Resources, Consumers, Non-citizens: Representation of the Citizens in the Discourse of the New Residential Areas in Moscow

Abstract

This article explores the representation of the citizens in the discourse of new residential areas in Moscow. The article focuses on how different agents of discourse representing citizens helps to reveal which citizens are taken into account in the production of urban spaces and who is left out of it. In Moscow, new residential areas represent the contradictions of how citizens are represented in certain agendas. For authorities, such areas embody extensive policy, capital, and successful political management. In the media, such a type of housing becomes stigmatized: it is labelled as “ghetto” and imaged as environmental, which does not suit the correct path of city development. In this article, focusing on the production of urban citizenship in the part of public discourse produced by authorities, developers, and critical agents, I will show (1) when citizens are used as a faceless, impersonated category in the discourse in one row with the infrastructural achievements of the current government; (2) the construction of the “average citizen”, who is the main character in space production; (3) the grounds behind the “consumer-citizen” in discourse, who is entitled with only the economic agency on housing market; and (4) citizens who are symbolically excluded from their right to the new residential areas’ space. Through the characters-citizens in the discourse, I will show the lack of fundamental differences in the discourse of different agents, such as the authorities, developers, and critical agents.