Химки Курич Презентац the Political Ec.. Growth on the Edge of Moscow11

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The political economy of place at thepost-socialist urban periphery: governing

growth on the edge of Moscow

Oleg Golubchikov* and Nicholas A Phelps**

What economic and policy conditions and power relations govern the transformation of

the metropolitan periphery in post-socialist nations and to what extent do these con-

verge on those observed in similar locations in the United States and Western Europe?

Drawing on original empirical research conducted on location, we consider the case

of the rapidly growing city of Khimki at the edge of Moscow in order to expose the

post-Soviet variety of the political economy of place on the metropolitan periphery. We

analyse both a broader institutional context of post-socialist urbanisation (ideology of

transition, Soviet legacy, urban planning, relationships between stakeholders) and more

specific aspects of local growth and placemaking in Khimki. Superficially, recent devel-

opment in Khimki includes elements that resemble those apparent in edge cities in the

liberal market economies and even appear to be promoted by a post-socialist variety of

growth machine politics. On closer inspection, however, the post-socialist local growth

regime operates as specific political-bureaucratic processes that question the relevance

of the Western understanding of place-centred coalitions as the key elements of a politi-

cal economy of place. Accumulation strategies in the post-socialist case are found to be

less cartelised and localised than in the West and seen to be largely decoupled from

any collective placemaking or growth agendas. We argue for the need to de-emphasise

the word ‘place’ and to accentuate the word ‘political’ in notions of a political economyof place when speaking of the post-socialist metropolitan periphery.

key words growth machine placemaking transition edge city Moscow

city-region Russia

*School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15

2TT

email: [email protected]

**Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, London WC1H 0QB

revised manuscript received 13 September 2010

Introduction

It has long been argued that the logic of socialist

urbanisation in Eastern Europe produced a some-

what different type of city from those in Western

regimes (Andrusz et al. 1996; Bater 1980). It is little

surprise, then, that the introduction of the market

economy resulted in a flood of new urban processes

that have been rapidly changing the function and

morphology of post-socialist cities. This has been

apparent in the likes of gentrification, redevelop-

ment, the rise of central business districts (CBDs),

and a rapid pace of commodification of urban space

within the cores of major cities (Badyina and

Golubchikov 2005; Enyedi and Kovacs 2006), but is

perhaps most conspicuous at the post-socialist

metropolitan periphery because of the sheer scale of

land use change resulting from suburbanisation

(Boren and Gentile 2007, 103; Golubchikov 2004,

233). As a result, many scholars have pointed to a

growing degree of convergence in the form of urbani-

sation in post-socialist and liberal market economies

of the West, including at the metropolitan periphery

(Nuissl and Rink 2005; Rudolph and Brade 2005).

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 425–440 2011

ISSN 0020-2754 2011 The Authors.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

ransactionsof the Institute of British Geographers





involved 50 semi-structured interviews. The body

of interview material collected inevitably reflected

some of the serendipity that results from ‘snowball-

ing’, with some actors well-represented (notably

the development community and local and regional

government) and others less so (civic and environ-

mental groups and the general public). Neverthe-

less, our informants included local officers in

Khimki, planning and development supervision

bodies at the Moscow Oblast regional level, Federal

authorities responsible for urban development,

land use and housing, private developers, realestate and other relevant businesses, chambers of

commerce, academic experts, as well as representa-

tives of local environmental groups concerned with

the preservation of green areas and resident anti-

development campaigners. We draw on observa-

tions and use some quotations from these interview

sources, the majority of which were conducted in

Russian (and translated by us into English) and

some in English.

The paper is structured as follows. In the next

section we start by discussing to what extent the

transition to the market economy reorients the

functioning of institutions versus the persistence of

pre-transition elements. We then introduce the pro-

cesses of urbanisation and urban change on the

periphery of Moscow. We continue discussing the

case of Khimki in light of the edge city and growth

machine literature. First, we highlight some similar-

ities between growth in Khimki and the patterns

typical to the suburban ‘growth machine’. Second,

we consider the role of the post-Soviet institution of

urban planning in the politics of place and local

placemaking. Third, we discuss in more detail thepolitico-economic dynamic behind growth in

Khimki, its contradictions and limitations. We con-

clude with some further reassessments of the Rus-

sian case and the relevance of Western concepts in

the analysis of urban development at Moscow’s

burgeoning periphery. We argue in particular that

although the case of Khimki has some elements

characteristic of ‘edge city’ and ‘growth machine’

style development, its growth is largely ‘placeless’,

because it is driven by initiatives and institutions

that are essentially disconnected from local-centred

Figure 1 The location of the Urban District of Khimki

Note: Territory belonging to the city of Moscow is marked in white

Source: Drawn by authors based on data from OpenStreetMap

Political economy of place at the post-socialist urban periphery 427






politics and active placemaking. In this and some

other respects, the political dynamic of the post-

socialist metropolitan periphery remains different

from that of many ‘post-suburban’ locations in the

West, both in the US and European context,

although the persistency of this ‘distinctiveness’ in

the longer term is less than clear.

Transition as convergence on the Westernmodel?

Transition can be viewed as one inescapable com-

pulsion that, while having originated at the

national regulatory level, has transformed life and

circumstances in all cities of post-socialist societies

– irrespective of the previous situations or aspira-

tions in these cities. In Russia, as in other post-

socialist countries, the appropriation of society bycapitalism has changed the very raison d’etre of

the city. Rather than being a socialist machine for

the propagation of communist ideology, of pur-

poseful evolution to ‘a fair and egalitarian society’,

the post-socialist city has become a machine for the

celebration of profit-making, of private wealth, of

individualism, of the ‘liberation’ of the self from

communal responsibilities and of the communal

responsibility from both caring for individual

selves and the necessity of building a better society

of tomorrow. The appearance and rhythm of citieshave changed accordingly.

