This article was downloaded by: [FU Berlin] On: 24 July 2013, At: 07:03 Publisher: Routledge Informa

Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cnap20

The Southern Square in the Baltic Pearl: Chinese ambition and European architecture in St. Petersburg, Russia
Megan L. Dixon
a a

Math and Physical Sciences , The College of Idaho , Caldwell , USA Published online: 11 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: Megan L. Dixon (2013) The Southern Square in the Baltic Pearl: Chinese ambition and European architecture in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 41:4, 552-569, DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2013.768218 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2013.768218

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Nationalities Papers, 2013 Vol. 41, No. 4, 552 569, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2013.768218

The Southern Square in the Baltic Pearl: Chinese ambition and European architecture in St. Petersburg, Russia
Megan L. Dixon
Math and Physical Sciences, The College of Idaho, Caldwell, USA (Received 4 June 2011; nal version received 26 January 2012) The Baltic Pearl is a 205-hectare development project underway southwest of St. Petersburg, Russia, originally nanced and designed by a consortium of rms from Shanghai, China. This paper analyzes the discourse surrounding the development of one section of the Baltic Pearl, the commercial multiplex Southern Square, particularly the use of the term European as used to signal the projects intended cultural orientation and to exert control over the interaction between Russian planners and Chinese developers. In the negotiation over the form of the multiplex, control over architectural style emerges as leverage for preservation of cultural norms and local autonomy. In further analysis, the situation emerges as an example of Sassens [(2008) Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press] shifting assemblages, that is, a reassembling of global inuences in a space invoked as national as well as local. Keywords: national identity; urban change; post-socialist planning

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

In the small museum in the Xintiandi shopping and dining blocks in Shanghai, China, a plaque in the display celebrating the districts construction claims that Xintiandi appears Chinese to foreigners and foreign to Chinese. This self-conscious statement of multiply performed identities marks the urban landscapes of globalization. It underlines the dependence of identity in urban space on ones position and viewpoint, and suggests the possibility of benign hybridity. Current discussions of identity in the Russian Federation emphasize the focus on delineating a clear Russian identity; as Rivkin-Fish and Trubina demonstrate in their volume (2010), only a subset of even scholarly debates attempts to understand how a new hybridity might emerge. In the area of post-socialist and Russian urban studies, as Diener and Hagen note in the introduction to this special issue, a common theme in scholarship is the resurgence of nationalism in the post-socialist context as expressed in recovered landscapes and heroes. In this context, the material contributions of non-Russian groups to the new landscapes are less discussed; far more frequent are studies of how migrants and other minorities navigate existing landscapes designed by the dominant culture (Dixon 2010c; more generally, Gdaniec 2010). In the case study discussed here, drawn from St. Petersburg, a Chinese architectural design rm has sought to participate actively in creating updated urban space. This has entailed both adopting rhetorical devices invoking St. Petersburgs European past and avoiding perceptions of Chinese designs as essentially or nationally Chinese. Ultimately, the realization of an avowed hybridity, possibly transferring some of the amenities-based success of Xintiandi, has seemed elusive.

Email: mdixon@collegeodaho.edu

# 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities

Nationalities Papers

553

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

In a close examination of planning negotiations surrounding a project called the Baltic Pearl currently underway outside St. Petersburg, Russias so-called second capital, the difculty of achieving hybridity becomes evident. The investment rm behind the project, also called the Baltic Pearl, is a development corporation that is also Chinese that wants to create an innovative global space in a Russian city that wants to be global yet each entity has strong beliefs about the identity of its nation-state as well as, in the case of St. Petersburg, about the identity of the city. As a journalist stated in an article in Kommersant news magazine in December 2008, the project is important . . . as a step in our perception of China in the role of contemporary industrial and nancial center of the world. The district in question, called the Baltic Pearl, is a development project on 205 hectares, partially on reclaimed land, about 10 kilometers southwest of the historical center.1 As the companys own documentation asserts, The Baltic Pearl project is the largest strategic cooperation project between China and Russia to date, and is also Chinas largest public investment project overseas (Conception). The master plan, as nally approved in early 2007, promised to include more than one million square meters of housing, 400 800 thousand square meters of retail and ofce space, parks, and schools. The lead investor is the Shanghai International Investment Company, or SIIC, a development rm with close ties to the Shanghai municipal government. Initial assertions made by the rm promised an investment of at least 1.25 billion dollars; projections since mid 2008 have suggested as much as 3 billion dollars. As of late 2011, the district boasts a luxurious business center (complete with technology for videoconferencing with Chinese locations, see Figure 1) and several completed multiunit residential buildings; units have been on sale since fall 2008.

Figure 1. The Baltic Pearl business center in July 2008. Photograph by author.

