, these enterprises had
large sites in municipal terms and in many
instances were charged with catering for the hous-
ing and recreational and service needs of workers,
who were the majority of Khimki residents at that
time. The scale of the ‘closed’ Soviet-era Khimki’s
defence enterprises can be gained from Figure 1,
where the land is demarcated as ‘industrial area’.Despite the rationalisation of these enterprises over
recent years, there is little prospect of any of the
huge site – adjacent to the historic centre of
Khimki (‘old Khimki’) – being released for devel-
opment. The enterprises now appear as constraints
on the alternative use of land and along with
major communications infrastructure (roads and
rail) present significant obstacles to planning. One
consequence of this is that the centre of gravity in
Khimki is shifting to ‘new Khimki’ – an essentially
previously undeveloped western area now subject
to massive housing and office developments, so
that the unity of the city is subject to significant
fragmentation.
Furthermore, as Khimki is inter-penetrated by
the territory of the City of Moscow, this also imposes
serious obstacles to urban planning and consolidat-
ing it as a single place. There is still a lack of inter-regional planning in Russia, while Moscow in
particular - at least under formerMayor Yuri Luzhkov
(dismissed from his post in September 2010) - was
not keen to cooperate with federal government or
its neighbouring Moscow Oblast on such issues
(Deputy Head, Unit for Monitoring Methodology
and Effectiveness Assessment, Ministry for Regio-
nal Development, Russian Federation, Moscow, 1
September 2008). The new general plan for Khimki,
which came into force in 2009, and related land-
use zoning documentation leave considerable stripsof the territory in the middle ground uncovered.
Apart from further erosion of the place as a whole,
this negatively affects infrastructural integrity in
Khimki. For example, Inteko, a development com-
pany closely affiliated with the Moscow govern-
ment, intends to build major residential
developments on the Moscow city land that inter-
penetrates Khimki’s territory. The municipality is
powerless to prevent this development, despite its
impact on the planning of the municipal territory
and the implications of using and financing utilitynetworks provided from the municipality (Deputy
Mayor for Building, Architecture and Land Use,
Khimki Administration, Khimki, 30 October 2008).
Dyadic relations in a placeless politicaleconomy
Having considered the limitations of post-socialist
planning for placemaking, we also need to discuss
the balance of interests in the development pro-
cesses in Khimki between different stakeholders,
including developers, politicians, planners andlocal citizenry. On close inspection, these reveal
themselves less as political coalitions with a vested
interest in local economic growth (a feature of the
growth machine) and more as a series of highly
unequal dyadic relationships including: (a)
between the particular private sector interests and
the municipality, (b) between particular private sec-
tor interests and civil society and collective busi-
ness groups, and (c) between the municipality and
the region – each of which are mediated by politi-
cal-bureaucratic processes nested at different
434 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 11/16
administrative levels. Below we consider the pat-
terns and dimensions of these dyadic relationships.
For some, at least, aspirations to improve territo-
rial planning at municipal level in Khimki do exist.
One interviewee, a commercial property developer,
argued that all local administrations were indeed
interested in planning for places and improvingservices and infrastructure, but that there were dif-
ferent possibilities for this:
Believe me, [municipalities] all have a detailed plan, but
what they don’t have is the money to realise the plan.
Apart from that, all these plans are as a rule completely
out of touch with reality . . . There is a planning com-
mittee in every local administration. They all have their
plans – plans of development, reconstruction . . . It
looks beautiful, but, as a rule, is absolutely unrealisable.
