The Comfortable City Model: Researching Russian Urban Planning and Design Through Policy Mobilities

Abstract

Drawing on the scholarship of policy mobility and center-periphery relations, this article sheds light on the evolution of Russian urban planning and design since the new millennium and critically discusses recent trends. We do so through the lens of planning ideas and their circulation. In particular, the paper reconstructs how the comfortable city model emerged and unfolded in Russian urban planning and design. We identify three phases: the model’s emergence within the professional community in the early 2000s, its consolidation in the 2010s, and its recent rise into the epitome of contemporary Russian city making. The paper finds that over the last two decades the centers of innovations in the field of urban planning and design have shifted. While mainly the regional capitals and other large and medium-sized Russian cities provided important stimuli in the beginning of the new millennium, contemporary urban planning and design is marked by attempts to spread many of Moscow’s best practices throughout the country. Such attempts are enforced, inter alia, through federal programs and national modernization projects, educational initiatives, and the spread of the capital’s expertise and experts to the regions. The resulting reshuffling of center-periphery relations is marked by the recentralization of knowledge, expertise, and professional resources and by further peripheralization through the undermining of local autonomy, expertise, innovation, and knowledge.