554

M.L. Dixon

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Initial protest with some xenophobic overtones invoked the non-belonging of Chinese bodies and Chinese inuence in Russian/Soviet space, although this protest has mostly faded in the face of other urgent conicts over urban development in the city. The Baltic Pearl rm has made efforts since its rst activity in the city to present its project as a neutral housing development, inspired by the best European traditions, merely lling a market gap in St. Petersburg. Still, the Baltic Pearl involves new international participants in the struggle to dene the identity and symbolic landscape of modern St. Petersburg. One particular element of the project a planned commercial complex near the entrance to the district called the Southern Square showed the interplay between coexisting tendencies to globalize and nationalize the design. First the space reected highmodern globalization in its iteration as a covered sport-shopping complex; then, at the time of this authors eldwork, it contained a prominent tower on an open plaza, heavy with nationalized symbols; and nally, it became a gray block fronted by expansive parking, a neutral economic space without the romance of outwardly global design or national markers. Rather than presenting a simple case of a struggle to shore up Russianness and defend against things perceived foreign (Rivkin-Fish and Trubina 2010, 17), the ultimate fate of the Southern Square demonstrates the attrition of explicit ideals of hybridity and suggests that their realization must remain more subtle and gradual, with less impact on the public debate. One way of understanding the situation is that Chinese ambition to lan of central Beijing to Russia became blunted by create a space that would bring the e the need to compromise with local realities and corruption. But between and beyond the national or nation-state level pressure to accomplish the project as a proof of Sino-Russian political and economic solidarity, a struggle ensued between the rm as a global prot-seeker and local elements that sought (and seek) to retain what is perceived as a proud local heritage of architectural excellence. Literature review At one level, St. Petersburgs welcoming of the Chinese investment in a large megaproject reects the desire of its top ofcials (and possibly of Vladimir Putin, a Petersburg native) to enhance St. Petersburgs status as a world city. Arguably, if St. Petersburg wants to be a world city not only nancially but also in the cultural sense discussed by Hannerz (1993), the city must nd a way to integrate and accept new inuences, such as Chinese agency; Ruble (2005) discusses the idea of diversity capital or the ability to take advantage of the new contributions and skills of immigrants, an ability which seems to have narrowed in Russia in the post-Soviet period (Rivkin-Fish 2010, Gdaniec 2010). The work of Doreen Massey (2005, 2007) has attempted to nd a balance between the imperative for cities to accept new inhabitants and the foundation for a steady social fabric that inheres in notions of a native or traditional urban culture. Recent work by Vendina (2005b) indicates that this is germane in the Russian context; her study of the negative effect of depressed economic conditions on receptivity to Others (even in traditional Moscow enclaves) suggests that new patterns of housing and a tendency to separate oneself from the previously mixed Soviet housing blocks will reduce the integration of new migrants to the city. Diatlov examines common prejudices against migrants from the Caucasus, comparing their patterns with prejudices against increasing numbers of Chinese migrants, newly provoked by a resurgence of Chinese out-migration since the late 1980s (2000, 2004).

Nationalities Papers

555

The Baltic Pearl engages this last cluster of problems in an interesting way, because while the project represents the arrival of Chinese immigrants into the city, it is simultaneously an embodiment of Chinese elite ambition to shape world city landscapes. While Moscow reportedly hosts about 20 to 40 thousand Chinese residents with their own banks and newspapers (Gelbras 2004), Petersburg does not yet have such a large Chinese population (partly due to immigration and residency restrictions). There are several thousand Chinese students enrolled in Petersburg institutes of higher education; there are about a thousand businessmen and their families, who run everything from centers for importing construction materials and textiles to restaurants (Interview); and there are at least some unskilled labor migrants (at least a few thousand brought by the Baltic Pearl rm itself, who are housed on or near the project site). But the Baltic Pearl, in spite of early blog protests, is not a typical Chinatown; it is not a housing area designed to attract and house Chinese specialists as a way of bolstering the local economy. The Baltic Pearl in fact aims to present a new model of afuent housing for St. Petersburg. While the economic viability of the project remains in question due to the impact of the global nancial crisis on local demand for new housing, the projects possible success would herald the participation of non-Russian (also notably non-European) actors in redening the quality of urban life in St. Petersburg. The question of public space provides a crossroads for several of these questions. The imperative to provide public space clearly resonates with developers in Russia. The highly controversial (and now canceled) Okhta-Center, for example, was intended to provide ofce space to several thousand employees of Gazprom Corporation subsidiaries; like the Baltic Pearl, it espoused a distinctly global esthetic. In an apparent effort to soften the feared threat to the Petersburg skyline from its 300 meter height, the corporation emphasized the provision of public or semi-public space in its advertisements: a fullpage ad in the June 2008 issue of the tourist/expat glossy Pulse assured readers that the proposed skyscraper would include a generally accessible observation platform at 300 s and restaurants for city residents, a year-round ice rink, the largest European meters, cafe museum of contemporary art, and linear parks in the tradition of Petersburg architecture (Pulse June 2008: 19). Even though this project was proposed by a Russian corporation, with the resulting ability to claim a distinctly Russian role in globalizing St. Petersburg, the conict with architectural markers of local identity galvanized sustained opposition (Yurchak 2011; Dixon 2010b). The promise of an amenities-based public space faded in the shadow of overwhelming objections. When the Shanghai investment consortium came to St. Petersburg with the intention of building a multi-use residential-retail-recreational district, they wanted their project both to communicate understandably to the Petersburg administration and its population and also to express a vision of Chinese participation in shaping new global culture. Thus, there were elements in the design of the Baltic Pearl that expressed negotiation with the spatial-formal language of local Petersburg tradition and also elements that seemed to express concepts of urban space employed in Shanghai and Beijing. While cities are often the focus of projections of national power (e.g. Sidorov 2000; Pagonis and Thornley 2000), they are also the landscape where new sub-national forces attempt changes that do not t easy categories. This is not to assert that such forces will render analysis of national categories obsolete, but that they demand more careful analysis if we are to understand what current developments on the urban landscape mean for nation-states as a whole. In discussing the need to expand an analysis of globalization beyond the self-evidently global, Sassen draws attention to a set of processes that does not necessarily scale at the

