Doctoral Dissertation Research: The "Baltic Pearl" in the Window to Europe: St. Petersburg's Chinese Quarter

越来越多的证据表明，俄罗斯正在东西方之间开辟一种新的政治和经济地位，包括与中国和哈萨克斯坦一起加入上海合作组织。俄罗斯第二大城市圣彼得堡就是一个明显的例子，由上海的开发公司出资建设的一个大型商业住宅区预示着新一轮的中国投资浪潮。这项研究的目的是了解这一项目对俄罗斯不断变化的国际地位和当地民众的影响。因此，这项研究将把城市发展项目置于不断发展的中俄投资领域，并探讨其对圣彼得堡居民态度和观点的影响。研究的两个方面都将采用定性方法和利用地理信息系统进行空间分析。该项目的核心是以下问题：1)圣彼得堡的中国区在多大程度上与世界其他大型城市项目相似？2)特定参与者在吸引外资和重新安排城市内部地理方面发挥了什么作用？3)中国区对当地地方感有什么影响？报纸报道、对官员的采访和现场观察将为解决前两个问题提供基础，并将有助于创建彼得堡的“投资地形”地图。通过参与观察、调查、访谈和在地理信息系统中设计的原始地图符号，研究官员、支持发展的居民、持怀疑态度的居民和中国移民的地方感。本研究提供了一种创新的研究方法组合，以研究俄罗斯圣彼得堡发生的多个层面的发展。它将通过审查当地居民和移民对变化的态度，并结合对政策文件的分析和基于新数据的访谈和绘图，为研究其他转型期社会提供有用的研究模式。这项研究通过在现有的地缘政治和经济分析中添加微观层面的数据，扩大了俄罗斯研究领域的知识，并关注了一个重要的中国跨国移民新案例。结果将产生新的信息和概念类别，用于评估俄罗斯当前和未来的发展。中国区的项目暗示了各种各样的趋势，包括圣彼得堡以牺牲与周边地区的经济联系为代价融入“世界城市”体系；通过在市中心附近创建一个“城市巨型项目”直接竞争世界投资；圣彼得堡本身的城市空间感发生了巨大变化；以及移民和对城市发展有不同看法的居民之间出现了潜在的冲突空间。

There is growing evidence that Russia is carving out a new political and economic position between East and West, including its membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with China and Kazakhstan. One striking example comes from Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, where a major commercial-residential district financed by development firms from Shanghai heralds a new wave of Chinese investment. The goal of this research is to understand the implications of this project both for Russia's changing international position and for the local populace. The research will thus situate the urban development project within the evolving Sino-Russian investment arena and explore its impacts on the attitudes and perspectives of St. Petersburg residents. Both aspects of the study will employ qualitative methods and spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS). At the core of the project are the following questions: 1) To what extent does the Chinese quarter in St. Petersburg resemble other urban mega-projects worldwide? 2) What is the role played by specific actors in bringing in foreign capital and rearranging the internal geography of the city? 3) What is the impact of the Chinese quarter on local sense of place? Newspaper reports, interviews with officials, and on-site observation will provide the basis of addressing the first two questions and will facilitate the creation of a map of Petersburg's "terrain of investment." The sense of place of officials, pro-development residents, skeptical residents, and Chinese migrants will be studied through participant observation, surveys, interviews, and original mapping symbols designed in GIS.The proposed research offers an innovative combination of research methods in order to study multiple levels of a development occurring in St. Petersburg, Russia. It will contribute a research model useful for studying other societies in transition by examining attitudes towards change among both local residents and immigrants and by combining analysis of policy documents with interviews and mapping based on new data. The research expands knowledge in the field of Russian studies by adding micro-level data to existing geopolitical and economic analyses, and also looks at a significant new case of Chinese transnational immigration. The results will generate new information and conceptual categories for evaluating Russia's current and future development. The Chinese quarter project suggests a variety of trends, including St. Petersburg's integration into the "world city" system at the expense of economic connections to its surrounding territory; direct competition for world investment by creating an "urban mega-project" near its downtown; a drastically changed sense of urban space for St. Petersburg itself; and the emergence of potential spaces of conflict between migrants and residents with differing views on urban development.