Urban Regimes and Socially Significant Projects of Transformation of the Urban Environment in the Russian Federation

The authors of the article aim to identify the principles and patterns of mutual influence of socially significant projects for transformation of the urban environment and urban regimes in the Russian Federation. Clarence Stone’s concept of urban regimes is used as a theoretical framework. Based on the author’s system of social significance criteria, six projects for transformation of the urban environment in four cities were selected and analyzed: Okhta Center and Tuchkov Buyan in St. Petersburg, Zaryadye Park and development of the fields at the Timiryazev Academy in Moscow, St. Catherine’s Church in Yekaterinburg, and concreting of the embankments of the Vologda River in Vologda. Whereas the initial phase of all projects took place in the realities of local urban growth regimes, with the predominance of the interests of the established coalitions of business and government, the subsequent increase in the role of public activism in all projects and the change of goal-setting under its influence led to a change in the local urban regime during their implementation. It is shown that in five studied cases, during implementation of projects, there was a transition of local urban regimes from growth to progressive, and in one, from growth to a greater extent towards a status quo regime. The general principles and patterns of mutual influence of socially significant transformation projects and urban regimes in the Russian Federation are identified and described: competitive public interaction of all types of actors; change or relocation of the project as a spatial way of conflict resolution; the prevailing shift from the realization of the government and business interests in favor of society; employment of paternalistic tools as a way to achieve consensus. Such conditions of mutual influence of socially significant projects and urban regimes can develop in a certain period in any major Russian city; then we can expect in it spatial transformation similar to the results described. The results of the study clearly demonstrate the onset of the process of local transformation of the dominant urban regimes in the Russian Federation.