Making Urban Futures at Your Kitchen Table: Temporalities of an Urban Renewal Controversy in Moscow

Abstract

While the nexus of time and space in cities is an established tradition in urban research, the specific temporality of urban planning and redevelopment projects is an emerging theme in the field. Focusing on the intensified interactions in various arenas around a controversial housing renovation program in Moscow, this article examines how and where urban futures are created from a polyphony of individual perspectives, aspirations, and projects. The housing renovation program (“Renovation”) aims to demolish thousands of socialist-era prefabricated apartment buildings and relocate the residents to yet-to-be-built high-rises. The project sparked popular mobilizations both in support of and in resistance to the demolitions. This article examines how Muscovites articulated and probed different future alternatives, matching them to their personal strategies and trajectories in various interactive arenas—from public hearings to homeowner assemblies to evening conversations with their family members. This future-probing became a key process that helped incorporate the temporal landscape of Renovation in people’s lives.