Because who is going to pay for that? (Marketing Direc-
tor, REGION Group, Moscow, 21 August 2008)There is some suggestion that Khimki’s mayor has
been resistant to powerful real estate company
interests with designs for his municipality (Deputy
Mayor for Building, Architecture and Land Use,
Khimki Administration, 30 October 2008). Neverthe-
less it seems that these companies are able to realise
development opportunities on the vast land banks
they have acquired at the onset of liberalisation in
Russia. The clash between local plans and financial
interests, with dominance of the latter, is exempli-fied by the development of a previously vacant
prime location at the entrance of Khimki from Mos-
cow by the Leningrad Motorway and next to the
municipality’s first ‘class A’ office development –
‘Country Park’. The site was originally earmarked
in the general plan for a new commercial and com-
munity centre, and there was a desire by the Khimki
chief architect to build a new mixed-use civic centre
of offices, shopping, entertainment complex and
new premises for the local administration. How-
ever, the property company PIK was eventuallygranted planning permission for residential devel-
opment of the plot (Plate 2). Interviews with both
local administration and neighbouring businesses
Plate 2 New-built housing in Khimki by development company PIK
Source: Authors’ photograph
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 435
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 12/16
reveal the discontent about the outcome, which dis-
rupts what could have been a compatible cluster of
office and retail land use. But the pressure for devel-
opment does not seem to be purely concerned with
the availability of money, but also with vested inter-
ests involving large development groups with
strong backing from the higher levels of administra-tive bureaucracy. As the deputy mayor put it:
The problem is related to the investment attractiveness
of the city. There are people coming here who we can-
not actually turn down. It happens that we are forced
to take decisions that contradict with the policy we
have. It happens very often. (Deputy Mayor for Build-
ing, Architecture and Land Use, Khimki Administra-
tion, Khimki, 30 October 2008)
The enormous pent-up demand for housing that
exists in Moscow coupled with a celebration of
unbridled economic growth and the personalwealth that it offers mean that there is little or no
popular discourse, and hardly any major grass-roots
or civic group action, relating to, for instance, issues
of rising social and spatial inequalities, or of the
costs of growth. Yet, in some respects this coupled
with Khimki’s accessibility to Moscow may make
politics rather more active in Khimki than many
other localities. As one interviewee suggested, ‘Tak-
ing into account that Khimki is very near Moscow,
it’s a very politicised city’ (Chief Architect of the
Urban District of Khimki, Khimki Administration,Khimki, 30 October 2008). The implication from this
interview source was that apparent conflict between
particular developers and preservationist interests
may often be fabricated by competitors. These con-
flicts between particularistic interests aside, there is
nevertheless a general rise in concern over the social
and environmental impacts of development in
Khimki, as described by one interviewee:
On the one hand, there are those people who want to
live in suburbs and they need a normal environment,
normal green areas, as well as transport – ecological,clean and without much infrastructure. On the other
hand, there are the interests that want to pump up the
economy of these zones and make them a means for
money-mining. This means maximum destruction to
these green zones and maybe at the cost of residents
but with some development of the infrastructure that
will bring money. So, these are the two tendencies that
appear in Khimki . . . (Khimki Forest Defence Move-
ment, Moscow, 21 August, 2008)
There is some evidence to suggest that the compar-
atively highly educated population of Khimki has
exerted some influence on the municipality. One
interviewee commented that the population did
have rising expectations of the municipality in
terms of improvements to, and refurbishments of,
the exiting housing stock (Deputy Mayor for Build-
ing, Architecture and Land Use, Khimki Adminis-
tration, Khimki, 30 October 2008) and another thatthe public have been vocal at planning meetings
(Chief Architect of the Urban District of Khimki,
Khimki Administration, Khimki, 30 October 2008).
Yet, there is rather limited evidence that business
and civic groups are becoming engaged in any polit-
ical economy of place with any substantial degree of
impact. For example, the very rapidity and haphaz-
ard nature of growth in Khimki has created acute
transportation problems. Khimki lies at the intersec-
tion of major roadways – the north–south Leningrad
highway and the MKAD (Moscow Orbital Motor-way) – but these roads fall under different and mul-
tiple jurisdictions and financing arrangements
(Federal, Moscow Oblast and Moscow). The widen-
ing of these roads in Khimki is now precluded by
the development that has occurred alongside them.
