Constructing urban cultural landscapes & living in the palimpsests: A case of Moscow city (Russia) distant residential areas

Abstract

A metaphor of palimpsest is used to describe the multivocal cultural landscapes since the 1970s. Interventions into new cultural / humanistic geography, semiotics and the theory of regional geography help to regard each layer of the palimpsest as a constructed context, centered by dominant representation of a place. Real-and-imagined landscapes are regarded as palimpsests lived through everyday practices seen as processes of (re)construction of new layers. Trying to unite those “constructing’ and “living’ perspectives is a challenging task for urban cultural agenda. A series of mobile quest games was made by the author for Moscow Agency for Area Development through Culture in order to construct new tourist sights outside city centre. This project is discussed as a case of constructing new geographical contexts (palimpsest’ layers) and the lived experience rediscovering the distant residential areas, traditionally regarded as standardized “non-places’, as becoming rich in symbolic capital.