Post-Soviet Transformations on Krasnaya Street, Krasnodar, Russia: an Issue-Based Case Study (First 3 Sections)

Post-Soviet Transformations on Krasnaya Street, Krasnodar, Russia: An Issue-based Case Study (first 3 sections) Corinna Welzenbach Master of Landscape Architecture candidate University of Washington Thesis Advisors: Lynne Manzo (chair), Department of Landscape Architecture Jeff Hou, Department of Landscape Architecture James West, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures INTRODUCTION Fall 1997: Arriving at the dilapidated tram stop, I feel a panic that I may not remember the way home. I cross the street and pass a brownfield on the way to my two-story apartment building. I memorize every detail so I won’t lose my way. I pass a market where a cow head covered in flies is for sale. The solid pink buildings surrounding me, staring, hoping I will lose my way. Fall 2009: I return to Zavodskaya (Factory) tram stop. The brownfield is now a huge parking lot, mall and movie theater with an English name:“City Center”. Blue mirrored walls of the mall and a large yellow sign invite visitors to the high-end stores and movie theater with reclining seats. The “character” I remembered, from a time when Russia was in the middle of economic collapse, was paved over very quickly. I feel a sadness thinking of the soul of a place and how it can be covered over by uncontrolled development. The research conducted in Krasnodar sought to the story of the transformation of a city, as it struggles to define itself in the post-Soviet era. This descriptive story in itself has historic value as the physical changes are an important aspect of history. I believe many of the changes caused by piecemeal free market construction have been negative. In Krasnodar, there has been an overall reduction of open space and many historic buildings have been destroyed. However, a renewed interested in cultural history has also been expressed in public spaces. Beyond just tracking the physical changes, I sought to understand the complexities of the urban space transformation in Krasnodar. My conclusions about the post-Soviet transformations in Krasnodar are based on observations of public spaces here and how life-time residents of the city feel about these changes. This resident-based approach to public space has been advocated for by The Project for Public Places which states “The Community is the Expert”. Conceptions of public and public space are culturally specific. This research will address a prejudice many people from the U.S. still have towards Russian cities. For example, I lived in 10 story gray apartment building, that most foreign would consider oppressive. However, it is half a block from a school, at most times of the day retirees are sitting on the benches at the entryway talking, and the small play area in front of the building is often filled with young mothers and their children. Most people live in these pedestrian priority “microraions”. Policies in the Soviet era, such as the lack of private property, pedestrian priority zone development, and required public work parties and demonstrations contributed to the public’s feeling of ownership of public space in Krasnodar. While many of the policies have changed, people’s use and sense of place developed in a time when these policies were in place. As a future landscape architect, I have a consciousness about the value of public space. I believe places can have soul and tell the story of time. Open space should be viewed as a historical and cultural asset. Krasnodar without a doubt has an extremely vibrant public realm in the city center. The government, developers, and citizens should fully recognize the value of this, and the importance of supporting and preserving it with policies and development projects. In a time of political and economic flux, decisions made by the city can greatly influence the future of public life in the city center. An analysis of the changes on Krasnaya St. revealed the deep cultural significance of this place. Future changes ought not disrupt the cultural significance, but be carried out with great consideration of the role of this place in the life and the hearts of residents. The following document contains the first three sections of my thesis: the Literature Review, Research Methods, and a History of Soviet Planning. Additional sections will include a History of Krasnaya Street, Results and Analysis with particular emphasis on the citizen interviews. LITERATURE REVEIW We crossed the large square newly paved with yellow, burgundy, and gray pavers in a fan pattern, past the statue of Pushkin, and to Krasnodar’s A.S. Pushkin Library. This light yellow historic building, at the beginning of Krasnaya Street, with large windows and high ceilings, possesses a majestic quality. Ira was kind enough to come with me, although she had not been to the library in years. She suggested I do research on the internet since libraries were a pain. (I was afraid to go alone because my friend from England who had gone to the library returned in tears telling me the librarian told her she actually didn’t want to look at the book she requested.) We entered the large doors, and passing through a metal detector, proceeded downstairs to the bag and coat check, where we left all our belongings except wallet and notebooks as we weren’t allowed to bring anything large inside. The process of looking at a book in the library was elaborate. First, we signed up for a library card. Luckily the people working there were surprisingly helpful and we were even allowed to present a copy of a picture to put on the card to substitute for an original (which we made when we went downstairs to pay at the cashier). Then we passed the control point where we received a form on which would be used to track all books we looked at, as we could not take books home. We found the card catalogue section on Krasnodar Region and on Architecture. There were many applicable resources and most significantly the book by Galina Shakhova on the history of Krasnaya Street, which I was looking for. I walked up to the third floor to the book storage counter and filled out two forms with the title and call number of the book. The woman at the counter told me to come back in twenty minutes. I waited on an old brown couch outside the door impatiently messing with my electronic translator. Then, I went back in the room, got my book, and brought it into the large sunny reading hall with rows of tables each with an individual lamp. After a couple hours of translation, I returned my book and checked out of the library showing the paper verifying I had returned all books. I share this story as an example of how the process of research in another country imposes barriers but at the same time constantly presents an opportunity to learn about the culture. Likewise, many barriers exist to understanding the creation of public space in Russia and the countries of the former USSR. It is worthy to face these barriers in order to gain understanding of the complexities of culturally specific place meaning. The extension of the iron curtain into academia largely remains today. On the surface many Russian cities seem oppressive and perhaps therefore unworthy of examination. However, a rich public life exists on the street which was supported by development policies. In the book “Plans, Pragmatism, and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today’s Cities,” R. Antony French writes “ Given the objectives of the Soviet system, it is perhaps a matter of considerable surprise that the overwhelming bulk of Western literature on town planning, urban sociology, and urban geography totally ignores the largest-scale experiment in history to bring about a new form of town ” (1995, 5). My research seeks to be a modest addition to breaking the divide in knowledge by examining design and planning in Russia. While the research on post-Soviet towns is also limited when compared with that on its Western counterparts, several case studies have provided in-depth descriptions of post-Soviet planning. In 1995, Blare Ruble, current director of the Kennen Institute and the chair of the Comparative Urban Studies Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, researched post Soviet planning in Yaroslavl, Russia by interviewing planners and developers who were involved in the privatization process. Oleg Golubchikov’s (2003) more general article looks at the transformations of the planning profession, using examples from Moscow. In 2007, Sasha Tsenkova presented a case study of experiments with new planning methodology in Sofia, Bulgaria. All of these case studies address the difficulties of developing a new planning system in post-Soviet times, an era of massive change. The specific dates of post-Soviet studies are extremely significant. From 1990-1999 the area of developed land in Russia (excluding roads) expanded from 30,000 to 54,000 square kilometers (80% increase!) (Golubchikov, 2003). This expansion occurred in a period before Russia fully recovered from the economic collapse in the perestroika period and before the main economic/construction boom of the last 10 years began. In Krasnodar, four mega-malls and an IKEA have been constructed in the last 8 years alone. Cities are developing with the market, and more quickly than the institutions of planning. The research of Ruble, Tsenkova, Golubchikov and others use the example of one city to speak of the changes occurring over the vast territory of the former Soviet Union. Research based in one city has a drawback because each region is unique and the research does not reflect the complexity of the entire territory of the Soviet Union.

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