However, there is little sign of business interests
having become organised to any significant degree
and no real evidence of any such organised business
interests lobbying government regarding the need
for transport improvements, as would surely be the
case in the US and Europe.Indeed, the only organised action regarding
transport issues actually relates to environmental
and civic group opposition to a by-pass proposed
by the Federal government as part of a new toll
road between Moscow and St Petersburg in order
to relieve this bottleneck. A small but tenacious
group of people have been trying to raise aware-
ness of the potential destruction of a major forest
area and part of Moscow’s greenbelt that lies in the
eastern part of Khimki, which they suspect is dri-
ven by the new development opportunities that it
would present. The group has been instrumental inelevating their local concerns about the destruction
of the Khimki Forest to the national public interest,
so that the motorway project has been delayed fol-
lowing an order from Russia’s President Medvedev
to temporarily suspend it in 2010. This represents
quite a successful story of political expressions
from below, but the scope of such organised grass-
root movements is generally much more limited in
Khimki (and indeed in other cities in Russia) than
in similar locations in the West.
436 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 13/16
Finally what of the role played by political lead-
ership in local territorial politics? Again, as yet
there is little indication that municipal-level politi-
cians are evolving distinctive agendas across the
greater Moscow area. The problem is that the sys-
tem and climate of politics that prevails at present
is one in which local political leaders are con-strained by patronage relationships with the regio-
nal governor. This is true of the manner in which
political patronage is dispensed within the region
in a context of the ‘inverted pyramid’ of fiscal reve-
nues noted above. Thus ‘opportunities’ for the
building of a sense of place are often allocated by
political leadership at a higher tier of government.
While Khimki has one of the largest municipal
budgets in the Oblast, of more importance in this
respect is that Khimki is considered, according to
one interviewee, to be the ‘locomotive for MoscowOblast’ (Head of the Committee for the Economy,
Khimki Administration, Khimki, 30 October 2008).
The close relationship of the Khimki administration
and its leadership with the Oblast government and
its political leadership has ensured the ‘allocation’
of some significant flagship capital investments,
such as a new basketball and football stadium.
However, to one observer from a major company
operating in Khimki, this relationship between
municipal and regional government had provided
little in the way of any place-shaping strategy:Khimki administration work quite closely with the Mos-
cow Oblast and Moscow Oblast need to take a long-
term grip but so far they have done little cosmetics for
the citizens to see that the parks are greener and nicer
and that the football stadium is a bit better and so on. I
think they try with the funds they have. But what really
will make a difference is the long term strategy. (Vice-
President, IKEA Real Estate Russia and Ukraine,
Khimki, 6 November 2008; in English)
Rudolph and Brade’s argument that ‘the districts of
Moscow Oblast have relatively little influence on
local economic development, because major eco-
nomic actors operate at the level of the governor’
(2005, 139) continues to resonate with the general
tenor of observations on the ground in Khimki. As
the ‘locomotive for Moscow Oblast’, Khimki has
undoubtedly been subject to a scale and variety of
new development – mass residential and specula-
tive retail and office developments, flagship civic
and sports projects and the incorporation of
Sheremetyevo airport – so that its gravity within
the Moscow metropolitan space grows consider-
ably. In contrast to the West, where great capital
would undoubtedly be made by local politicians
and officials of a slogan like ‘greater Khimki’ used
recently by planning consultants Cushman Wake-
field (2007), there appears to have been little inter-
est in the Khimki administration for the use of this
or any other marketing slogan in an attempt toexpress a vision for the future of Khimki as a
place.
To sum up, the relationships between stakehold-
ers in the economic development of places like
Khimki tend to be nested at, and scattered
between, different administrative levels (where
they are mediated by, or indeed utilise, the power
of corresponding bureaucratic apparatus) rather
than being embedded in the local place and its pol-
itics. The combination of a sectoral approach to
urban planning, a limited appreciation of place-making on the part of local government and politi-
cians, and a centralisation of fiscal resources in
Russia mean that such ‘nested’ relationships imply
important weaknesses in the role of the local state
as the (admittedly imperfect) mediator of con-
tradictions between private and collective interests
in the accumulation process (Scott and Roweis
1977).
Conclusion
On the whole, the organisation of the political econ-
omy of place in the post-Soviet metropolitan
periphery of Moscow represents an interesting case
of the mutation of global urban entrepreneurial
strategies under neoliberalism. Rudolph and Brade,
while making it clear that contemporary urbanisa-
tion at the periphery of Moscow can be described
as a new phase, suggest that development at the
periphery displays hybrid elements (2005, 148).