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

556

M.L. Dixon

global level as such; these processes take place deep inside territories and institutional domains that have largely been constructed in national terms in much of the world (2008, 3). Sassens examples of these multisited, transboundary networks (2008) focus on political activism and monetary and scal policies. The following case study suggests that certain nationally-based rms engaged in new attempts to operate in other nation-states (that is, globally, although Sassens discussion interrogates that very adverb) also qualify as agents of these processes. Methods and methodology The authors study of the Baltic Pearl project began in early 2005, not long after its public announcement in St. Petersburg in late 2004. Online newspaper sites and their comment blogs as well as the citys ofcial website and the rms ofcial site provided a rich source for visual and textual analysis of the development of the projects design. Fieldwork in St. Petersburg in fall 2006, spring 2007, and summer 2008 allowed for multiple expert interviews and site visits; several design books produced for sponsoring ofcials and investors in both Russia and China were made available to the author for analysis. Additional eldwork in Beijing and Shanghai, China, in January 2008, allowed for further interviews as well as observation of urban sites completed by the same rm that is building the Baltic Pearl. Rather than testing a particular hypothesis, the aim was to discern the enactment of responses to the urban landscape that did not t established categories and thus suggested possible new daily practices (Piirainen 1997; Alasuutari 1995). The attempt of Chinese members of the initial Baltic Pearl design team to create in the Baltic Pearl a global urban model that would disarm Russian suspicions of a nationalist-based takeover is just such an enactment; the desire of Russian planners to hold the Chinese to a promise of innovative city planning for which they themselves yearned is another. Ultimately the established categories reasserted themselves, but the documentation of attempts to avoid them is an important element in understanding post-socialist cities. Euro-Chinese: a new hybridity? Notably, both sides used the term European throughout the process of negotiation over the form of the district. The ambition to globalize Chinese inuence used the term as a way to describe the planned district in the culturally safe mode (also generally palatable to nationalism) of identifying St. Petersburg as Russias most European city. Local Russian desires to control and benet from urban development projects deployed the term to regain control of the signication and quality of local urban landscapes. Some observers within Russia have recently seen the country as under siege by low-wage labor migration from China (particularly in the Far East, but increasingly in European Russia as well; e.g. A.G. Larin 2003). Scholars have countered with statistics and discussions of actual case studies (Zaionchkovskaia 2005; Gelbras 2004). Observers familiar with the overall quality of Chinese migration to Russia note new developments in Chinese migration to Russia which relate directly to the Baltic Pearl. First, the frequent narrative of advanced Russia besieged by peasant China misses new realities. In May 2008, interviewed as part of a project by Russian website Polit.ru and the Freedom Institute, expert Bobo Lo emphasized that Chinese entrepreneurs increasingly want to invest in higher-prole projects such as the Baltic Pearl in western Russia rather than become mere traders or get involved in resource extraction in the Far East

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Nationalities Papers

557

(Lo 2008). Polit.ru commentator Boris Dolgin, in response to commentary by Japan-based Swiss journalist Christoph Neihardt about Russias relationship to China, also notes that many young Chinese of his acquaintance see Russia as an alternative eld for self-realization after leaving Chinas crowded industrial regions. That is, a population of worldly educated young Chinese may not only shape and guide the presence of Chinese labor, but bring a level of intellectual and cultural engagement that Russians tend to assume as their own prerogative (Neihardt 2008). Second, such developments reposition Russia in the broader political economic framework. Essentially suggesting Russia as the terrain for a spatial x for excess Chinese capital (cf. Harvey 2001), several different professors of planning interviewed in Shanghai in January 2008 described the potential goals of the SIIC in building the Baltic Pearl in terms of expansion out from China a China reimagined as the center of the very latest in architectural developments and a major pole of economic development into an arena with a low degree of economic competition from Western rms and investors in order to develop its strength before trying to compete in Europe itself. The representative of the SIIC himself suggested (repeating language used by other representatives and on the companys Baltic Pearl website) that Russia was a place in need of new, good housing product of European standards that is, imagining Russia as a backward space lagging behind both Europe and China and requiring Chinese help to catch up (Li 2008). Emphasizing Russia as a eld for Chinese growth, the representative of SIIC added, After the end of the USSR, Russia goes down, but now it develops fast. The level is still not so high. There is a good chance [for our company] (Li 2008). Several interviewees characterized Chinese activity in Russia as a good t for both parties. Speaking of SIIC, a professor of planning from Shanghais Fudan University suggested that [this] developer has to nd other opportunities to build, outside the country.. . . [and] maybe the Baltic Pearl offers an opportunity to make a base for selling Chinese products in Russia and Northern Europe (Zhuo 2008). This impression was conrmed by another colleague from East China Normal University, who pointed out the additional attraction of St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg is not like Moscow; theres a different atmosphere, few tall buildings, less developed. So this project is an opportunity to cooperate, work together, and in the future to sell more Chinese products. . . . Russia is a new market. The US is a major market, where the competition is keen. In Russia, it is easier for Chinese businessmen there is less competition (Ning 2008). As some have noted, important players in Chinas (at the time) overheated economy were looking for places to spend excess capital. To some Chinese investors, who see themselves as more able to withstand the pressures and complications of Russian corruption and cronyism than Western counterparts, Russia seems like a logical place to vent this nancial steam (Interviews). But what is the content of this Chinese entry, and what does it mean for a local landscape in St. Petersburg? Heterogeneity to hybridity: a theoretical bridge Over a decade after the appearance of Appadurais Modernity at Large, there is still a need to complicate discussions of globalization as the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization (1996, 32). Particularly in the case of Russia caught between East and West, this may not be the main challenge; Russia has long promoted certain kinds of homogenization across its space, rst through imperial Russication and then through Sovietization. In the early 2000s, an intoxication lingered in postsocialist studies with the new, contrasting possibilities of regional autonomy that seemed to grow throughout the 1990s; numerous articles suggested that Russia was decentralizing