However, the arrival of ‘capitalism’ was neither

uniform, nor had uniform implications in space.

For a start, the intensity of the ‘wind of change’

has been asymmetric and asynchronic. Larger cities

and inner cities were first and foremost bearing the

signs of post-industrial transformation, tertiarisa-

tion and commercialisation (Bater et al. 1998). Mos-

cow was a particular focus for such economic

restructuring, notably in its central areas (Badyina

and Golubchikov 2005; Kolossov and O’Loughlin

2004). Eventually the processes of change have alsofallen on cities further down the urban hierarchy,

as well as peripheries of the larger cities (Rudolf

and Brade 2005). However, while urban corners are

being penetrated by ‘propetisation’ and mercantile

urbanism, the capitalist logic of uneven develop-

ment means that these changes hardly bring pros-

perity to all (Round and Williams 2010). As a

result, as in other parts of the post-socialist world

(Tsenkova and Nedovic-Budic 2006), Russian urban

experiences have been characterised by great diver-

sification and fragmentation.

It is not only urban experiences that have seen a

fragmentation; the very teleological belief in a lin-

ear transition to ‘the western model’ has been chal-

lenged following the diversity of transition

pathways instead of the triumph of a universal

capitalism (Klein and Pomer 2001; Pickles and

Smith 1998; Roland 2001). This is of course becausethe wider forces of transition and globalisation

interplay not simply with a uniform societal ‘mass’,

but rather with thick and complex local institu-

tional assemblages and material legacies. Each

post-socialist society is constituted of a complex

combination of phenomena, with each of these rep-

resenting its very own format and speed of change.

This is not simply to mechanically distinguish

between ‘fast-moving’ and ‘slow-moving’ institu-

tions as Roland (2004) does, nor between ‘progress’

and ‘rigid path dependency’ as the neoliberalorthodoxy now likes to explain many failures of its

policies. But if we unpack the local ‘consensuses’ of

post-socialist societies for scrutiny, we will find

the contentious processes of institutional configura-

tions and reconfigurations with old and new,

socialist, pre-socialist and post-socialist elements

coexisting, interplaying and conflicting with each

other – where the ‘old’ does not necessarily mean

‘regressive’ and where the ‘new’ is not necessarily

‘progressive’.

This complexity notwithstanding, all emergingmarkets have very substantial ideological imprints

of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005; Peck and Tickell

2002). Transition has been part and parcel of neo-

liberalism. It is rooted in the neoliberal ideology

and is feeding this ideology. Thus, the idiosyncra-

sies of the post-socialist practices in no way imply

that these societies have opposed neoliberalism or

provided alternatives to it, but rather that they

have internalised neoliberalism to themselves

become one of its various ‘mutations’.

In Russia, in particular, the new post-Soviet

elites seemed happily subscribed to neoliberalorthodoxy, requiring the market system to be cre-

ated in a ‘big bang’ rather than incrementally.

Here, as Nolan observed when comparing Russia

and China, there is a ‘paradox that in the transition

from a ‘‘planned’’ economy, a central condition of

success is the ability of the state to plan effectively’

(Nolan 1995, 4). The prevailing elitist visions in

Russia, however, were to break the planning of the

old system as fast as possible, no matter what

would follow. Such opinions are still widespread,

as reflected by one interviewee who complained

428 Oleg Golubchikov and Nicholas A Phelps






about the ‘market-perverse legacies’ of Soviet plan-

ning and development institutions:

Our mainstream strategy is to make a big step from a

regulated economy to a market economy. You cannot

do this in small steps but you must do it with a big

leap forward . . . otherwise you end up with the situa-

tion as in Moscow which is more or less like the Soviet

model of controlling and regulating development. (Dep-

uty Director, Reforms in Real Estate, the Institute for

Urban Economics, Moscow, 25 August 2008)

And yet, while attempts were made to eradicate

Soviet-era institutions and not to merely adjust or

‘superstructure’ them based on their utility, Soviet

institutions have not been completely marginalised.

Rather, given the absence of alternative capacities

and experiences, the result has been their reincar-

nation in new forms, which, although now oriented

towards different ends and often bringing quiteopposite results than in the past, still do not quite

fulfil the neoliberal script either. Thus, the inter-

nalisation of the neoliberal doctrine has been

blended with the persistence of socialist elements,

which may now play a very different role than in

the past (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). In short,

post-socialist urban societies need to be viewed as

hybrid juxtapositions of social forms, relationships

and trajectories, emerging from the struggles

between their ‘outside’, their ‘inside’ and their

histories. We need to keep this in mind whendiscussing the political economy of place in the

post-Soviet context. In the next section we turn to

the consideration of urbanisation at the edge of

Moscow in more detail.

Urbanisation at the edge of Moscow

In Moscow, as in other large post-socialist cities, the

processes of urban transformation have been

unfolding in a compressed time, obliterating the rel-

evance of common analytical separation of the pro-

cess of urbanisation into stages, as a linear outward

growth of the city. In the US literature, for example,

both inner-city regeneration and transformations on

metropolitan edges such as the growth of ‘edge cit-

ies’ (Garreau 1991), post-suburbs (Kling et al. 1995)

and ‘technoburbs’ (Fishman 1987) are sometimes

opposed to the mass suburbanisation of the 1940s

to 1960s. In Russia, because of suburbanisation, the

‘built-up’ category of land use had doubled in the

1990s; and still in parallel central urban areas have

been renovated and increasingly colonised by the

new rich – a recognisable pattern of gentrification

(Badyina and Golubchikov 2005). Thus in its

embodying several elements of urbanisation, which

in the West commonly have been seen to have

occurred sequentially over significant stretches of

time, the process of urbanisation in Moscow might

appear to have some superficial similarities withthe chaotic, fragmented and non-linear patterns of

urbanisation said to characterise contemporary,

post-modern, processes of urbanisation in the US

(Dear and Dahmann 2008; Soja 2000).