Notable in this regard is a strengthening of pro-
cesses of social polarisation that have become visi-
ble at the periphery. Perhaps as a corollary to this,as they argue, the economics of transition have
become less powerful as a defining force in periph-
eral urbanisation. What we have described above
tends to question the diminishing importance of
transition. Moreover, we demonstrate that the uni-
versality of processes of urban development should
not be overplayed.
Although the case of Khimki may share some
facets and controversies, as depicted by the con-
cepts of ‘edge city’ and the ‘(surburban) growth
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 437
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 14/16
machine’, it is still distinct from these. When using
the term ‘political economy of place’ to apply to the
post-Soviet metropolitan periphery, it is the word
political that needs accentuating and conversely the
word place de-emphasised. Even the word political
might more accurately be taken to refer to a more
fully bureaucratised politics of inter-authoritypatronage apparent in the process of urban devel-
opment in a place like Khimki, in comparison to the
importance of an overt politics of influence in the
US and the importance of party and grass-roots pol-
itics in Western Europe. To date, it is the ‘placeless-
ness’ of rapid urban growth that has been striking
in the context of post-Soviet Khimki. The placeless-
ness, or the lack of purposeful placemaking strate-
gies by any coalitions of growth (or anti-growth)
interests, arises from a number of reinforcing rea-
sons, including highly speculative developmentpractices, little organised interest of local businesses
to influence the shape of wider urban development
beyond their immediate control, and local govern-
ment’s retreat to standardised planning require-
ments and to a capricious allocation of developable
land as opposed to visionary urban planning and
development strategies. Thus, growth in Khimki is
fuelled by a spontaneous variety of opportunistic
profitmaking initiatives that are characterised by
short-termism and yet are essentially disconnected
from the ‘local’ city.This model of growth in fact destroys Khimki’s
‘thick’ Soviet-era industrial identity as a self-
contained city and makes the city an increasingly
fragmented place that may well be hardly distin-
guished as one city, but rather as several peripheral
dormitory districts of the City of Moscow proper.
As Khimki is directly adjacent to the territory of
the City of Moscow, most non-government inter-
viewees consider Khimki as de-facto a district of
Moscow. Indeed, Khimki’s peculiar borders and
location make it much interconnected with Moscow
and its development is often considered to be thecontinuing expansion of Moscow. In this sense,
Khimki may be considered to have reverted from
being a self-centred city to a settlement that resem-
bles and functions more like a suburb, reflecting a
more general trend of increased commuting ties
between former satellite-type urban communities
of the Soviet era and core cities (Boren and Gentile
2007, 103).
However, Khimki does have a separate local gov-
ernment, which complicates the political structur-
ation of development interests. There is a much
stronger and independent role to be played by
Khimki government than by any local governments
within the territory of the City of Moscow proper –
while Moscow has the prefects of local districts
appointed directly by Moscow’s Mayor, the Mayor
of Khimki is a political, popularly-elected post.
Thus, if by some historical accident Khimki waspart of the City of Moscow, then probably the city
would have had a very different configuration of
political interests and might have followed a differ-
ent path of development. The separation of Khimki
as an individual political unit outside the City of
Moscow has indeed created a more distinctive
political interest for Khimki’s government when it
comes to local development. Rather than being con-
sidered a peripheral and most likely less well-off
district of Moscow, Khimki finds itself in the posi-
tion of being one of Moscow Oblast’s wealthiestand investment-attractive districts. This also results
in a lot of interest in Khimki from the regional gov-
ernment and makes it one of the spatial junctions in
the frictions between the regional governments of
Moscow and Moscow Oblast. This territorial config-
uration both circumscribes to some degree autono-
mous processes of placeshaping and creates
prerequisites for Khimki remaining a separate
place. It remains to be seen, however, whether a
growing demand for new urban infrastructure and
emerging residents’ movements will further re-structure the modes of governing developments in
Khimki more in line with the sorts of political econ-
omy of place found in the US or Western Europe.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC grants PTA-026-27-
1997 and RES-062-23-0924). The authors are grate-
ful to three anonymous referees and the editor
Alison Blunt for their insightful feedback on the
manuscript.
