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Moscow Chill and Shanghai Frenzy: Two False Exits from the Communist Urban Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Philippe Haeringer
Philippe Haeringer*
Affiliation:
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris
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Extract

On paper, the Russians left Communism behind at a single stroke of the pen. But within their walls and inside their heads the great majority of them remain material and mental prisoners of the Soviet period, whose tattered remnants still ensure - albeit with increasing difficulty - everyday life and survival. As for the Chinese, they continue to celebrate the glory of Mao in the most official fashion. But within their walls and deep within themselves, they are now decidedly elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 49 , Issue 194 , June 2002 , pp. 69 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2002

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References

Notes

1. This text is taken from an international compartive study conducted within the framework of the ‘City Diversity' seminar (Ministère de l'Équipement et Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris). It was presented to the conference, ‘Nouvelles urbanités, nouvelles ruralités en Europe' (LADYSS / Council of Europe, Strasbourg, May 2000).

2. Provisional figures supplied (in 1998) by Olga Vendina, Professor at Moscow University.

3. Social housing blocks without lifts in the French suburbs are usually four-storey (five in British terms) buildings, those of Shenzhen on the outskirts of Hong Kong, as high as eight (nine in British terms). People are evidently not equal as far as stairs are concerned. From Paris to Shenzhen, via Moscow and Shanghai, the pedestrian's last landing gets higher and higher…

4. Note the etymological origin of folie (folly) from feuillée (mass of leaves), a folie being a house built in the feuillée (forest).

5. Such villages are legion in the countryside around Hangzhou.

6. At the time of writing, this was Mayor Loujkov, whose ambition for Moscow focussed on the wish to give it a new ‘saleable' face in the eyes of investors of all kinds. Moscow owes him above all the renewal of its centre and improvements to its major roads.

7. More exactly, this average includes the still-existent 4 square metres per person in the remaining part of the old housing stock, and the increase in the numbers of new dwellings which pulls up the mean.