Search

The unfolding debate on authoritarian urbanism and resistance to it largely avoided the conceptual clarification of what exactly this phenomenon is about. In this comment, I argue that authoritarian urbanism should be conceptualised as practices and tools for governing the urban space that help to maintain the autocratic order. I draw on the evidence from Russia to check if urban contention there fits into the category of „resistance to authoritarian urbanism“ and posit that it occupies the middle-ground between an open call for fundamental change in urban governance and infrapolitics.