Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2018 number 2

With Russia shifting from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism, the system of urban planning also underwent a change. Citizen participation in urban planning is currently declared as a socially desirable practice ensuring that the interests of ordinary citizens and power holders are in balance, which contributes to the sustainable development of cities and the urban environment. In reality, however, the multiplicity ofways to involve citizens in planning, their specificity and limitations reveal the immaturity of the legalfield, complicating the participation process. The article analyzes individual determinants, aswell as motivations for citizen participation/non-participation in long-term urban planning based on the data collected through a sociological survey in small towns: Kirov (Kaluga Oblast), Kasimov (Ryazan Oblast), Belev (Tula Oblast). We show that citizen participation in formal urban planning is not a common practice. Only a small proportion of respondents are ready to continually cooperate with the local administration in solving issues of local importance within normatively defined forms of direct participation. Most are ready to become more active only when it is necessary to address an urgent problem, giving preference to informal practices and interventions in the urban landscape that can be attributed to do-it-yourself urbanism.