More specifically in terms of the dynamics of the

metropolitan periphery, suburbanisation in Mos-

cow has taken the form of second-home develop-

ments rather than permanent residences. People

continue to reside in their urban multifamily

houses, but have second homes of various stan-

dards in less urbanised settings. This is betterdescribed as ‘seasonal suburbanisation’ – a phe-

nomenon of some (although variable) significance

across Europe (Arnstberg and Bergstrom 2007).

This has been overlain recently by more ‘perma-

nent’ residential or cottage patterns of suburbanisa-

tion taking place in the nearest areas around

Moscow (Makhrova et al. 2008) and that has some

similarities with what in the US would be termed

exurbanisation, due to its extreme low-density and

as yet purely residential orientation. Finally, at

important junctions in the expanding Moscowmetropolitan space are a number of burgeoning

high-rise settlements which, as well as being sepa-

rate administrative jurisdictions, are home to a

diverse mix of activities and functions – old manu-

facturing, new retail, office, distribution and other

employment. In the US (Kling et al. 1995; Teaford

1997) and further afield (Phelps et al. 2006) such

settlements have been labelled ‘post-suburban’ and

are seen to embody an urbanisation of the suburbs

into cities in function but not in form.

Thus, along with quasi-suburbanisation, the

fringe of the Moscow metropolitan area is nowexperiencing some patterns of intensified growth.

Initially, at least, this was clearly driven by the

development of shopping malls along the Moscow

Orbital Motorway (which for the most part corre-

sponds with the administrative border between the

City of Moscow and Moscow Oblast – a separate

administrative region surrounding Moscow), as

well as the development of warehouses along the

major motorways running from Moscow. But,

increasingly, other forms of development, such as







major modern office-based employment, including

back-offices, emerge in the nearest cities to Moscow

(Makhrova and Molodikova 2007; Rudolph and

Brade 2005). These forms of development are also

paralleled by much intensified residential construc-

tion in and around the Russian capital.

Khimki was one of the first ‘satellite’ cities inMoscow Oblast to experience the combination of

these processes during the period of economic

boom in Russia between 1999 and 2008. The city

now hosts some of the largest shopping malls in

Russia, including by IKEA and Auchan (Plate 1).

IKEA has also diversified significantly by develop-

ing a large office project (Khimki Business Park),

which is envisaged to consist of six towers, two of

which are completed. Many other office and retail

projects of smaller scale, as well as huge new-build

residential sites in previously greenfield areas, haverecently changed the Khimki skyline. As a result,

while in the 1990s Khimki evolved to have mostly

a residential suburban character with most people

commuting to work in Moscow because of the

decline of employment in the local industries, more

recently it has become a sub-centre for employ-

ment, which leads to more complex work–home

relationships between Khimki and Moscow.

The property boom in Khimki is seen as being

preconditioned by the city’s favourable location

(Figure 1). First, it is adjacent to Moscow and is

well connected with it. Second, major transport

links cross Khimki, including the Moscow–

St Petersburg motorway (known as Leningrad

Motorway) and railway. Third, Khimki is locatednear and on the main route from Moscow to

Russia’s major international airport Sheremetyevo;

the airport also now administratively belongs to

the territory of Khimki. Fourth, the city is located

in an environmentally favourable zone to the west

of Moscow and near the Moscow Canal.

In January 2006, because of a municipal reform

in Russia, the whole area of what used to constitute

the Khimki District became amalgamated as the

unified ‘Urban District of Khimki’ (Gorodskoy Okrug

Khimki) with a total population of about 180 000.However, historically Khimki had been an adminis-

trative centre of a larger district with a few other

settlements and open countryside. In 1984, the

Council of Ministers of Soviet Russia handed over

a part of the territory of the Khimki District to

Moscow (even earlier, Moscow received Zeleno-

grad District further afield). As Khimki was an off-

limits city, Moscow grew around the city rather

Plate 1 The territory along the Leningrad Motorway in Khimki has attracted many new commercial and

residential property development projects

Source: Authors’ photograph







than incorporating it. With the collapse of the

Soviet system, various administrative borders,

which were previously easily changed by central

decisions, assumed importance as demarcating

political jurisdictions. The often ambiguous borders

of Khimki became the points of tensions between

Moscow Oblast and Moscow. Most importantly, along dispute in the court preceded settling the bor-

ders for Sheremetyevo in favour of Khimki. As was

noted, ‘It indeed turns out that it’s a very compli-

cated city as it is all interpenetrated by Moscow

territory, Federal transport junctions and motor-

ways – this is the specificity of the city’ (Deputy

Head of the Project Studio for Suburban Zone of

Moscow and Moscow Oblast, Research and Devel-

opment Institute for the General Plan of the City of

Moscow, Moscow, 26 August 2008).

A post-Socialist growth machine?