Note
1 Although the concept of the growth machine has
been elaborated with respect to cities, it can be
argued that it applies better to new suburbs in which
the greatest exchange values are to be had from the
conversion of raw land into developed land and
where land-assembly is least encumbered by complex
patterns of landownership and lease (Phelps and
Wood forthcoming).
438 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 15/16
References
Andrusz G 1984 Housing and urban development in the
USSR Macmillan, London
Andrusz G, Harloe M and Szelenyi I eds 1996 Cities after
socialism: urban and regional change and conflict in post-
socialist societies Blackwell, Oxford.Arnstberg K-O and Bergstrom I 2007 No place like sec-
ond home: weekends, holidays, retirement and urban
sprawl in Couch C, Leontidou L and Petschel-Held G
eds Urban sprawl in Europe: landscapes, land-use change
and policy Blackwell, Oxford 163–80
Badyina A and Golubchikov O 2005 Gentrification in
Central Moscow: a market process or a deliberate pol-
icy? Money, power and people in housing regeneration
in Ostozhenka Geografiska Annaler B 87 113–29
Bater J H 1980 The Soviet city: ideal and reality Edward
Arnold, London
Bater J H, Amelin V and Degtyarev V 1998 Market
reform and the central city: Moscow revisited Post-Soviet Geography 39 1–18
Boren T and Gentile M 2007 Metropolitan processes in
post-communist states: an introduction Geografiska An-
naler B 89 95–110
Burawoy M 1991 The extended case study method in
Burawoy M ed Ethnography unbound: power and resis-
tance in the modern metropolis University of California
Press, Berkley 271–80
Burawoy M and Verdery K 1999 Introduction In
Burawoy M and Verdery K eds Uncertain transition:
ethnographies of change in the postsocial world Rowman
and Littlefield, Oxford 1–18Clark T N, Lloyd K, Wong K K and Jain P 2002 Ame-
nities drive urban growth Journal of Urban Affairs 24
493–515
Cox K and Mair A 1988 Locality and community in the
politics of local economic development Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 78 307–25
Cushman Wakefield 2007 Greater Khimki: good quality at a
reasonable price Cushman Wakefield, Moscow
Dear M and Dahmann N 2008 Urban politics and the Los
Angeles School of Urbanism Urban Affairs Review 44 266–
79
Enyedi G and Kovacs Z eds 2006 Social changes and social
sustainability in historical urban centres: the case of CentralEurope Centre for Regional Studies of Hungarian Acad-
emy of Sciences, Pecs
Fishman R 1987 Bourgeois utopias: the rise and fall of subur-
bia Basic Books, New York
French R A 1995 Plans, pragmatism and people: the legacy of
Soviet planning for today’s city UCL Press, London
Garreau J 1991 Edge city: life on the new frontier Doubleday,
New York
Gentile M and Sjoberg O 2006 Intra-urban landscape of
priority: the Soviet legacy Europe-Asia Studies 58 701–29
Golubchikov O 2004 Urban planning in Russia: towards
the market European Planning Studies 12 229–47
Golubchikov O 2010 World-city-entrepreneurialism: glob-
alist imaginaries, neoliberal geographies, and the pro-
duction of new St Petersburg Environment and Planning
A 42 626–43
Harding A 1994 Urban regimes and growth machines:
toward a cross-national research agenda Urban Affairs
Quarterly 29 356–82Harris R 2010 Meaningful types in a world of suburbs in
Clapson M and Hutchison R eds Suburbanisation in glo-
bal society: research in urban sociology no 10 Emerald
Books, Bingley 15–47
Harvey D 2005 A brief history of neoliberalism Oxford Uni-
versity Press, Oxford
Klein L R and Pomer M eds 2001 The new Russia: transi-
tion gone awry Stanford University Press, Stanford CA
Kling R, Olin S and Poster M 1995 The emergence of
postsuburbia: an introduction in Kling R, Olin S and
Poster M eds Postsuburban California: the transformation
of Orange County since World War Two University of Cal-
ifornia Press, Berkeley CA 1–30Kolossov V and O’Loughlin J 2004 How Moscow is
becoming a capitalist mega-city International Social Sci-
ences Journal 56 413–27
Kulcsar L J and Domokos T 2005 The post-socialist
