‘A NEW SPACE HAS OPENED...’: LOCAL URBAN MEDIA IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT PRODUCTION

Abstract

The article deals with the activity of the urban-oriented media. It is a relatively new phenomenon in the structure of the Russian media. In our opinion, these online media are heuristically fruitful to consider as active agents of urbanization. They declare new ideas about the city and the culture of its use in the spirit of the concept of ‘city for people’ (Jan Gehl). They are also communication platforms for active urban communities. Developing the proposed view, in this article we focus on the role of the urban-oriented media in the production of urban space in the sense in which the concept of production was interpreted by Henri Lefebvre. In the context of the large-scale process of transformation that Russian cities are undergoing, in the recent decade the issues of the urban space development have become the subject of intense intellectual reflection and discussion in the media space. We can say that since the early 2010s the process of discursive rediscovery of urban space has been ongoing. Urban space is being studied from new points of view, determined by the change in the types of urbanism and understanding of the city as space comfortable for life, not only for industrial production, concentration of power functions and work. The subject of the analysis in the article is journalistic materials of columns devoted to the development of urban space in three Internet media: ‘The Village’ (Moscow), ‘It’s My City’ (Yekaterinburg) and ‘Zvezda’ (Perm). The analysis shows that the discursive development of urban space in these publications is united by a common strategy, which we define as a strategy of privatization of urban space. It is characterized by the idea of combining historical and personal narratives in the story about the city. The article analyzes examples of features and quotes journalists and editors.