Creating an Urban Environment: Controversies in Multiple-Object

Abstract

At the beginning of 2010 in Russia, interest in the urban environment and its quality and comfort increased. This trend appeared in a number of large-scale projects in the most populated cities, firstly in Moscow, and in the opening of new educational institutes, programs and NGOs that focus on the urban environment. This movement could not remain only in metropolitan cities; by the mid 2010s it had spread to all over the country, and numerous groups of civil activists were appearing. During the election campaign for the State Duma, a priority federal project “the formation of a comfortable urban environment” was begun. In implementing this program there was much disagreement about how the urban environment should be created, about the criteria for that environment, and eventually about the necessity for or priority of such programs at all. This article views these controversies through the concept of “multiple object” of the Lancaster branch of actor-network theory (ANT), represented mainly by works of John Law and Annemarie Mol. We examine the basic processes that formed the creation of the urban environment—the implementation of the federal project, processing improvements, and activist activity. Then we identify the main actors and illustrate that, today, the urban environment enacts at least two conflicting networks of relations.