growth machine: the case of Hungary International Jour-
nal of Urban and Regional Research 29 550–63
Logan J and Molotch H 1987 Urban fortunes: the political econ-
omy of place University of California Press, Berkeley CA
Makhrova A and Molodikova I 2007 Land market, com-
mercial real estate, and the remolding of Moscow’s
urban fabric in Stanilov K ed The post-socialist city:
urban form and space transformations in Central and EasternEurope after socialism Springer, Dordrecht
Makhrova A G, Nefedova T G and Treivish A I 2008
Moskovskaya oblast segodnya i zavtra: tendentsii i perspek-
tivy prostranstvennogo razvitiya [Moscow Oblast today
and tomorrow: tendencies and perspectives of spatial
development] Novyy Khronograf, Moscow
Marcuse P 1996 Privatization and its discontents: property
rights in land and housing in the transition in Eastern
Europe in Andrusz G, Harloe M and Szelenyi I eds
Cities after socialism: urban and regional change and conflict
in post-socialist societies Blackwell, Oxford 119–91
Molotch H L 1976 The city as a growth machine American
Journal of Sociology 82 309–30Nolan P 1995 China’s rise, Russia’s fall: politics, economics
and planning in the transition from socialism Palgrave-
Macmillan, Basingstoke
Nuissl H and Rink D 2005 The ‘production’ of urban
sprawl in eastern Germany as a phenomenon of post-
socialist transition Cities 22 123–34
Pallot J and Shaw D J B 1981 Planning in the Soviet Union
Croom Helm, London
Peck J and Tickell A 2002 Neoliberalizing space Antipode
34 380–404
Phelps N A and Wood A forthcoming The new post-sub-
urban politics? Urban Studies
Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 439
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
8/9/2019 Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/-the-political-ec-growth-on-the-edge 16/16
Phelps N A, Parsons N, Ballas D and Dowling A 2006
Post-suburban Europe: planning and politics at the margins
of Europe’s capital cities Palgrave-Macmillan, Basingstoke
Phelps N A, Wood A M and Valler D C 2010 A post-sub-
urban world? An outline of a research agenda Environ-
ment & Planning A 42 366–83
Pickles J and Smith A eds 1998 Theorising transition: thepolitical economy of post-communist transformation Routl-
edge, London
Roland G 2001 Ten years after . . . transition and econom-
ics IMF Staff Papers 48 29–52
Roland G 2004 Understanding institutional change: fast-
moving and slow-moving institutions Studies in Compar-
ative International Development 38 109–31
Round J and Williams C 2010 Coping with the social costs
of ‘transition’: everyday life in post-Soviet Russia and
Ukraine European Urban and Regional Studies 17 183–96
Rudolph R and Brade I 2005 Moscow: processes of
restructuring in the Post-Soviet metropolitan periphery
Cities 22 135–50Scott A J and Roweis S T 1977 Urban planning in theory
and in practice: a reappraisal Environment & Planning A
9 1097–119
Soja E 2000 Postmetropolis Blackwell, Oxford
Stone C 1989 Regime politics: governing Atlanta, 1946–1988
University Press of Kansas, Lawrence KS
Tasan-Kok T 2006 Institutional and spatial change in
Tsenkova S and Nedovic-Budic Z eds The urban mosaic
of post-socialist Europe: space, institutions and policy Physi-
ca-Verlag, Heidelberg 51–70Teaford J 1997 Post-suburbia: government and politics in the
edge cities Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Tsenkova S and Nedovic-Budic Z eds 2006 The urban
mosaic of post-socialist Europe: space institutions and policy
Physica-Verlag (Springer), Heidelberg
Ward K 1996 Rereading urban regime theory: a sympa-
thetic critique Geoforum 27 427–38
Wood A M 2004 Domesticating urban theory? US con-
cepts, British cities and the limits of cross national
applications Urban Studies 41 2103–18
Wu F and Phelps N A 2008 From suburbia to post-subur-
bia in China? Aspects of the transformation of the Beij-
ing and Shanghai global city regions Built Environment34 464–81
Yin R 1989 Case study research Sage, London
440 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011
ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)