Reflections on Fieldwork in Yakutsk

By Ksenia Mokrushina – SKOLKOVO Center for Urban Studies, Moscow

The coldest city of its size or larger on the planet, Yakutsk is impressively vibrant and rich in cultural and urban life. Over the past 50 years it experienced an explosive population growth of 300% and is still actively attracting people from neighboring regions. Today, the city is home to over 325 thousand people. Situated on continuous permafrost, Yakutsk has a long-standing experience of design and construction in extreme weather conditions. The city is cut off from the rest of Russia: located on the west bank of the Lena with no bridge, so the city is only accessible for its own citizens, visitors and goods by air, ferry or over the frozen river in the dead of Siberian winter. Although not strictly an arctic city, Yakutsk is the capital of the vast Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), 40% of which lies beyond the North Polar Circle (Figure 1). Five mono-settlements are located in the region, including Mirny on the famous Mir diamond mine and the shrinking coal-mining city Neryungri, second largest in the Republic. The population of the once prosperous northernmost port city of Tiksi has shrunk almost threefold after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Almost 0.5 mln of indigenous people live in Yakutia, out of which 93% are Yakuts, whose well-being and position is the region is continuously improving.

Figure 1: Yakutsk under the Midnight Sun

It is the extraordinary nature of large Russian northern cities and their intrinsic relationship with the Artic that brought Brent Ryan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Ksenia Mokrushina of the Center for Urban Studies SKOLKOVO to Yakutsk to begin their research on innovation in urban sustainability policy in arctic cities. Brent and Ksenia studied Yakutsk’s experience in urban planning and design, mass housing maintenance and construction in permafrost conditions, and the context, policies and challenges of Yakutian monocities development. An important task of the mission was to identify sources of policy innovation, evaluate the level of accessibility of quantitative and qualitative data, build partnerships with local organizations and institutes to include them in the PIRE network, as well as research educational outreach efforts later on. They held over 20 meetings with people from the regional government and municipal administration, research institutes and think-tanks, local universities, , representatives of local business and creative industries, and civil society organizations. Among them are the State Commission for the Arctic, Institute for Permafrost Studies, the Center for Strategic Studies, North-Eastern Federal University, Association of Reindeer Herders, etc.

 

Figure 2: Meetings with representatives from Yakutsk

The team has found out that negative effects of climate change are taking their toll on Yakutsk. Thawing permafrost causes visible deformation of buildings, road surfaces and pavement. The city increasingly suffers from the vagaries of the Lena river, which make the ‘northern delivery’ of food and energy supplies completely unpredictable for Yakutsk and the remote settlements in Arctic Yakutia. The economic losses arising from climate change are becoming evident, although not evaluated by the municipality.

Figure 3: Aged Housing Units in Yakutsk

Upgrading of dilapidated housing stock and ensuring systemic deployment of affordable, energy efficient, solutions in new construction, energy, heating and other municipal services poses a significant urban sustainability challenge for the city. Yakutsk is one of the few large Russian cities that is still struggling to solve the problem of urban slums with absent or poorly functioning heating, water, waste management systems, as well as inadequate transport, food and services access. There are still a lot of run-down wooden barracks built back in 1950-60s as temporary housing for builders of ‘khruschevki’. They are being slowly replaced with new mass housing projects of questionable quality and a lot of people are still trapped there waiting for private developers or the municipal government to relocate them within the framework of federal dilapidated housing relocation program. Effective institutional engagement mechanisms to ensure faster and better quality renovations are clearly missing. Without municipal services and housing policy change the city is unlikely to break the vicious circle of local budget deficits and excessive dependence on federal donations and centralized decision-making.

 

The city is tackling the challenge of unwelcoming public spaces, streetscapes exacerbated by ubiquitous empty spaces of the khruschevka mass housing design pattern, the sight of worn-out external piping, frightening vacuums in-between stilts under houses, lack of trees and greenery. Local design and architecture companies encouraged by the chief architect of Yakutsk and supported by experts from around Russia including the successful local IT company SINET volunteer to develop design projects for abandoned places, disused park territories and canal embankments. A number of these projects will be financed and implemented as part of the federal government driven program “5 Steps towards a more сomfortable city” that is criticized for a standard beautification approach to local urban design problems in Russian cities.

 

The same urban beautification program is implemented in monotowns and settlements around Yakutia following federal policy requirements. Planning and realization is hindered though by the lack of local capacity and understanding of the need for better urban environment. The Fund for Monocities Development has been recently established to coordinate federally driven local economy diversification programs, including the establishment of ‘zones of intensified development’ offering advantageous conditions for doing business and investing in monotowns,. Whether the new federal monocity development program will bear fruit, remains to be seen. What’s obvious, however, is that there is not enough locally driven strategic planning and policy innovation, community engagement and proactive approaches to local problem solving.

