A New Look at the Neighborhood: the Formation of Communities Around Houses Under Construction

The actual work of the London district in Kudrovo town (Leningrad oblast') was carried out to study the mechanisms for forming communities of future residents of apartment buildings in the online field and their development in following periods. For this purpose two types of data were used - the texts of posts of online groups from the VK social network and semi-structured interviews with their administrators. This study contributes to the topic cause it considers the motivation of residents to create and develop online groups, and also analyzes the online communication and offline practices of neighbors in the local community what has not been done before. Also, the author observed functions that various channels of online communication have and how they change over time. It was found that online groups of multi-story houses are created by ordinary residents, participants in shared construction, interested in putting their house on time. However, later this person plays an important role in building a community of the house. His desire and interest in the management of the group define how communication between residents will develop, how much the feeling of cohesion will rise among them. Communicating among residents of high-rise buildings occurs through various communication channels — online groups, chat rooms in instant messengers, and in-person meetings. Moreover, each of them is used for specific purposes, depending on the type of questions and problems the community has at the moment. Key words: neighborhood community, online communities, neighborhood initiatives, local community, self-organization.