What happened with the urban spaces of everyday life when the Soviet Union collapsed? And how
may this change be understood? Based on long-term qualitative fieldwork in post-Soviet Russia
this study draws upon time-geographic social and semiotic theory to formulate a model of how
urban space is formed. Mirrored through the case of Ligovo Uritsk a high-rise residential
district situated on the outskirts of Sankt-Peterburg (St Petersburg) the changing relation
between the lifeworlds of people and the system of governance is highlighted with regard to the
transformation of Soviet and Russian society over the last decades. The empirical material
presented here documents a number of processes within urban identity formation spatial
representations and local politics. The resulting findings add both empirically and
theoretically to the knowledge of urban cultural geography in Russia - a field of research that
until recently was closed to Western researchers and seems currently to be closing again. The
book will be of interest to researchers with an interest in social semiotic and geographic
theory as well as to students and researchers of cultural and urban studies urban life and
Russian affairs. The study could be also helpful to professionals working in fields related to
post-Soviet urban identity spatial representations and local politics.
