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.

摘要

本文关注城市条件、行动者、机构和发展路径的多样性，与城市企业家精神和竞争力的必要性形成鲜明对比。本文的目的不是假设外生增长源的关键作用，而是通过城市更新的视角，实证探索地方机构在实现连续性或变化方面的作用。数据取自俄罗斯小型公司城镇（monogorods）的三个案例研究。该论文的结论是，在小城镇，当地行为者和内生资源在实现积极变革方面发挥着重要作用。对于俄罗斯mongorods有一种趋势是将不同类型的机构“合并”成一个包罗万象的地方领导层，尽管存在等级权力关系，但中央政府仍享有一定的决策自主权。该研究表明，需要更好地考虑城市发展各个领域中不同形式的人类能动性。虽然传统方法倾向于优先考虑正式的等级制度，并从静态的权威和经济权力地位中获得代理权，但我们证明，行动者可能承担不同的角色，这些角色不能以固定和预先定义的方式或狭隘确定的经济利益巧妙地反映他们的立场。