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

558

M.L. Dixon

politically and socially (Lapidus 1999; Melvin 1995; Stoner-Weiss 1999; Valuev 2000). In 2005 Vendina suggested that Russian cities, which had so long suffered from the Soviet orientation to the Moscow-based hierarchy, could escape this centralization, called verticality, through horizontal connections with other cities, both within the Russian Federation and beyond its borders (2005a). Yet ongoing even then was a wellknown recentralization a renewal of the vertical. Thus, somewhat paradoxically according to the usual dichotomy that Appadurai (1996) discussed, some elements in Russia would welcome the homogenization brought by globalization if it would dilute the homogenization of the power vertical (Gelman 2007); indeed, in Vendinas discussion, globalization would arguably allow greater heterogenization in Russia (2005a). Appadurais suggestion that even globally shaped tendencies are appropriated and played out at different scales in states and subregions (1996, 32) recalls Sassens exhortation (2008) to analyze phenomena that are not explicitly global as part of an effort to understand how globalization works. The operation of the kind of globalization represented by the arrival of the Baltic Pearl rm in St. Petersburg also promised a productive kind of heterogeneity. In spite of the heavy favor from top ofcials in both nation-states hanging over both sides suggesting the inevitability of the project and a lack of possibility to shape or inuence it at the scale of the Baltic Pearl, a new horizontality had seemed possible as Chinese designers and Russian planners discussed the role of the new district in revitalization of the southwest side of St. Petersburg. Russian planners, enamored with the idea of nally nding a major investor who could pay for the kind of design they could never afford under the Soviet regime, hoped for new architectural models and new inspiration.2 The assertion of a local urban identity sought to shape the project to certain norms and standards of quality; St. Petersburg architecture specialists have continually sought to force the district to embody authentic architectural innovation and not just prot on square meters. To understand the Baltic Pearl as a Chinese phenomenon entering Russian space, we must ask rst how the Chinese have adopted in China certain globally common versions of constructing space, and especially Europeanized space, as a precursor to a move to invest in Russia. Then we can examine how these efforts resonate in St. Petersburg, a city with a complex Euro-Russian identity that is currently struggling with attacks on its identity from the federal Moscow scale (see e.g. Dixon 2010b) as well as trying to absorb the reality of increasing ethnic presence among its residents and work force.3 Examining the Baltic Pearl in some detail will allow us to see that western, European Russia is fast becoming a space of contention for forces that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models (Appadurai 1996, 32) and suggest a series of imagined worlds that coexist, overlap, and possibly suggest a very different future landscape for a part of Russia that has envisioned itself chiey as European. Actors such as the Baltic Pearl might be playing an important role in mediating this new future landscape. In an article about the refraction of international architecture into Chinese space, Dirlik suggests a productive alternative to the center-periphery or global-local dichotomy: in the articles conclusion he uses a phrase about the needs and prerogatives of everyday existence (2005, 50) which stand against off-ground conceptions and goals of spatial utility (2005, 49). Clearly, the needs and prerogatives of everyday existence shift pragmatically depending on the shifting makeup of what constitutes a locations native population; even as certain groups advocate for an unchanging vision of national purity, other agents are engaged in negotiation over a transformation of what everyday existence requires. As was clear from coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and as the cited article by Dirlik (2005) discusses, China has become the arena for some of the most extravagant

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Nationalities Papers

559

experiments in high modern architecture, by the likes of Herzog and de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas. In fact it is more precise in terms of scale to claim that such tendencies have been metropolized, or adopted in some large cities, rather than adopted as a regional architecture typical of all of China. Arguably, such projects as the Birds Nest stadium and the new CCTV headquarters stand far from the needs and prerogatives of everyday existence. As Dirlik also reminds us, they partake in a dialogue that is not between the global and the local but between the global and the global talking about the local (2005, 37); there is little visible interaction between local spatial culture and the architectural results. Will the same thing be true in St. Petersburg?

The Baltic Pearl as European Since the SIIC reportedly could not afford a charismatic architect to design the entire project, the Baltic Pearl falls somewhat outside the magnetic eld of high modern architecture and into a nexus of negotiation between local planners, individual agents inside the Chinese design process, and the desires of Chinese investors. The Chinese agents in the negotiation had to reckon with fairly stubborn local conceptions of the city and the spaces that it requires. In this process, the Baltic Pearls promotional literature shows that designs related to the Baltic Pearl were presented, not as Chinese, but as international and modern. Among the local conceptions is the idea that St. Petersburg is European; in fact, in the late 1990s, when the St. Petersburg Leontief Centre produced a conceptual outline for the citys latest master plan (adopted in 2005), open European city was the dominant motto of the document. This context clearly inuenced the language used by Chinese investors in their presentation of the project from the very beginning as something European:
We have attempted to create a contemporary urban district of European type. To offer a transportation system corresponding to this level and commercial services of European class. (Conception for Habitation)

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

However, other language suggests that the Chinese investors and designers were not merely using the trope of Europeanness as a mask to appease the locals. First, the language indicates that the Chinese investors see St. Petersburg as in some way inadequately European, needing to attain European standards; this repeats the rhetoric of City Governor Valentina Matvienko in her annual speeches to the City Legislative Assembly, calling for European standards in city services (Matvienko 2004 2008). Second, the rhetoric indicates that the Chinese had something specic and additional in mind besides using Europe as a diversionary tactic. Other language used earlier on the rms website asserted that
We want not merely to build a universal district of European type with developed infrastructure and services of European quality, but also to create a new way of life. (Residential real estate; emphasis added)

The conception of the quarter described on the website invoked a new way of thinking: the concept of development of an international enterprise of an integrational type (Conception for Habitation). The project was disavowing traditional Chineseness but also asserting a uniquely Chinese innovativeness.

Intentions for Chineseness in the Southern Square The Southern Square in the plan was for four years (2006 2010) dominated by a tower (see Figure 2) surrounded by a broad plaza with four petals or wings that were slated to house four different types of post-industrial functions: leisure, shopping, tness, and hotel.

560

M.L. Dixon

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Figure 2. The Lotus Tower in the Southern Square, displayed in July 2008. Photograph by author.

The text on the projects ofcial website had this to say in January of 2009 (my translation from the Russian):
In the rst building series in the southern section of the district, construction has begun on an architecturally unusual multiuse commercial center. . . . In the vertical view the building will represent the two-headed eagle with outspread wings the sign of Russia; in the horizontal view the bloom of a clover, a legendary ower that brings luck. However, the petals of this commercial complex do not only symbolize love, prosperity, happiness and health, they also have completely dened functional aims: in the ower there will be a hotel complex which will joyfully welcome guests of the Northern capital. Also, on the area of the Southern Square it is planned to open a trade gallery with stores and boutiques for every taste, a store for electronics and appliances, a grocery store, cozy cafes and restaurants, a modern cinema, and a large tness center. (The commercial complex Southern Square; emphasis added)

Further consideration of the symbolic content and practical implications of this plaza permits greater precision in evaluating Russian responses to it. In the text, the design of the tower has been presented as a synergy of important Russian and Chinese symbols: the top of the tower supposedly is simultaneously a two-headed eagle and a ower. In conversation with a representative of the rm in December 2006, the ower was described as a lotus, an important Chinese symbol. The text here refers only to clover, the sign of luck eliding the national Chinese presence in the tower. But similarly to a map in the design book showing Russia and China linked by a pearl (the Baltic Pearl project), this landscape element seeks to position Chinas power and its initiation of Russo-Chinese cooperation grandly on the local skyline. Chinese interviewees did not uniformly approve of this element. A research associate at Tongji University in Shanghai, who had been associated with the early stages of