While travelling between Moscow and the Sherem-

etyevo airport within Khimki District, it is hard to

avoid superficial comparisons with the edge city

environment of the US. By now the heavy conges-

tion on the stretch of road allows one ample time

to gaze out onto what is a rather chaotic mix of

office and apartment blocks and retail outlets that,

at least until the recent effects of the global finan-

cial crisis, were being built at very rapid ratesindeed. It is tempting to consider this suburban

nodal point of car-based accessibility being subject

to the sorts of private sector forces apparent in the

US. Certainly, the initiative, as in the US, does tend

to come from the private sector, as one interviewee

from a commercial property brokerage described:

As for the government, there is no one good well

thought-out strategy of developing this or that Moscow

Region suburb or district. It is stimulated by developers

. . . IKEA, for instance, was being built without any per-

mission for construction. They just came out on the land

and started to build and got the [formal] permissions inprocess. If you imagine this kind of situation now, it

would be absolutely impossible to proceed. You would

lose all the money invested in the project. But six or

seven years ago it was okay. (DTZ property consultants,

Moscow, 20 August 2008, in English)

This particular account may involve a good deal of

oversimplification, especially given that the con-

struction of the IKEA complex at the end of the

1990s involved a number of conflicts both with the

local populace and the governmental agencies over

concerns that it might introduce damage to a

Soviet-era war memorial commemorating the place

where the Nazi’s advancement onto Moscow was

turned back in 1941. However, it rightly reflects the

practice of giving planning permissions ex-post,

following developers’ initiatives, which may even

be against formal rules. Here, government and its

planning and regulatory systems at all levels, andespecially the municipal level, respond to a newly

created market system that was ushered in, albeit

in a rather incomplete way, in the early 1990s. Leg-

islation in the early 1990s provided for private

property rights and, although incomplete, released

a huge suppressed demand for housing from indi-

viduals and for commercial premises from busi-

nesses. This time, lasting until new legislation

completing the market system in more recent years,

was considered by many in the industry as a per-

iod of ‘wild capitalism’ as one informed intervie-wee observed (Partner, Ernst and Young, Moscow,

28 October 2008, in English).

The pace and seemingly uncontrolled nature of

development take on the possibly peculiar features

of the Russian ‘big bang’ route to transition, pro-

ducing in appearance an exaggerated form of what

has been described in US literature as growth

machine development.1 Indeed, growth in the

peripheries of major post-socialist cities has

prompted Kulcsar and Domokos (2005) to invoke

the term ‘post-socialist growth machine’. The con- joining of the term growth machine is testimony to

the concept’s ability to travel, but, if taken for

granted, it may conceal more than it reveals. In

fact, the understanding of the ‘political economy of

place’ in this concept is a rather denuded one and

one recognised and critiqued as such by its progen-

itors (Logan and Molotch 2007; Molotch 1976). It

has been further exposed not only by other concep-

tualisations of urban politics in the US (Cox and

Mair 1988; Stone 1989), but also the practices of

urban politics in Western Europe, where more pur-

poseful and progressive strategies of placemakinghave existed. The growth machine concept explains

the continued growth of historic cities as driven by

speculative motives of the coalitions of landed

business interest and politicians that seek to pursue

the development with greatest exchange value

when set against concerns for social inclusivity and

interest in the use and amenity value of land (Clark

et al. 2002). Furthermore, the mutual interests of

municipal politicians and officials and the private

sector in the growth machine are place-based

because of what Cox and Mair (1988) have further







elaborated as the ‘local dependence’ of both

parties. The joint actions of the private and public

sectors coalesce over the profits and revenues that

attend the development patterns centred on uplifts

in the exchange value of land and property within

a particular jurisdiction. As such, municipal eco-

nomic development strategies and planning poli-cies become a focal point for coalitions of vested

interests.

And here important dissimilarities with the post-

socialist metropolitan periphery begin to emerge.

For a start, private sector interest in the exchange

values of land takes on a peculiar, heightened and

political-bureaucratically mediated form in that par-

cels of land that were developable, or might become

so, were released by authorities at the moment of

marketisation without anything corresponding to a

market value; this represented a reversal of a situa-tion under socialism in which the rights to own and

exchange property were subordinated to those of its

use (Marcuse 1996). Banks of such land represent a

huge reservoir of developable land whose exchange

value is at least decoupled from local market condi-

tions – scattered parcels were secured for nominal

sums, with little regard for the extant or future pat-

tern of development or neighbouring uses. Such a

situation would be unfamiliar in the US growth

machine. Moreover, deficiencies with the new legis-

lation and regulatory systems still promote veryrapid urban development in order to recoup out-

lays, by particular types of developer, using partic-

ular types of financing for development in the face

of uncertainties over enforceable property rights

(Partner, C ⁄ M ⁄ S Cameron McKenna, Moscow, 29

October 2008, in English).

While private development seeks to capture sub-

stantial differences in the exchange values of

undeveloped and developed land presented in

locations like Khimki, one might assume that

Khimki ought to have a healthy fiscal capacity. In

fact, due to the tax system in Russia all municipali-ties are in a weak position relative to the regions in

which they sit. As a result, some of the chief possi-

bilities for placemaking that are evident at the

municipal level have come from the ‘planning gain’

extracted from developers rather than through

increased tax revenue (Consultant, RB-Centre Con-

sultancy, Moscow, 28 October 2008, in English). To

this extent, the municipality has a vested interest in

promoting development. For residential develop-

ments, the planning gain extracted was quite sig-

nificant at the peak of growth, with up to 25 per

cent of all units of flats constructed in Khimki

being handed over to the municipality as munici-

pal housing (Deputy Mayor for Building, Architec-

ture and Land Use, Khimki Administration,

Khimki, 30 October 2008). Beyond this, the plan-

ning gain extracted may be extended to the provi-

sion or refurbishment of public spaces and parksand the building of kindergartens and schools

(Head of the Committee for the Economy, Khimki

Administration, 30 October 2008). However, it is

far from guaranteed and the present financial crisis

promises to affect the contributions from even the

largest developers, who according to one intervie-

wee are now struggling to finance the amenities

and services promised for major residential devel-

opments (Deputy Mayor for Building, Architecture

and Land Use, Khimki Administration, 30 October

2008).While the relationship between the fiscal capaci-

ties of municipalities and development opportuni-

ties is less straightforward in Khimki than that

which conditions the US-style growth machine, can

this situation signify better possibilities for the pur-

poseful ‘distortion’ of development opportunities

via more socially-focused or place-integrative plan-

ning and government interventions? To be sure, in

the context of many western European countries it

is planning policies that play (albeit to varied

degrees) an important role in local social and eco-nomic development. Intuitively, urban planning

may be expected to be a major instrument for con-

structing places like Khimki and therefore a key

focal point for a local politics of place. In the next

section we explore whether this is so.

