Khimki in Moscow city-region: From ‘closed city’ to ‘edge city’?

Abstract

Many concepts in social sciences sooner or later face ‘trial by geography’ - a consideration of their applicability beyond specific places and contexts, thus allowing these concepts to be either adjusted or rethought. The interest of this chapter is, then, to bring the analysis of postsuburbia from the Western economies into the former ‘Second World’ and to consider to what extent the ideas of ‘edge city’ (Garreau, 1991), ‘post-suburbia’ (Kling et al, 1995) and associated models of urban growth may apply for the latter. To this end we consider urban development and place-making on the periphery of Moscow. The analysis here is particularly based on the case of Khimki - a former Soviet off-limits ‘satellite city’ of Moscow and more recently a fast-growing area featuring many new retail, office and housing development projects right at Moscow’s edge.