Nationalities Papers

561

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

planning for the project, suggested that the design for the tower had been decided exclusively in Shanghai via a separate competition among Chinese architects. The research associate had little else to say about the design, but he did indicate that this plaza did not form a part of the project as it had been envisioned by the Tongji team that initially collaborated with Russian counterparts. His demeanor suggested disapproval of this element that interrupted a complete vision of the space as an urban district of a certain modern type (Xu 2008); the addition of the ower and eagle contradicted the purity of the global hybrid vision with nationalist specics. When asked about the ideal form in the Baltic Pearl, the Tongji research associate rejected the idea that there would be any distinctively Chinese forms. Rather, he said, the space would be characterized by the most popular, successful European style of life to St. Petersburg, bring a new lifestyle to St. Petersburg . . . with global-approved forms (Xu). As expressed by Cai LaiXing, the main press representative of the Baltic Pearl subsidiary in St. Petersburg, the Baltic Pearl will have a modern operation and management model [that] will represent the latest European lifestyle at the frontier of the world today harmony between human and nature (Conception). In this comment we can see, perhaps, an attempt by some Chinese designers to take over the conversation between the global and the global talking about the local: after appropriating this idealized universal European globallyapproved mode of space, the Chinese would now take their own version of it to Russia.

Russian reactions to Chineseness The presentation of the project in Russia was initially very cautious, partly in anticipation of xenophobic reactions. Aleksei Oreshkin, a journalist for Gorod, one of the more liberal news magazines at the time, wrote in December 2004 that he was struck by the complete absence in the design of Chinese identity or recognizable Chinese forms. In spite of early reports that the project would include a branch of the Peking opera and a Buddhist temple, no such element appeared in any design document that I saw. Oreshkin apparently regretted this; he summed up the design as classic townhouse. As he added, it was obvious that the Chinese investors had set out to create a project that would in no way remind anyone of the words Chinese quarter or Shanghai, which, according to Chinese intelligence, have negative connotations in Russia (Oreshkin 2008). Unlike projects in Western Europe, such as Frankfurt and Rotterdam, where local developers and urban administrations are creating Chinatowns in order to lure and house employees of Chinese rms that are clients of those ports, the Baltic Pearl has been from the beginning carefully couched to be a project for locals not for potential Chinese buyers. Oreshkin also noted that at the press conference he attended, the companys representative asserted rmly that no more than 1% of housing in the Baltic Pearl would be sold to Chinese citizens. Certainly there were xenophobic reactions, with recognizable tones and forms of expression. Some of the most notable of this type are as follows:
Life will ow there by its own laws and traditions! Chinese always and everywhere live in isolation! 1% [of the housing] that means more than 10 thousand square meters where youll have bunks stacked three high and Chinese will sleep there in three shifts, who wont study the language and wont observe the laws of the land where theyre staying, and will live by their own rules in isolation. On one side your neighbor will be a Chinese drug addict and on the other a Chinese drug dealer, above you a Chinese prostitute who invites clients home and below you Chinese

562

M.L. Dixon

Maosi, lthy entrances and yards, shot-up doors, you can only go outside during the day. (Comments)

Notably, these anxieties are directed at two factors: a misuse of the housing space according to Russian notions of conceptions and goals of spatial utility (overcrowding) and the formation of a separate lawscape within space occupied by Chinese. These anxieties are shaped signicantly by Western Russian perceptions of current realities in the Russian Far East, where, as one contributor to a news blog wrote, [I saw] an announcement hanging openly that said No Russians may enter! The notion of diluting national space with a proxy polity composed of swarming laborers alarms many Russians who share these views. Further, though, there were very specic objections to the Baltic Pearl as a designed space, claims that certain elements would not t within the local St. Petersburg conceptions and goals in an esthetic and social sense. Alluding to the Soviet approach of developing large city blocks as single projects or kvartals, another blog contributor wrote:
The kvartal construction proposed by the Chinese is not typical for Petersburg. Our city was from the beginning built up project by individual project and this gives it a particular unrepeatability. Building by blocks took place in Soviet times and reached its peak from the 1960s to 1980s. (Comments)

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Another contributor also wrote that he was bothered most of all by the Soviet-ness of the design. That is, he saw the design not as bringing a new style of life and a vision of universal European urban delight, but as reimposing overly controlled space (see Figure 3). Asked specically about the Southern Square, one Russian architect had only scathing remarks. For him, this plaza represented not a step forward into post-industrial functions but a step backward into overscaled Soviet spaces.
Its completely clear that here two scales, two cultural environments cohabitate. Here its distinctly and completely visible that this part and this part were drawn by different people, and this part with this ower [the Southern Square], with this exit to the sea, these are drawn by different people. And if this [eastern residential] part is drawn for people, and its understandable why there are such gaps and distances, then this [commercial area] continues to be drawn for Soviet man. . . . Its again the ideas of a certain composition, you understand, in which a person becomes a part of some kind of spatial game, its Stalinism again, China, Mao ZeDong. (Kharchenko 2006)

However, contrary to the comments of the Russian blog contributors, who disliked the elements they saw in the project of Soviet kvartal-style planning, the two Russian architect-planners whom I interviewed had had precisely this set of conceptions and goals for spatial utility in mind during their own interactions with the company. Kharchenko approved the courtyard spaces inside the residential complexes.
[This arrangement] is different from our kvartals, its not so bleak, it has a different scale, it becomes more European. It has a more human face, [theres] more warmth, more humanism in this environment.

Former government architect Nikitin, who was the main liaison with the succession of Chinese design teams (and had visited Shanghai during the projects early stages) also conceded the quality of the residential space.
[In China] they build a lot of good housing. Therefore . . . they will denitely meet this challenge [here]. I dont doubt that the housing will be of good quality. A higher quality of housing and residential environment than our Brezhnev kvartals. It will be super-social housing. So in that sense its a success. (Nikitin 2006)

He added, though, that the project per se, the general composition, is terribly weak. Overall, the other architect Kharchenko agreed with the bloggers that the ultimate result

Nationalities Papers

563

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Figure 3. The interior courtyard of a residential building under construction. Photograph by author.

left much to be desired and (again) was far from a new universal vision of transmuted European urban life:
. . . this was essentially the rst case when, after a decade-long interruption, we in the city had the chance to see in the shape of this big territory, how it [kvartal-scale planning] would develop . . . and naturally, knowing what is going on in the world, knowing, and hearing these promises from the Chinese, that the project should be interesting, contemporary,

564

M.L. Dixon

taking account of world trends, in the area of housing, in urban planning, [we gured] that this project should be interesting. But the result was a bleak pragmatic uninteresting project, no better than Soviet ones.

