The Local Parks Renovation and Its Impact on Urban Community: the Case of Three City Parks

Since the 2014 Moscow was overtaken by the municipal program called blagoustroystvo, which can hardly be translated into English but all in all means something close to “renovation” and “beautification”. The program was at first mainly aid at central districts and streets, but after some amount of time it spreaded over the whole city and had it’s working points in the most distant areas. Moreover, it overcame its own name (“My street’) and faced the other big parts of urban environment, including local parks. In this research we are going to study how the construction (or re-construction) of such parks is connected to the well-being of the local community, surrounding them. To do so we are going to examine a list of criteria, defining the quality of public space, observe the practices available for the park visitors and how do they cultivate the feeling of belonging among visitors. The analysis will be based on three cases - three local Moscow parks in districts with various background, all created or re-created in 2017-2018. Due to the certain limitations of our research we have to “re-build” the past of three places with the help of such sources as social media groups for local communities, archive maps and photos and oral narratives of people from the neighborhoods. This information will help us to mark the certain differences between “before” and “after”, as well as create a base for our own criteria list. A number of characteristics for the creation of good local park within the context of post-soviet city is going to be one of the results of this study.