From plan-led cities to development-ledplanning

In fact, both the Soviet legacy and post-Soviet expe-

riences limit the role of urban planning in today’s

politics of place. For a start, the Soviet model of urban planning was inscribed into a centralised

institutional setting of the complex hierarchy of

national economic planning and was part of social

and economic regulation. Since the national priority

was production, plans largely focused on servicing

industrial enterprises. Social infrastructure in cities,

including housing, services and green spaces, was

allocated according to norms based on the needs of

production (Andrusz 1984; Bater 1980; French 1995;

Pallot and Shaw 1981). The implication of this top–

down economic planning process was that it







tended to be largely sectoral, where urban plans

were left to attempt to integrate different sectors by

the virtue of their applying to individual localities.

The stress of urban master plans was not so much

on urban design, but on the territorial organisation

of ‘productive forces’. The task for urban planning

was thus not to create a local sense of place to indi-vidual cities, but rather to build functional ‘com-

munities’ that would provide efficient living and

working environments based on norms for the pro-

vision of social, engineering, transport and environ-

mental infrastructure.

The new imperative of transition to a more fully

market-led system made many inherited principles

of Soviet planning for administrative-led develop-

ment practically ineffective, while at the same time,

in a context of significant deficiencies with legisla-

tion promoting the market system, a lot of opportu-nities were created for rent-seeking behaviour, both

by developers and local officials (Golubchikov

2004). A series of reforms have not solved this

problem but instead considerably emasculated the

institution of planning. Importantly, the 2004

Urban Development Code of Russia stresses the

role of legal zoning, thus re-orientating the accent

of town planning to land-use zoning underpinned

by narrower development rights interests. The

planning instruments, such as general ⁄ master city

plans still exist, but are assumed to be supplemen-tary in the new system and in view of most inter-

viewed planners are largely marginalised. While

new legislation obliges that from 2010 building per-

mits may only be issued once up-to-date rules for

land use and building (effectively, land-use zoning)

exist, it is still questionable whether these will

make the development process more transparent.

Overall, planning in modern Russia has increas-

ingly taken development-led and opportunistic

forms. Indeed, in contrast to planning, develop-

ment control has become a more persuasive

machine. Today, before making an application fora building permit, a developer has to obtain

numerous technical approvals from local and regio-

nal sectoral authorities and ad hoc agencies, which

require developers to conform with their sectoral

infrastructural, environmental and social services

norms and policies. Even if developers’ proposals

are in accordance with local plans, they cannot be

sure about the result until the end of administra-

tive negotiations. On the contrary, if authorities are

interested in development and forming a kind of

partnership with developers, or are forced to

accept development by other pressures (see the

next section), existing plans may be easily violated

and updated ex-post (Golubchikov 2004). Appar-

ently, such a system of ‘opportunity-led’ planning

is familiar to many other post-socialist cities in Eur-

ope (Tasan-Kok 2006).

This new system results in the lack of a reallycomprehensive approach to territorial planning and

the sorts of municipal ‘place-shaping’ actions taken

for granted in Western Europe. When asked

whether there were any visions at local or regional

government of how individual cities in Moscow

Oblast should look 20–30 years from now, Moscow

Oblast’s chief planner replied that such ‘visions’

are not according to the market regime: ‘people

who will live in those places in 20 or 30 years time

will have their own vision about how they want

those places to look like and we don’t have theright to impose our views on their wishes’ (Head

of the Main Department for Architecture and

Urban Planning of Moscow Oblast, Moscow, 29

October 2008). It might seem paradoxical to hear

such discourse from a bureaucrat responsible for

coordinating local and regional planning; however,

it reflects well the state of incorporating some of

the inherited practices into the prevailing neoliberal

ideology. As in the Soviet past, urban plans are

considered not as instruments for ‘making places’,

but rather as the technocratic tools to provide forand protect the basic functionality of places, mostly

in terms of transport, water and energy infrastruc-

ture, as well as social amenities (such as schools or

hospitals). The sector-based planning of the Soviet

era continues to have an important legacy in that

there remains little appreciation of the value of ter-

ritorial planning at the municipal scale among

political leaders and local officials. However, while

the Soviet territorial planning in its top–down total-

ity did provide each place its sense as a part of the

overall system of the national economic organisa-

tion, in modern Russia planning has not embracedthe bottom–up and socially inclusive ‘placemaking’

element to compensate for the destruction of the

system of vertical integration. As a result, fast-

growing places like Khimki have seen a fragmenta-

tion of the urban space into poorly coordinated

land uses and a chaotic mix of old and new, resi-

dential and non-residential developments.

Furthermore, the capacity for municipalities to

integrate aspects of planning for their jurisdictions

is also compromised by planning responsibilities

and financing that remain fragmented between







Federal, regional and municipal levels. Here, the

situation contrasts, for example, with China where

the State is seen as a coordinator and promoter of

development as part of place-building at national,

provincial and local level. While development at

the metropolitan periphery in China is every bit as

rapid as that described in the Moscow periphery atlocations like Khimki, it is also territorially more

integrated by virtue of the entrepreneurial actions

of local governments seeking growth through new

townships, and through special purpose vehicles

for territorial and economic planning associated

with industrial and technology parks (Wu and

Phelps 2008). Although similar examples can be

seen in larger and stronger cities in Russia such as

Moscow or St Petersburg (Golubchikov 2010), the

Russian local state in smaller jurisdictions has

rather become an unpredictable holder and releaserof developable land.