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

So while there was anxiety from uninformed citizens about Chinese stereotypical overcrowding and conicting political loyalties on Russian spaces, conceived of as an invasion, some Russians deeply involved in negotiation over the project perceived it as a return to Soviet qualities rather than either a step towards a stronger re-Europeanized landscape or, for that matter, a nationalist Chinese imposition on it. By contrast, the Chinese often perceived the conditions in which they had to operate as overly conservative and oppressively local. The promotional literature produced by the Baltic Pearl continually emphasized the connection to local Petersburg architectural tradition; in fact, the November 2006 iteration of the design plan, completed by OveARUP, included an extensive backstudy of the structure of residential courtyards throughout Petersburgs history. Yet while the rm has incorporated local urban morphology into the discussion throughout its design process, the rm has never sought to copy local norms. It emphasizes adherence to actual codes and ordinances as a way to facilitate the construction process, but the rms promotional literature constantly emphasizes the creation of a new way of life and a new Petersburg brand. In a revealing passage from the 2008 UN Habitat Award competition application, the documents author emphasizes the contrast between global world or international Chinese thinking and localized conservative, out-of-date, obsolete Russian thinking.
At the beginning of the project, we were faced with the conservative cultural thinking mode and out-of-date rules and regulations in Russia. In terms of design, for example, we invited the most prestigious designers in the world for creative designing, but there were a lot of restraints regarding urban architecture. To protect the cultural relics, the city does not allow building any structure higher than 75 meters despite the fact that for a modern urban architectural complex with colorful skylines and in diversied forms, the ornament of high-rise buildings is indispensable. In a word, though we were conducting modern and internationalized planning and design, we had to face the obsolete Russian standards and conservative attitude towards new things and a string of issues regarding design, approval and management. (Habitat Business Award; emphasis added)

As the emphasized phrases indicate, the Chinese author of the application sees the Baltic Pearl as very much identied with international architectural trends, including the assumption that the ornament of high-rise buildings is indispensable. The description of the local reaction refers to responses to design iterations in 2006 and 2007 by the City Architectural Council, that is, of a group of people who saw themselves as the guardians of a particular mode of Petersburg architecture. The shift within the city since that time to rely less on the so-called elites of traditional architecture and urban culture and more on the forward-looking businessmen and proponents of international investment has lessened the opposition in the city administration to high-rise buildings. Not surprisingly, the passage quoted above implies that global equates to modernity and international success, while the local implies conservatism and obsolescence: this is a common argument used against local resistance to internationally conceived projects. By appropriating this familiar language, the Chinese rm also rmly identies itself with the most prestigious designers of urban space. While the Russian side in Petersburg might sometimes portray the Baltic Pearl complex as the arrival of a nest of swarming Chinese laborers, the Chinese side for its part portrays the district as the arrival in Petersburg of a node in the global web of urban elegance, a favor of sorts to the backwardslooking Petersburgers.

Nationalities Papers

565

Discussion: the end of the poetic tower In April 2010, local news outlets covered the unveiling of a new Finnish-Chinese design, the result of new consultations following the accession to the project of the Finnish rm SRV Group. This design basically a huge gray glass-and-steel block with a vast parking area between it and the main access road to the district has entirely lost the promise or even hint of cultural hybridity or colorful globalization. How did the project arrive at this point? Visits to the ofces of the Baltic Pearl rm in late 2006 hinted at heady cross-national cooperation: Russians worked alongside Chinese, and not only local architects were engaged but a recent round of architectural bidding (called an international proposal collection) that had just concluded involved some of the worlds most famous high-modern architects, including Koolhaas. As mentioned, no elements of traditional Chinese architecture had ever been part of the plans; the possible Chinese architecture envisioned was quite different, more experimental. Interviews conducted in early 2008 with representatives of the Baltic Pearl rm suggested a possible association with the kind of urban architecture linked to redeveloped historical streetscapes in Shanghai, such as the shopping/residential area Xintiandi. Fieldwork in Shanghai and Beijing suggested that, were some of the latest Chinese architecture to come to St. Petersburg, it would embody the colorful, oddly shaped experiments appearing in those two cities. Russian planners reaction to this new gray version showed that the Southern Square tower, which had been seen as a capricious insertion in late 2006 and early 2007, now seemed a better option than the gray block proposed by the Finns. The deputy chair of the City Committee on Architecture and Construction (KGA), Viktor Polishchuk, was quoted as saying that the design in the form of a ower was, perhaps, unusual, but unique. Now they have decided to replace it with banal Eurotypicality (Instead of a ower). BN.ru quoted Polishchuks comment that the project presented a banal European composition. Here there is no symbol, no attachment to place, no connection to the Baltic Pearl. It needs more emotional energy (Golokova 2010). In this way he dismisses the Chinese claim, made through the discourse of Europe, to be the best steward of new spatial developments. Instead of the new ease of globally hybrid and amenable spaces the Starbucks kind of global comfort, if you will the outward appearance of the district, viewed through the latest version of the Southern Square, presents the gray efciencies and necessities of globally mobile investment. Arguably, the Starbucks version of globalization erases local specicity and has its own serious drawbacks; however, in the case of the Baltic Pearl, it is interesting that the initial hybridizing promise of the projects implications has faded somewhat, and the potential for the district to become a concentration of globally anonymous, non-local, but universally enjoyed comforts has proportionately diminished. Anton Buchev, the Chair of the St. Petersburg city administrations Committee for Strategic Investments maintained that the project is a wonderful example of RussoFinnish-Chinese cooperation and shapes the investment climate in the city (In Petersburg). However, a news story reporting on the impending involvement of the Finns stated that in this way, the most heralded project to lure foreign capital into the construction industry in St. Petersburg has turned into a typical Petersburg building site (stroika) (Nikiforov 2009). From trumpeting the expression of love, prosperity, happiness and health in the Southern Square in 2009 (The commercial complex), the Baltic Pearl ofcial site now merely makes claims that visitors can do shopping of European quality (The multifunctional complex).

