Fourth Urbanist Summer School: Students from Across Russia Work on Tikhvin’s Tourism Development

© HSE University

How can tourism be developed in historic areas? How can the interests of residents, tourists, businesses, and local authorities be reconciled? And how can the specific context of a particular city be taken into account when developing project solutions? These were the questions explored at the Urbanist Summer School (USS), which brought together students from leading Russian universities for the fourth time.

The Urbanist Summer School is a joint project of the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism at the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development (FURD), the Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg State University, and the Institute of Design and Urban Studies at ITMO University. The USS is supported by the Committee for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Leningrad Region.

Each year, the school is held in one of the cities of the Leningrad region. This year, it took place in Tikhvin, a historic city where a monastery complex stands alongside operating railcar manufacturing, chemical, and furniture plants.

Over the course of two weeks, around 30 participants from cities across Russia, including students from the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development, worked on a concept for the city’s tourism development.

Ruslan Goncharov

© HSE University

‘The Urbanist Summer School is being held for the fourth time,’ said Ruslan Goncharov, Head of the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism. ‘Over the years, the school has become a project that brings together participants from across the country and gives them an opportunity to work “on the ground” on complex urban planning challenges. For students at HSE University’s Graduate School of Urbanism, it is also valuable because it allows them to work in a fundamentally different territorial context—the cities of the Leningrad region—and learn to apply their knowledge and skills in real-world conditions.’

Inter-University Cooperation as an Opportunity to Expand Professional Skills

Each of the three universities organising the USS contributes its own expertise to the school’s work: management skills, research methods, and data analysis tools.

The summer school is an opportunity to meet people from different cities, universities, and professional backgrounds. For two weeks, the participants live together on the Mikhailovskaya Dacha campus of St Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management, creating a unique atmosphere reminiscent of an adults’ camp: work on transforming urban areas is accompanied by conversations in the kitchen after lectures, evening walks around Peterhof, film screenings, and guitar recitals.

Communication extends beyond the educational process, and participants gradually build professional and personal connections that continue to develop after the school ends.

The research-based approach of the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism sets the framework for the project work. The graduate school team prepares the terms of reference, requiring students to develop a strategic vision for the area’s development and support it with an economic rationale and an assessment of the tangible benefits the city would gain if the project were implemented.

Thanks to the partnership with the Committee for the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Leningrad Region, participants not only have the opportunity to work with university experts, but also interact directly with representatives of local administrations and professional communities in the cities that become the focus of their research.

Tutors from Three Universities: Different Perspectives on the Same Challenge

Tutors, or teachers at the school, accompany the students throughout the entire process, from field research to the final presentation of their projects. There are six tutors and six teams in total.

Lina Yakhno

Lina Yakhno, a tutor at the first and fourth Urbanist Summer Schools and a graduate of the Master’s programme in Urban Development and Spatial Planning at the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development, noted that much had changed since the first USS. ‘What impressed me most were the nationwide selection process and the atmosphere at the latest school. The participation of students from all over Russia made the teams even more interdisciplinary and the projects more diverse,’ Lina Yakhno said. ‘It is great to see how the students discover new layers and connections between the Orthodox, musical, and industrial elements that have shaped Tikhvin’s identity and bring them together in their concepts. Some of them could have used a little more time to develop their ideas further, but everyone did a huge amount of work, which is a major achievement, especially when you are spending the summer practically in the countryside in a new place, while also being not far from St Petersburg.’

‘The team of tutors and I are very different: we have different skills, temperaments, and bodies of knowledge. Yet, remarkably, we develop a shared view of the students’ projects: we are almost always in agreement about where there are problems and where the students have come up with a brilliant idea. We then suggest different ways of strengthening their solutions, each from our own perspective. I think this is the unquestionable value of the USS: people with different skills but shared values come together in one place and learn to look at the same challenge together,’ emphasised Arina Markaryan, a tutor at the second to fourth Urbanist Summer Schools and a graduate of the Master’s programme in Urban Development and Spatial Planning.

Field Research: The Foundation of Working with Historic Cities

Working on site and communicating with local authorities and residents who are interested in the city’s development are important parts of every Urbanist Summer School. Before travelling to the city, students always conduct a preliminary analysis of the area, so they arrive with a shared understanding of its characteristics and development potential.

This year, for the first time, the in-person part of the school began with a field trip to the city under study—Tikhvin. Over several days, participants explored the city ‘in the field’: they familiarised themselves with its historical heritage and contemporary life and spoke with representatives of the local administration and professional community, as well as local residents and tourists.

The field trip served as one of the main sources of data for the students’ projects. Before the trip, the students carried out a preliminary analysis; once in Tikhvin, they were able to test their hypotheses, identify new ideas for research, and gain a more precise understanding of how to develop their proposals for the city.

Anastasia Sholokhova

‘We developed a project that appeals not only to tourists but also to local residents. After meeting with the administration, we became even more convinced that the project solution should be aimed not only at tourists but at residents as well,’ said Anastasia Sholokhova, second-year student of the Master’s programme in Urban Development and Spatial Planning at the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development and USS participant.

A New Perspective on Tourism in Tikhvin

Tikhvin is a city with an established tourism identity, particularly among pilgrims. The school’s participants therefore faced the challenge of preserving what already works while simultaneously diversifying the tourism offering and expanding its target audience.

Each of the six teams proposed its own approach to developing the city’s tourism potential. At the final project presentations, the students showed how Tikhvin could be viewed through a variety of lenses—from its musical heritage as the birthplace of Rimsky-Korsakov to its industrial specialisation.

The students also worked with existing tourism infrastructure and events, proposing ways to strengthen what already attracts visitors and revive projects that could once again become attractions for the city. For example, one of the teams proposed bringing back the light-and-music festival that was previously held in Tikhvin.

Over the course of two weeks, the participants completed the entire journey from preliminary analysis of the area to developing their own project solutions: they explored the city, spoke to those who make decisions and those who live in Tikhvin, tested their hypotheses, and presented tourism development strategies. But there is another important outcome: participants leave the school with a new network of professional contacts, experience of working with a real city, and an understanding of how different approaches to an area can work together.

More information about this year’s and previous years’ USS projects is available on the project website (in Russian).