Developing Expert Support for the City Authorities in Urban Areas (the Case of Saint-Petersburg)

Defining the city development basis and building long-term relations and feedback with its citizens is the key to improving a city performance, welfare of the population and unique urban environment. For this reason, trends in management are discussed in public administration, strategic planning is gaining significant importance in city management nowadays. In this context, expert support is needed to gather high-value information for creating a strategy. Expertise is a combination of skills and intuition, inner perception of a question they work on, as well as numerical evaluation with subsequent interpretation of the carried out judgment. This work is aimed at defining the role of expert support, considering foresight methodology as a part of expertise, substantiating recommendations for the Strategy of Saint Petersburg. For purposes of this study a number of interviews will be held to collect the necessary data. The survey respondents are experts from the city institutions and the city government. They will be interviewed and the current development programs will be considered. After processing the collected information, the stated hypothesis will be confirmed or rejected. The results of the study will allow us to elaborate recommendations about the city performance.