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

566

M.L. Dixon

Conclusion To develop further Dirliks point in 2005 about off-ground notions coming down on Chinese locations, we must ask: What is off-ground inuence now? As I have suggested, the global has been to some extent nationalized, or even localized, as a tool to deploy in development space by the Chinese. This refracted global now comes to Russian ground, confronting a range of perceptions and expectations that affect how it will be seen either as completely foreign and ungovernable, as a return to a rejected past, or as a potential importer of good new product. Specically, the Chinese seem to be experimenting here with a new notion of the Chinese self as designer of space. Whether it is a covert marking of the landscape with a distinctly Chinese tower or the pretension to redene the European notion of urban, what is East here seems to be in ux, under negotiation, a moving target. A professor of planning interviewed in Beijing suggested that after moving from Soviet-inuenced mass housing to a traditionalist period of strict preservation in the 1990s, China now wants to chart a new course:
Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013
They are trying to balance these two things [traditional/historical and new]. They are always talking about it during projects. There is a big difference between the Eastern and Western cultures. Right now the East is receiving a lot of Western inuence. The West is comparative [accepts contrasts]. In the West, there is fusion e.g. the Louvre glass pyramid in the palace courtyard: old and new together. Right now China wants more similar [things], more contact.

The Baltic Pearl thus is not only an experiment in nance and investment in a country with a low degree of nancial stability, it is also an experiment in place-making to rival the experiments already conducted in Europe. As a small indicator of globality, we might speculate on the possibility that this Chinese project will be the conduit for other agents of globality to enter Russia. Starbucks is a ubiquitous sight in the spaces in Chinese cities that are most hip: while it was pushed out of the Forbidden City, it prominently occupies the former Emperors teahouse in the Qianmen development south of Tiananmen Square. It also has a prominent location in Shanghais Xintiandi shopping district, the epitome of successful hybrid development mentioned to me as a model by virtually all of my Chinese interviewees. In an interview in December 2008 with the news journal Kommersant, Baltic Pearl representative Wang Changda noted that the company was conducting negotiations with international chains, especially British and American, for tenancy in the planned retail and commercial space of the Baltic Pearl (Why do people believe). Will this Chinese space become the mode of entry for that symbol of global caffeination and capitalism? What will happen as the Baltic Pearl project becomes more fully built remains to be seen. Buildings are sprouting up all along the Peterhof highway. The housing units are selling, if more slowly than the company planned before the nancial crisis. Perhaps the space will feel Soviet when it is completed or perhaps it will feel new, clean, modern, and efcient. As a pro-Baltic Pearl blogger wrote on a news website in 2003:
Of course I feel a personal interest in how it turns out. I live not far away and therefore I want my growing children to see not only dirty Khrushchev-era tenements but also to go to the [planned] water park, to stroll on a covered pedestrian walkway and so on. The way that it happens in the whole normal world. (Comments)

This contributor envisions himself enacting simple spatial practices on the site that seem to him completely normal and that support his idea of family activities; he does not

Nationalities Papers

567

perceive the resulting development as an expanse of competing spatial practices, with different cultural and social (national) representations demanding their own spaces. How many people will share his view might determine the fate not only of the development itself, but of St. Petersburgs sustainable social and economic development. It is a distinct if glimmering possibility that a new pragmatism will override the traditional perceived conict between East and West. My interviewee (Xu) at Tongji University in Shanghai put it well, when I pressed him to describe what Chinese forms might be useful to adopt in Russian space. He persistently resisted even an abstraction of any forms as Chinese, and nally said: Chinese things are connected to the whole world. You cant have a cultural conict with objects that you use. Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of the reviewers. Research for this manuscript was made possible in part through National Science Foundation DDRI grant 0623599.
Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Notes
1. The genesis of the project and its connection to the Chinese state as well as details of its implementation through committees of the St. Petersburg administration have been discussed in Dixon 2010a. 2. Certainly large projects were carried out under the Soviet regime. However, strikingly, in more than one interview, planners in St. Petersburg lamented the way that lack of funds in the Soviet period prevented the full realization of urban designs, leaving large housing areas deprived of promised amenities and effective infrastructure (e.g. Nikitin interview). They clearly expected that Chinese wealth could overcome those constraints. 3. The reaction of St. Petersburgers to, for example, the proposal for the Gazprom skyscraper (rst known as Gazprom-city and later as Okhta-Center) is not merely a case of cultural conservatism; an important catalyst for the resistance was a desire to preserve the political leverage of developing local building codes, which Okhta-Center at rst ignored (see Dixon 2010b). (Also see Ruble 1990 about the political role of Petersburg landscapes in the 1980s.) That case further differs from the Baltic Pearl in that the conict was Russian-on-Russian, in a way Moscow vs. St. Petersburg. That controversy in fact shifted responses to the Baltic Pearl, which began to seem extremely mild by comparison.

References
Alasuutari, P. 1995. Researching Culture. Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies. London: Sage. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Comments. Projects of the Century: Chinese Quarter. Nevastroyka, 20042008. Accessed April 23, 2008. www.nevastroyka.ru/1/17]. Diatlov, V. I., ed. 2000. Sovremennye torgovye menshinstva: faktor stabilnosti ili konikta? (Kitaitsy i kavkaztsy v Irkutske). Moscow: Natalis. Diatlov, V. I., ed. 2004. Most cherez Amur. Vneshnie migratsii i migranty v Sibiri i na Dalnem Vostoke: Sbornik materialov mezhdunarodnogo issledovatelskogo seminara. Moscow: Natalis. Dirlik, Arif. 2005. Architectures of Global Modernity, Colonialism, and Places. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 17: 33 61. Dixon, Megan. 2010a. Emerging Chinese Role in Shaping St. Petersburgs Urban Landscape: Interscalar Investment Strategies in the Development of a Residential Megaproject. Eurasian Geography and Economics 51 (6): 803819. Dixon, Megan. 2010b. Gazprom vs. the Skyline. Spatial Displacement and Social Contention in St. Petersburg. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34 (1): 3554.