In one other respect the legacy of Soviet plan-

ning and land use represents limits for comprehen-

sive planning today. As Gentile and Sjoberg (2006)

describe it, Soviet planning created ‘landscapes of

priority’ across the city. Military-related industry

in the Soviet era was perhaps the most prioritised

of sectors in the planned economy (Boren and Gen-

tile 2007, 100). Contemporary development, land

uses and territorial planning in Khimki continue to

be conditioned as a former special case ‘landscapeof priority’. Khimki, along with many other com-

pany towns around Moscow, was a location for

key state enterprises – notably in Khimki’s case,

production related to missiles and aerospace. Being

the key functions in the city, these enterprises had

large sites in municipal terms and in many

instances were charged with catering for the hous-

ing and recreational and service needs of workers,

who were the majority of Khimki residents at that

time. The scale of the ‘closed’ Soviet-era Khimki’s

defence enterprises can be gained from Figure 1,

where the land is demarcated as ‘industrial area’.Despite the rationalisation of these enterprises over

recent years, there is little prospect of any of the

huge site – adjacent to the historic centre of

Khimki (‘old Khimki’) – being released for devel-

opment. The enterprises now appear as constraints

on the alternative use of land and along with

major communications infrastructure (roads and

rail) present significant obstacles to planning. One

consequence of this is that the centre of gravity in

Khimki is shifting to ‘new Khimki’ – an essentially

previously undeveloped western area now subject

to massive housing and office developments, so

that the unity of the city is subject to significant

fragmentation.

Furthermore, as Khimki is inter-penetrated by

the territory of the City of Moscow, this also imposes

serious obstacles to urban planning and consolidat-

ing it as a single place. There is still a lack of inter-regional planning in Russia, while Moscow in

particular - at least under formerMayor Yuri Luzhkov

(dismissed from his post in September 2010) - was

not keen to cooperate with federal government or

its neighbouring Moscow Oblast on such issues

(Deputy Head, Unit for Monitoring Methodology

and Effectiveness Assessment, Ministry for Regio-

nal Development, Russian Federation, Moscow, 1

September 2008). The new general plan for Khimki,

which came into force in 2009, and related land-

use zoning documentation leave considerable stripsof the territory in the middle ground uncovered.

Apart from further erosion of the place as a whole,

this negatively affects infrastructural integrity in

Khimki. For example, Inteko, a development com-

pany closely affiliated with the Moscow govern-

ment, intends to build major residential

developments on the Moscow city land that inter-

penetrates Khimki’s territory. The municipality is

powerless to prevent this development, despite its

impact on the planning of the municipal territory

and the implications of using and financing utilitynetworks provided from the municipality (Deputy

Mayor for Building, Architecture and Land Use,

Khimki Administration, Khimki, 30 October 2008).

Dyadic relations in a placeless politicaleconomy

Having considered the limitations of post-socialist

planning for placemaking, we also need to discuss

the balance of interests in the development pro-

cesses in Khimki between different stakeholders,

including developers, politicians, planners andlocal citizenry. On close inspection, these reveal

themselves less as political coalitions with a vested

interest in local economic growth (a feature of the

growth machine) and more as a series of highly

unequal dyadic relationships including: (a)

between the particular private sector interests and

the municipality, (b) between particular private sec-

tor interests and civil society and collective busi-

ness groups, and (c) between the municipality and

the region – each of which are mediated by politi-

cal-bureaucratic processes nested at different







administrative levels. Below we consider the pat-

terns and dimensions of these dyadic relationships.

For some, at least, aspirations to improve territo-

rial planning at municipal level in Khimki do exist.

One interviewee, a commercial property developer,

argued that all local administrations were indeed

interested in planning for places and improvingservices and infrastructure, but that there were dif-

ferent possibilities for this:

Believe me, [municipalities] all have a detailed plan, but

what they don’t have is the money to realise the plan.

Apart from that, all these plans are as a rule completely

out of touch with reality . . . There is a planning com-

mittee in every local administration. They all have their

plans – plans of development, reconstruction . . . It

looks beautiful, but, as a rule, is absolutely unrealisable.

Because who is going to pay for that? (Marketing Direc-

tor, REGION Group, Moscow, 21 August 2008)There is some suggestion that Khimki’s mayor has

been resistant to powerful real estate company

interests with designs for his municipality (Deputy

Mayor for Building, Architecture and Land Use,

Khimki Administration, 30 October 2008). Neverthe-

less it seems that these companies are able to realise

development opportunities on the vast land banks

they have acquired at the onset of liberalisation in

Russia. The clash between local plans and financial

interests, with dominance of the latter, is exempli-fied by the development of a previously vacant

prime location at the entrance of Khimki from Mos-

cow by the Leningrad Motorway and next to the

municipality’s first ‘class A’ office development –

‘Country Park’. The site was originally earmarked

in the general plan for a new commercial and com-

munity centre, and there was a desire by the Khimki

chief architect to build a new mixed-use civic centre

of offices, shopping, entertainment complex and

new premises for the local administration. How-

ever, the property company PIK was eventuallygranted planning permission for residential devel-

opment of the plot (Plate 2). Interviews with both

local administration and neighbouring businesses

Plate 2 New-built housing in Khimki by development company PIK

Source: Authors’ photograph







reveal the discontent about the outcome, which dis-

rupts what could have been a compatible cluster of

office and retail land use. But the pressure for devel-

opment does not seem to be purely concerned with

the availability of money, but also with vested inter-

ests involving large development groups with

strong backing from the higher levels of administra-tive bureaucracy. As the deputy mayor put it:

The problem is related to the investment attractiveness

of the city. There are people coming here who we can-

not actually turn down. It happens that we are forced

to take decisions that contradict with the policy we

have. It happens very often. (Deputy Mayor for Build-

ing, Architecture and Land Use, Khimki Administra-

tion, Khimki, 30 October 2008)

The enormous pent-up demand for housing that

exists in Moscow coupled with a celebration of

unbridled economic growth and the personalwealth that it offers mean that there is little or no

popular discourse, and hardly any major grass-roots

or civic group action, relating to, for instance, issues

of rising social and spatial inequalities, or of the

costs of growth. Yet, in some respects this coupled

with Khimki’s accessibility to Moscow may make

politics rather more active in Khimki than many

other localities. As one interviewee suggested, ‘Tak-

ing into account that Khimki is very near Moscow,

it’s a very politicised city’ (Chief Architect of the

Urban District of Khimki, Khimki Administration,Khimki, 30 October 2008). The implication from this

interview source was that apparent conflict between

particular developers and preservationist interests

may often be fabricated by competitors. These con-

flicts between particularistic interests aside, there is

nevertheless a general rise in concern over the social

and environmental impacts of development in

Khimki, as described by one interviewee:

On the one hand, there are those people who want to

live in suburbs and they need a normal environment,

normal green areas, as well as transport – ecological,clean and without much infrastructure. On the other

hand, there are the interests that want to pump up the

economy of these zones and make them a means for

money-mining. This means maximum destruction to

these green zones and maybe at the cost of residents

but with some development of the infrastructure that

will bring money. So, these are the two tendencies that

appear in Khimki . . . (Khimki Forest Defence Move-

ment, Moscow, 21 August, 2008)

There is some evidence to suggest that the compar-

atively highly educated population of Khimki has

exerted some influence on the municipality. One

interviewee commented that the population did

have rising expectations of the municipality in

terms of improvements to, and refurbishments of,

the exiting housing stock (Deputy Mayor for Build-

ing, Architecture and Land Use, Khimki Adminis-

tration, Khimki, 30 October 2008) and another thatthe public have been vocal at planning meetings

(Chief Architect of the Urban District of Khimki,


Yet, there is rather limited evidence that business

and civic groups are becoming engaged in any polit-

ical economy of place with any substantial degree of

impact. For example, the very rapidity and haphaz-

ard nature of growth in Khimki has created acute

transportation problems. Khimki lies at the intersec-

tion of major roadways – the north–south Leningrad

highway and the MKAD (Moscow Orbital Motor-way) – but these roads fall under different and mul-

tiple jurisdictions and financing arrangements

(Federal, Moscow Oblast and Moscow). The widen-

ing of these roads in Khimki is now precluded by

the development that has occurred alongside them.

However, there is little sign of business interests

having become organised to any significant degree

and no real evidence of any such organised business

interests lobbying government regarding the need

for transport improvements, as would surely be the

case in the US and Europe.Indeed, the only organised action regarding

transport issues actually relates to environmental

and civic group opposition to a by-pass proposed

by the Federal government as part of a new toll

road between Moscow and St Petersburg in order

to relieve this bottleneck. A small but tenacious

group of people have been trying to raise aware-

ness of the potential destruction of a major forest

area and part of Moscow’s greenbelt that lies in the

eastern part of Khimki, which they suspect is dri-

ven by the new development opportunities that it

would present. The group has been instrumental inelevating their local concerns about the destruction

of the Khimki Forest to the national public interest,

so that the motorway project has been delayed fol-

lowing an order from Russia’s President Medvedev

to temporarily suspend it in 2010. This represents

quite a successful story of political expressions

from below, but the scope of such organised grass-

root movements is generally much more limited in

Khimki (and indeed in other cities in Russia) than

in similar locations in the West.







Finally what of the role played by political lead-

ership in local territorial politics? Again, as yet

there is little indication that municipal-level politi-

cians are evolving distinctive agendas across the

greater Moscow area. The problem is that the sys-

tem and climate of politics that prevails at present

is one in which local political leaders are con-strained by patronage relationships with the regio-

nal governor. This is true of the manner in which

political patronage is dispensed within the region

in a context of the ‘inverted pyramid’ of fiscal reve-

nues noted above. Thus ‘opportunities’ for the

building of a sense of place are often allocated by

political leadership at a higher tier of government.

While Khimki has one of the largest municipal

budgets in the Oblast, of more importance in this

respect is that Khimki is considered, according to

one interviewee, to be the ‘locomotive for MoscowOblast’ (Head of the Committee for the Economy,


The close relationship of the Khimki administration

and its leadership with the Oblast government and

its political leadership has ensured the ‘allocation’

of some significant flagship capital investments,

such as a new basketball and football stadium.

However, to one observer from a major company

operating in Khimki, this relationship between

municipal and regional government had provided

little in the way of any place-shaping strategy:Khimki administration work quite closely with the Mos-

cow Oblast and Moscow Oblast need to take a long-

term grip but so far they have done little cosmetics for

the citizens to see that the parks are greener and nicer

and that the football stadium is a bit better and so on. I

think they try with the funds they have. But what really

will make a difference is the long term strategy. (Vice-

President, IKEA Real Estate Russia and Ukraine,

Khimki, 6 November 2008; in English)

Rudolph and Brade’s argument that ‘the districts of

Moscow Oblast have relatively little influence on

local economic development, because major eco-

nomic actors operate at the level of the governor’

(2005, 139) continues to resonate with the general

tenor of observations on the ground in Khimki. As

the ‘locomotive for Moscow Oblast’, Khimki has

undoubtedly been subject to a scale and variety of

new development – mass residential and specula-

tive retail and office developments, flagship civic

and sports projects and the incorporation of

Sheremetyevo airport – so that its gravity within

the Moscow metropolitan space grows consider-

ably. In contrast to the West, where great capital

would undoubtedly be made by local politicians

and officials of a slogan like ‘greater Khimki’ used

recently by planning consultants Cushman Wake-

field (2007), there appears to have been little inter-

est in the Khimki administration for the use of this

or any other marketing slogan in an attempt toexpress a vision for the future of Khimki as a

place.

