Urban community lifestyle as a resource for adaptation to uncertainty of the environment

The article substantiates the relevance of the study of problems of adaptation to the conditions of uncertainty in the urban environment. The research problem is to identify the specific components of the urban community‟s lifestyle in times of crisis and to assess the significance of various indicators of these components for adaptation to uncertainty. Data analysis from the Russian nationwide monitoring, conducted during the peak of the crisis – a period of uncertainty at the macro level, has revealed a low level of adaptability of respondents from urban settlements with a population from 100,000 to 250,000, which are commonly referred to as “big cities”. A comparative analysis of urban community‟s lifestyle components from big and all other cities has allowed us to draw the following conclusions. The lifestyle of the urban settlement community can be viewed as a complex indicator of the “resourcefulness” of adaptation to environmental uncertainty, including those caused by the crisis at a higher structural level. In general, the data allows us to characterize the adaptive “resourcefulness” of respondents‟ lifestyle from big cities as dual. On the one hand, a certain conservatism, “stagnation” contributes to psychological adaptation to the crisis period, on the other hand, the uncertainty in our everyday life requires reflection and recognition of the changed social reality, and, secondly, active increasing of the adaptation potential. The adjustment of lifestyle is the mechanism of this complex adaptation process through the increase of subjectivity, reflexivity, and the activity-motivational component of lifestyle.