568

M.L. Dixon

Dixon, Megan. 2010c. Is Chinese Space Chinese? New Migrants in St. Petersburg. In Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities. The Urban Landscape in the Post-Soviet Era, edited by Cordula Gdaniec, 21 49. New York: Berghahn Books. Gdaniec, Cordula, ed. 2010. Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities. The Urban Landscape in the PostSoviet Era. New York: Berghahn Books. Gelbras, Vilya G. 2004. Rossiia v usloviiakh global noi kitaiskoi migratsii (Russia and global Chinese migration). Moscow: Muravei. Gelman, Vladimir. 2007. From local self-government to the power vertical. (In Russian.) Pro et Contra, n.p. Moscow Center Carnegie, 16 April 2007. Web. 3 March 2008. Golokova, Marina. 2010. The Finns have drawn a boring Plaza. Biuletten nedvizhimosti. Bn.ru, 9 April 2010. Web. 14 June 2010. Habitat Business Award. Baltic Pearl. Bpearl.net, n.d. Web. 19 January 2009. Hannerz, Ulf. 1993. The Cultural Role of World Cities. In Humanising the City? Social Contexts of Urban Life at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by A. P. Cohen and K. Fukui, 67 84. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Harvey, David. 2001. The Spatial Fix: Hegel, Von Thunen, and Marx. In Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, 284 311. New York: Routledge. In Petersburg the cornerstone was laid for the multi-functional complex Pearl Plaza. 2010. Agenstvo stroitelnykh novostei. Asninfo.ru, 30 September 2010. Web. 24 April 2011. Instead of a ower for the Baltic Pearl they designed banal Eurotypicality. 2010. Agenstvo stroitelnykh novostei. Asninfo.ru, 12 April 2010. Web. 14 June 2010. Kharchenko, O. 2006. Personal interview. 6 December. Lapidus, Gail. 1999. Asymmetrical Federalism and State Breakdown in Russia. Post-Soviet Affairs 15: 74 82. Larin, Alexander G. 2003. Kitaitsy v Rossii, vchera i segodnia. Moscow: Muravei. Li, B. 2008. Personal interview. 19 January. Lo, Bobo. 2008. China knows that Russia is extraordinarily West-centric. Polit.ru, 20 May 2008. Web. 21 May 2008. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Publications. Massey, Doreen. 2007. World City. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Matvienko, V. I. Annual Address to the City Legislative Assembly. June 2004; March 2005; March 2006; May 2007; April 2008. Accessed April 23, 2008. http://gov.spb.ru/gov/governor. Melvin, Neil. 1995. Regional foreign policies in the Russian federation. Post-Soviet Business Forum series. Russian and CIS Programme. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Neihardt, Christoph. 2008. China and Russia: the communist mask vs. the democratic hat. Interview by Boris Dolgin. Polit.ru, 20 May 2008. Web. 21 May 2008. Nikiforov, Pavel. 2009. The Baltic Pearl has decided to outsource. Biuletten nedvizhimosti. Bn.ru, 18 December 2009. Web. 16 November 2010. Nikitin, S. P. 2006. Personal interview. 19 October. Ning, Y. 2008. Personal interview. 22 January. Oreshkin, Aleksei. 2008. The hoped-for becomes reality. Gorod. Gorod.ru, 27 December 2004. Web. 18 February 2008. Pagonis, T., and A. Thornley. 2000. Urban Development Projects in Moscow: Market/State Relations in the New Russia. European Planning Studies 8: 751 766. Piirainen, Timo. 1997. Towards a New Social Order in Russia. Transforming Social Structures and Everyday Life. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Residential real estate. Baltic Pearl. Balticpearl.spb.ru, n.d. Web. 5 October 2007. Rivkin-Fish, Michele, and Elena Trubina, eds. 2010. Introduction: Conceptualizing Cultural Diversity after the Cold War. In Dilemmas of Diversity after the Cold War: Analyses of Cultural Difference by U.S. and Russia-based Scholars, 7 49. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Ruble, Blair. 1990. Leningrad. Shaping a Soviet City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ruble, B. 2005. Creating Diversity Capital: Transnational Migrants in Montreal, Washington, and Kyiv. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Sassen, Saskia. 2008. Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Nationalities Papers

569

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 07:03 24 July 2013

Sidorov, D. 2000. National Monumentalization and the Politics of Scale: The Resurrection of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90: 548 572. Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn. 1999. Central Weakness and Provincial Autonomy: Observations on the Devolution Process in Russia. Post-Soviet Affairs 15: 87 106. The commercial complex Southern Square. n.d. Baltic Pearl. Bpearl.net, Web. 19 January 2009. The multifunctional complex Pearl Plaza. n.d. Baltic Pearl. Web. 24 April 2011. Valuev, Vasiliy. 2000. Globalization through Regionalization. The Case of Russia. International Journal of Political Economy 30 (3): 21 43. Vendina, Olga. 2005a.Perspectives for Polycentric Development of the Russian Expanse in the Context of Globalization. In Russia and its Regions in the Twentieth Century. Territory Settlement Migration (In Russian.), edited by O. Glazer, and P. Polian, 307333. Moscow: O.G.I. Social geography. Vendina, Olga. 2005b. Migrants in Moscow: is Moscow Heading Towards Ethnic Segregation? In The Migration Situation in Russias Regions 3. (In Russian.) Moscow: Center for Migration Research. Why do people believe in the Pearl. 2008. Baltic Pearl: The press about us. Bpearl.net, 1 December 2008. Web. 19 January 2009. Xu, J. 2008. Personal interview. 23 January. Yurchak, Alexei. 2011. Aesthetic Politics in St. Petersburg: Skyline at the Heart of Political Opposition. An NCEEER Working Paper. Web. 16 December. Zaionchkovskaia, Zhanna. 2005. Pered litsom immigratsii. Sosedstvo Kitaia pomozhet reshit obshcherossiiskuiu problemu ostrogo detsita rabochei sily. Pro et Contra 9 (3): 72 87. Zhuo, J. 2008. Personal interview. 22 January.