To sum up, the relationships between stakehold-

ers in the economic development of places like

Khimki tend to be nested at, and scattered

between, different administrative levels (where

they are mediated by, or indeed utilise, the power

of corresponding bureaucratic apparatus) rather

than being embedded in the local place and its pol-

itics. The combination of a sectoral approach to

urban planning, a limited appreciation of place-making on the part of local government and politi-

cians, and a centralisation of fiscal resources in

Russia mean that such ‘nested’ relationships imply

important weaknesses in the role of the local state

as the (admittedly imperfect) mediator of con-

tradictions between private and collective interests

in the accumulation process (Scott and Roweis

1977).

Conclusion

On the whole, the organisation of the political econ-

omy of place in the post-Soviet metropolitan

periphery of Moscow represents an interesting case

of the mutation of global urban entrepreneurial

strategies under neoliberalism. Rudolph and Brade,

while making it clear that contemporary urbanisa-

tion at the periphery of Moscow can be described

as a new phase, suggest that development at the

periphery displays hybrid elements (2005, 148).

Notable in this regard is a strengthening of pro-

cesses of social polarisation that have become visi-

ble at the periphery. Perhaps as a corollary to this,as they argue, the economics of transition have

become less powerful as a defining force in periph-

eral urbanisation. What we have described above

tends to question the diminishing importance of

transition. Moreover, we demonstrate that the uni-

versality of processes of urban development should

not be overplayed.

Although the case of Khimki may share some

facets and controversies, as depicted by the con-

cepts of ‘edge city’ and the ‘(surburban) growth







machine’, it is still distinct from these. When using

the term ‘political economy of place’ to apply to the

post-Soviet metropolitan periphery, it is the word

political that needs accentuating and conversely the

word place de-emphasised. Even the word political

might more accurately be taken to refer to a more

fully bureaucratised politics of inter-authoritypatronage apparent in the process of urban devel-

opment in a place like Khimki, in comparison to the

importance of an overt politics of influence in the

US and the importance of party and grass-roots pol-

itics in Western Europe. To date, it is the ‘placeless-

ness’ of rapid urban growth that has been striking

in the context of post-Soviet Khimki. The placeless-

ness, or the lack of purposeful placemaking strate-

gies by any coalitions of growth (or anti-growth)

interests, arises from a number of reinforcing rea-

sons, including highly speculative developmentpractices, little organised interest of local businesses

to influence the shape of wider urban development

beyond their immediate control, and local govern-

ment’s retreat to standardised planning require-

ments and to a capricious allocation of developable

land as opposed to visionary urban planning and

development strategies. Thus, growth in Khimki is

fuelled by a spontaneous variety of opportunistic

profitmaking initiatives that are characterised by

short-termism and yet are essentially disconnected

from the ‘local’ city.This model of growth in fact destroys Khimki’s

‘thick’ Soviet-era industrial identity as a self-

contained city and makes the city an increasingly

fragmented place that may well be hardly distin-

guished as one city, but rather as several peripheral

dormitory districts of the City of Moscow proper.

As Khimki is directly adjacent to the territory of

the City of Moscow, most non-government inter-

viewees consider Khimki as de-facto a district of

Moscow. Indeed, Khimki’s peculiar borders and

location make it much interconnected with Moscow

and its development is often considered to be thecontinuing expansion of Moscow. In this sense,

Khimki may be considered to have reverted from

being a self-centred city to a settlement that resem-

bles and functions more like a suburb, reflecting a

more general trend of increased commuting ties

between former satellite-type urban communities

of the Soviet era and core cities (Boren and Gentile

2007, 103).

However, Khimki does have a separate local gov-

ernment, which complicates the political structur-

ation of development interests. There is a much

stronger and independent role to be played by

Khimki government than by any local governments

within the territory of the City of Moscow proper –

while Moscow has the prefects of local districts

appointed directly by Moscow’s Mayor, the Mayor

of Khimki is a political, popularly-elected post.

Thus, if by some historical accident Khimki waspart of the City of Moscow, then probably the city

would have had a very different configuration of

political interests and might have followed a differ-

ent path of development. The separation of Khimki

as an individual political unit outside the City of

Moscow has indeed created a more distinctive

political interest for Khimki’s government when it

comes to local development. Rather than being con-

sidered a peripheral and most likely less well-off

district of Moscow, Khimki finds itself in the posi-

tion of being one of Moscow Oblast’s wealthiestand investment-attractive districts. This also results

in a lot of interest in Khimki from the regional gov-

ernment and makes it one of the spatial junctions in

the frictions between the regional governments of

Moscow and Moscow Oblast. This territorial config-

uration both circumscribes to some degree autono-

mous processes of placeshaping and creates

prerequisites for Khimki remaining a separate

place. It remains to be seen, however, whether a

growing demand for new urban infrastructure and

emerging residents’ movements will further re-structure the modes of governing developments in

Khimki more in line with the sorts of political econ-

omy of place found in the US or Western Europe.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Economic and

Social Research Council (ESRC grants PTA-026-27-

1997 and RES-062-23-0924). The authors are grate-

ful to three anonymous referees and the editor

Alison Blunt for their insightful feedback on the

manuscript.

Note

1 Although the concept of the growth machine has

been elaborated with respect to cities, it can be

argued that it applies better to new suburbs in which

the greatest exchange values are to be had from the

conversion of raw land into developed land and

where land-assembly is least encumbered by complex

patterns of landownership and lease (Phelps and

Wood forthcoming).







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