Neighborhood and Inequality in the Daily Life of Moscow Residents: Case Study of Urban Courtyards

This study presents an analysis of social practices and identities of residents of houses of different housing types in a common yard space (Khrushchev’s houses; Stalin-era houses; elite new multistory buildings, etc.). The research is based on the analysis of 2 cases that represent urban courtyard spaces in Moscow where residents of different housing types coexist on one territory. We demonstrate what social types live in different types of housing and how the neighborhood / social distance between residents of different types of houses is constructed. The study was carried out in the case-study genre, because it seems that such a design has the greatest heuristic potential for studying housing inequalities, as it allows the most contextualized data. In Moscow the phenomenon of housing inequality is particularly acute in the context of the active construction of houses / residential complexes of business- and premium class and a fairly measured process of demolition of old Soviet-built houses that are losing their suitability. In this regard, at a qualitative local level, it is interesting to answer the question: what forms of spatio-social relations arise between people who have different housing statuses at the micro level - within the common yard space consisting of houses of different housing types?