THE RUSSIAN INFLUENCE ON THE FORMATION OF BAKU’S URBAN IDENTITY

This paper aims to understand the relationship between the political reconstruction of society and transformation of city via investigating the changes of concepts such as public and private spaces after the transition from a planned socialist economy to a free market economy in Baku city, Azerbaijan.

Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan Republic, was one of the major industrial cities in the Soviet Union. In contrast, the post-Soviet development of Baku has witnessed a major reconstruction with grandiose construction projects, which is meant to turn the city into a global city. Consequently, the urban landscape has been transformed in many parts of the city, while informal settlements and a deteriorating environment have become the main scourges of Baku. However, while the administration has attempted to follow the model of Dubai, in practice, the urban development is characteristically chaotic due to the absence of effective regulation and planning. Indeed, with the continued influx of oil revenue, the city is spending vast sums on new projects, buildings and infrastructure without any apparent strategic plan. This paper identifies the key forces and processes underlying the transformation of Baku and looks at the problems haunting the city.► We looked at urban development of Baku in historical perspectives. ► We examined urban transformation of Baku since collapse of the Soviet Union. ► Absence of Master Plan and zoning make the urban construction chaotic and costly. ► Urban elites are prone for Dubai model of development. ► Dubai model proved to be wrong approach since Baku misses several important factors such as geography and resources.

Gentrification is being increasingly discussed as a driver of urban change globally, including in the former Soviet Union. However, the translation of the gentrification phenomenon into post-Soviet cities like Baku remains poorly understood. This article explores how a particular form of state-led "gentrification by demolition" is unfolding in Baku. We assert the ongoing relevance of using the framework of gentrification to analyze the processes. We go on to use the case of the recently demolished Sovetsky district to carefully expand the geography of the gentrification discourse. We argue that Baku's own "landscape of gentrification" is shaped by anumber of preconditions. It bears the marks of the legacy of post-socialist cities. However, it more resembles muscular state-led "gentrification by demolition" that is characteristic of Chinese cities. It also echoes Soviet citybuilding legacies in its use of spectacle and "grand gesture" to legitimize and buy support for gentrification policies.

Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2017

Baku: Violence, Identity, and Oil, 1905-1927 is an exploration of the economic, social, and political metamorphosis of Baku, Azerbaijan, from 1905 to 1927, from a growing boomtown to a city divided by ethnic and political violence to a reconfigured existence as a critical oil production center of the Soviet Union. It will address how Baku’s industry, crude oil drilling, and petrochemical refinement had profound social, political, and economic effects on the city— not only on the urban physical environment of the city itself but also on the demographics and livelihood of its population. The core purpose of this work is to connect outbreaks of violence and other events affecting Baku across this period, especially during the Russian Civil War, to the splintering of political identity and the contemporaneous shift in material circumstance that occurred in the city across the first two decades of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the thesis will address how this outcome was additional...

Urban Geography, 2019

Gentrification is being increasingly discussed as a driver of urban change globally, including in the former Soviet Union. However, the translation of the gentrification phenomenon into post- Soviet cities like Baku remains poorly understood. This article explores how a particular form of state-led “gentrification by demolition” is unfolding in Baku. We assert the ongoing relevance of using the framework of gentrification to analyze the processes. We go on to use the case of the recently demolished Sovetsky district to carefully expand the geography of the gentrification discourse. We argue that Baku’s own “landscape of gentrification” is shaped by anumber of preconditions. It bears the marks of the legacy of post-socialist cities. However, it more resembles muscular state-led “gentrification by demolition” that is characteristic of Chinese cities. It also echoes Soviet citybuilding legacies in its use of spectacle and “grand gesture” to legitimize and buy support for gentrification policies.

journal of Art and Civilization of the Orient (JACO), 2014

After the communist states, took Sovereignty the Caucasus cities, urban spaces were a lot of changes. Street as one of the components of the urban landscape that much of perception is dependent on it that in strategy of Sovereign states such as the Soviet was used; so that producing streets came out the main principle to introduce a new face in town to show power. Order and geometry in a direct structure with Governmental landuse such as office buildings, religious and government of the obvious physical characteristics of this streets. Considerable point is Presence of such streets in the cities of the Caucasus today's perspective that only flavor of Interest globalization and modernization have been added. It seems urban management of Caucasus adopted the same approach to organizing a street perspective, with a different purpose from the socialist era, that achieving the government's goals has priority over urban life. This article is a comparative view of the streets of the Caucasus in the socialist period and thereafter, provides the phenomenological analysis of urban management approaches towards designing street. Introduction Streets are one of the elements of the urban landscape that Intellectual Foundations of Urban Management and cultural life is emerging in it. In period of tradition, spatial structure of the street consistent with the paradigm and behavior and held gradual with the organic order. Streets of tradition period reflect the social, economic and cultural community more important than the physical structure of the city. Whereas, Modern thought shape the Street as geometric and logical, with the specified width and consistent sidewall. The human scale of the Street change and Functional status takes priority. Since the characteristics were considered by Socialist ideas of the Caucasus, therefore sovereignty was introduced into the main street of town that was built Sudden and rapid away from the lives of people. At the time of independence, despite the changing political face of the city, the streets is Caucasian, with its socialist bodies play a central role in the spatial organization of the city. In contrast to the political rhetoric and the status quo of the city's urban management policies implies that the dichotomy facing.

Urban History Review , 2024

Contrary to urban histories of the Caucasus that have tended to take an individual capital city and chart urban development from the Persian imprint and the Russian imperial legacy to the Soviet reconstruction, this article takes a comparative look at three national capitals, Baku, Yerevan, and Tbilisi, in order to argue for their similarities as well as their distinctness. It puts forth that the markers of the “national monumentality” and “capitality” of these three cities were set in place in the period of Russian imperial rule and that the central cores of Yerevan, Baku, and Tbilisi remained relatively unchanged into the Soviet era. This argument stresses that the impact of both the historiography of the Soviet urban revolution and the nationalizing historiography that continues to idolize genius figures like Armenian–Soviet architect Alexandr Tamanyan has led to an under-appreciation of the many imperial traces remaining in the Soviet-era cities. The article proceeds by using the architectural evidence, alongside travel accounts authored by those very familiar with imperial urban settings that describe Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan in some detail in these periods, to shed light on the changing dynamics of these locations (or lack thereof) into the Soviet era. Imperial travelers are supplemented by literary sources, as well as a spotlight on the example of Tamanyan and his centrality to movements like the World of Art group of neoclassicist architects in St. Petersburg. It is argued that it was neoclassicism that united the urban approaches in Baku, Tbilisi, and Yerevan under the Russian and Soviet periods of rule and that this violent rupture from the Persianate past continues to dominate these cities today.