SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL MODEL OF MODERN URBAN ENVIRONMENT: A HUMAN IN THE CITY, A CITY IN THE HUMAN

Abstract

A city, its structure and identity can be represented as a theoretic model. There are “key” models of modern cities: servicing, comfortable, compact, “green”, learning, creative, “smart” and social; more individual variants include creative, cultural, sporty, healthy and adaptive cities, cities of opportunities, sustainable development, etc. A city, functioning in line with any of these models, is inseparable from its social culture: historical heritage, traditions, and values. The sociocultural model incorporates the description of real landscape, cultural space and residents’ mentality. Sociocultural models are developed and implemented, for example, for Moscow and St. Petersburg. Ivanovo, Tambov, Sochi, Nizhniy Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and other cities, which models can be found in various studies, are grouped in terms of either resources which need to be managed or depressive economy which needs means of rescue. In both cases the sociocultural model establishment is seen not only as a way to “understand”, but as a way to “do”. A human being creates some space; the city, in its turn, becomes both an opportunity and restriction for humans [N. Terebihin, Yu. Lukin, A. Dregalo, V. Ulyanovsky]. Cities like people may be familiar, favourite, native, strange, tiresome, diverse, businesslike, monotonous and boring. One can become “keen on a city like a person, a city can become ‘someone’s fate’”. According to the average citizen’s perception, each city has a face, character, heart, spirit, belly, profession, friends and enemies, its past, present and future, the fact of being born, the recognition triumph, the process of dying, fate, mission and potential. Most people in the world already live in cities, and “his or her city” lives in each human being. These intangible elements comprise the subjective cultural space of images, meanings and values of particular people, living in objective social and geographical circumstances, i.e. the social anthropological model of a modern city.