Post-urbanism and cold: geo-cultural images and representations of cultural landscapes of the Northern and Arctic cities  

Zamyatin D.N. (Moscow, Russian Federation)

              page 218–227

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The purpose of this article is to show the specifics of the formation of cultural landscapes and geo-cultural images of Northern and Arctic cities within the concept of post-urbanism. The ontological and phenomenological category of cold, crucial for understanding of this specificity, has a decisive influence on the formation of both material and expressive (mental) environments and identities of the inhabitants of the Northern cities. Cultural landscapes of cold represent an ambivalent anthropological phenomenon. This phenomenon captures the complex integrity of the unique geo-cultural imagery, spatial representations, and a system of adaptation patterns to low temperatures, and their consequences. The rise and fall of the Northern and Arctic cities, in conjunction with history of development of particular countries and regions, show the fragility of their cultural landscapes, whose representations may reflect the stages of decline, ruining or long-term conservation of residential areas, administrative and industrial buildings, technological and public infrastructure. Geo-cultural images of the Northern and Arctic cities are genetically linked to the increased mobility of their founders and inhabitants. The same Northern city can «produce» many differentiated images of cold, due to its geo-cultural patchiness. The image of cold can be considered as an important component of the symbolic asset of the Northern and Arctic cities, as well as a field of implementation and struggle of various post-colonial practices. Cold as an autonomous ontology and cultural landscape of the Northern city can be a phenomenological basis for the dynamic post-urbanism of the Northern and Arctic territories. The phenomenon of co-spatiality, fundamental for understanding the post-urban trends of social development, acquires a special configuration in the cultural landscapes of the Northern cities, contributing to the enrichment of the semantic space of post-urbanism in general. In the future, geo-cultural and cultural-landscape studies of the Northern and Arctic cities may become some of the most important sources for accelerated development of new ontologies of mobile settlement systems.

Key words: post-urbanism, cold, cultural landscape, geo-cultural image, Northern city, co-spatiality, identity, post-colonial practices.