'New Urban Activism' and 'Public Policy' in Russia (case of Saint Petersburg)

Abstract

In the recent decade, specialists observe a growth – in number and scale – of all sorts of grass root activities connected to the urban development and urban environment in contemporary cities. By these activities we mean a growing popularity of DIY movements and projects, a growth of demand for horizontal (non-hierarchical) connections, forms of actions and organization, a popularity of various participatory mechanisms. Our 10-years long observation (form inside as consultants for activist groups, and from outside as researchers) allows distinguishing several common vectors in the transformation of grass root urban activist movements in the recent years. We identify, for instance, a transformation from protective 'initiatives against' to the productive 'initiatives for', from struggle to cooperation. We argue that these transformations constitute a phenomenon we call the new urban activism. Drawing from interviews with urban activists of Saint Petersburg, as well as from our observation of their projects, we show how dramatism of protective urban activism has transformed – via DIY and tactical urbanism movements popular in Russian cities in the early 2000s – into a rather festive and joyful activity. In the last part, we also address the issue of 'political apathy.' To conceptualize observed processes, we employ the theoretical approach suggested by Hanna Arendt. We look at the activity of the new urban activism through the perspective of vita activa and argue that the new activism constitutes a sphere of public policy, as an alternative to the conventional Realpolitik, reminding politika that refers to an ancient polis where city was the main concern of citizens.