Collection of articles “Micro-urbanism. The city in details”ed. Olga Brednikova and Oksana Zaporozhets, released without much fuss by the publishing house "New Literary Review", is in many ways an amazing artifact. Firstly, this is one of the rare editions devoted to urban research and designed for the general public: almost the only one since the time of Elena Trubina's wonderful book "The City in Theory", which was published in 2011 by the same UFO publishing house. Secondly, the publication of the collection proves the presence of urban researchers from science. While everyone is hearing only some "urbanists", which are most often understood as amateur popularizers like "Urban Projects", there is a serious lack of urban studies, developed in the West, with interdisciplinary scientific journals dedicated to all kinds of urban issues.
The concept of the publication is also unusual: contrary to the generalization of everything and everyone, which is customary in the research environment, the compilers deliberately avoid global approaches and see the collection as “a collection of texts in which the authors try to capture the life of the city through the analysis of the experience and habitation of its places, through the identification and description of small and insignificant (within the framework of big theories) details.
The format of presentation of a number of articles is quite in the tradition of British psychogeography. The difference between the British version and its French ancestor is a literary, descriptive approach to the study of urban landscapes. For the compilers of the collection, it is important to search for a new language that describes the city: “Not only are there not enough analytical tools, but also the language for creating“pictures”of city life, which, of course, is also a means of analysis and conceptualization. The researcher's personal reflection alternates with scientific methods such as interviewing and participatory observation. The descriptive-personal method may seem subjective, but this is already a question of the quality of the research, the depth of the conclusions and the credibility of the author's voice.
The interest of the compilers and authors of the collection in everyday life in the urban environment is supported by the belief that nuances can be used to analyze larger social phenomena, and the materiality of details, in turn, will allow the city to be perceived as something close, not alienated by theory: something, what you can touch. The anthropological approach determines the choice of topics - from the texts included in the collection, you can find out why children are attracted to the marginal zones of the city, why tourists, taking pictures against the background of attractions, take one or another pose, and what are the reasons for the special “choreography” of passengers with hand luggage.
Modern urban researchers, following publicists, often use situational tactics - for example, scattered wandering around the city (derive): Ian Sinclair paces the London ring road, musician David Byrne travels around the world on a bicycle, and the author of one of the collection's texts, Polina Mogilina, explores the city by tram. A prerequisite is the presentation of what is happening in the form of a text, and a combination of subjectivity and objective knowledge. The degree of lyricism or pseudoscience of tone remains at the discretion of the author. In the text of Anna Zhelnina, exploring a closed polar city, both scientific facts and emotionally saturated experience of space serve as tools. At some point, the city is endowed with anthropomorphic features: “Kovdor is a traumatized city. The city, which is difficult to manipulate its own memory, “forgetting” the camp past, again and again reminding itself of the bygone “golden age””. The final article by Natalia Samutina is dedicated to a lone graffiti artist who changed the perception of the entire city. The text describes the process of transformation of myth into reality, individual insignificant objects into urban fabric. The author skillfully operates with scales, now bringing the focus of attention to small details, now moving away to include the city-wide context in the field of vision.
In general, the publication of the collection “Microurbanism” can be considered a step towards the beginning of a conversation about the city, “grasping” its intricately interwoven space, and the formation of new semantic fields. At the same time, the variety of topics, focus on everyday life and accessibility of presentation make the book attractive to the general reader.
