Urban Planning Reform: (Non-)Legal Regulation in Russian Cities

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of a tool of urban planning — the rules of the Land Use and Development (LUD), which are a key element of the Russian urban planning reform of the 2000s. The main challenge in urban law and planning is the high variability of norms, which undermines their legitimacy; instead of regulating relationships, they merely describe them. This raises questions about how the dynamics of norms emerge and why a regulatory tool that functioned predictably in international contexts behaves differently when transplanted. How does the LUD tool itself change during urban reform, and how does its operation structure the course of reform? Does it depend on its structure or the conceptual underpinnings on which it is based? How does this distinct operation of LUDs relate to their transfer from a neoliberal economic system to a post-socialist one, and what does this imply about the characteristics of post-socialism? Current research in institutional analysis does not address these questions but allows us to explore how social relations are organized in specific contexts. Drawing on published documents, field research, including in-depth and expert interviews, and participant observations, the paper attempts to offer alternative ways of describing the operation of LUDs. Unlike neo-institutionalism, actor-network theory, and social topology introduce the concept of coordination, which views the operation of the LUD tool as a coordination of processes across four levels: (1) aligning local interests through the technical elements of LUDs, (2) adapting new governance instruments at the state level, (3) synchronizing various reform and change processes, and (4) integrating different epistemological perspectives. Thus, the high variability of LUD norms is linked to their diverse applications, from local interactions to the design and implementation of reforms, with an emphasis on the temporal synchronization of different processes.