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Город как территория неравенства: оспаривание сноса гаражных строений в Санкт-Петербурге
The article discusses the opportunities of city dwellers civic participation in the urban decision making. The theoretical background of the article is both L. Thevenot’s pragmatic sociology and Sh. Arstein’s “a ladder of citizen participation”. The empirical base of the study consists of a series of semi-structured interviews with members of garage spots owners in St. Petersburg, involved in urban contestation against enormous garage demolition. The author concludes that the possessors of garage spots resorts to the large range of instruments of urban space contestation in view of legal actions are found unproductive. The strong advocacy groups (city authorities and buildings developers) appeals to norms and lows largely, but also they addresses to the variety of the other instruments for legitimating their actions though. As a result, the interaction among urban activists and city authorities occurs in the level of “therapy”, “informing” and “manipulation”, according to the Arstein’s terminology.