Reality vs Regulation: Informal Practices of Spatial Development in Krasnodar, Russia

Urban Studies and Practices. 2023. Vol. 8. No. 4. P. 36–53.

Karaselnikova M., Maltseva D., Iskusov N., Fadeeva E., Mardanov L., Pisareva M., Kharitonov M., Elkina E.

In the research environment, informal urban development has traditionally been studied in the cities of the Global South. However, in the Eastern European context, informal urban development differs as land use regulation goes through the process of post-socialist transformation. Krasnodar is one of the biggest and fastest growing cities in Russia, where informal construction practices and bottom-up approaches in spatial redevelopment are widely spread despite the strict regulation of housing construction and precise tools for identification of informality. The work presentsa step towards the discovery of this phenomenon. In the spotlight we put the exploration of inner synergetic inconsistency of legal relations, connecting economic, institutional, demographic, and sociopolitical context to understand the contradiction between formal and informal urban life. The research methods include spatial and regulatory documents analyses, in-depth interviews with different collective actors (city administration, activists, experts in urban development, locals living in informal). The core of the research — the machinery of the conflict behind the legalization process. Findings of this work illustrate a number of reasons behind the spread of informal settlements in Krasnodar and their role in urban development. While administrative power does not seek compromise with locals and migrants, the mistrust of others embodies itself as unguided and spontaneous urban development.

Keywords: informal urbanization, urban conflicts, morphology of informal buildings, illegal construction