 

The team was lucky to visit a village 130 km away from the capital, which gave them a unique opportunity to see the other side of the urbanization challenge in Yakutsk. The village is struggling to retain its younger residents, develop local eco-tourist and farming businesses. However their entrepreneurial spirit is still dominated by the habit of relying on support and directions from the government.

 

Yakutians see the preservation of their unique local arts, culture, and spirit as the key prerequisite of sustainable development. Indeed, Yakutsk boasts a large number of theaters, museums and art galleries that are well-known in Russia; and the Yakutian film industry has established itself globally. The development of local creative industry is one of city’s strategic goals. Almazergienbank, the largest bank in Yakutia, has made the creative cluster project one of its strategic investments and is actively promoting the themes o around the Republic in cooperation with Calvert 22. The State Arctic Institute for Arts and Culture was established in 2000 with the aim to preserve and develop local cultural heritage. Aysen Nikolaev, the Mayor of Yakutsk, believes creative industries will be the main driver of the city’s economic development.

 

Everything seems to be taken to the limit in Yakutia: from the seasonal temperature differences of over 100°C to the warmth and hospitality of the northern people. This calls for unconventional, locally sensitized approaches to urban sustainability. Thorough research into sources, drivers and prerequisites for locally grown creative potential is required to make arguments and give recommendations regarding the needed policy action.

 

Figure 3: Workshop with Local Representatives

Arctic PIRE Students Prepare for Siberian Fieldcourse

International Arctic Field Course on Permafrost and Northern Studies

Blog 1 – Carlson Giddings

On July 3rd, 2017, five professors and 20 students from the US, Russia, and European Union countries will gather in Moscow to begin a month-long field course on permafrost and northern studies. This field course presents a unique opportunity for an international study of how natural and technogenic landscapes in Arctic cities are impacted by climate change and permafrost conditions. For this study, the team of students and professors will study the impacts of permafrost thaw on two Siberian cities, Salekhard and Vorkuta.

Salekhard, a portion of which reaching across the Arctic Circle, is the capital of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Russian high north. Meanwhile, Vorkuta, a subarctic municipality, is considered part of the Komi Republic. In an article by The Siberian Times, Salekhard was described as a “new economic frontier,” given its close proximity to oil and gas fields and the municipality’s commitment to industrial and infrastructural development. The population of Salekhard has grown rapidly in light of these conditions with migrants driven by higher wages and increasing social and cultural opportunities for their families. As of the 2010 census, the population of Salekhard was 42,544.

Photo from The Siberian Times

While Salekhard is known for its industrial oil and gas extraction, Vorkuta is known for its industrial coal extraction. Vorkuta’s coal mining industry originally employed Gualag prisoners during when during the early to mid-1900s it served as an administrative center for smaller groups of municipalities with labor camps and coal mines. As one of Soviet Siberia’s largest labor camp and coal mining operations, today Vorkuta exists as a historical monument of that window of Russia’s history.

With the field course quickly approaching, several curiosities come to mind. Firstly, given that climate change has induced geotechnical and infrastructural construction challenges in most high north cities, how have settlements like Salekhard and Vorkuta adapted practices of urban architecture and design to accommodate for these challenges? Secondly, as a global rise in the appeal of adventure tourism becomes increasingly apparent, how has this rise impacted Salekhard and Vorkuta? Are these cities planning for an increase in tourism? If so, in what ways? Finally, what opportunities exist for university-age students in Salekhard and Vorkuta to study permafrost or climate change? What kinds of jobs do degrees in these fields lead to?

Overall, Arctic PIRE’s geography and northern studies field course in Siberia presents a unique opportunity for an international group of students, research assistants, and professors to engage with Arctic science in live time and be able to draw conclusions about what sustainability means and how it can be measured in an urban Arctic setting.

Aaron Doering – Educator and Adventurer Visits Arctic PIRE

The Man Who Does it All

Aaron Doering is an educator, explorer, and software engineer of unique quality.  To put him into context one has to consider the life of earlier high profile explorers, Jaque Cousteau, or Ernest Shackleton, for example.  Transport Shackelton to a modern era, and offer him the opportunity to share his explorations with the public via social media and it puts Doering’s work into perspective.   Follow Doering’s body of work and one quickly becomes entangled in his narrative as he studies and advocates for people who too often go unheard, their stories, and the stories of a rapidly changing planet.  

University of Minnesota (2017) describes Dr. Doering’s academic research as focused on the pedagogy he pioneered, adventure-learning (AL), which is an integrative approach to teaching geography, environmental science, cultural competency, and digital storytelling.  He defines adventure learning as a “hybrid online educational environment that provides students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences within collaborative online learning environments” (Doering, 2006a, p. 200).  Doering’s (2006) article discussed the ways in which teachers utilized an interactive online experience, Arctic Transect 2004: An Educational Exploration of Nunavut.  The program was designed to to engage students in the fields of geography and environmental education through real-time interactions with Doering as he traveled on a 3,000 mile dog-sled expedition across Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic (Doering, 2006).  While AL uses the expedition, with its thrilling sense of adventure as a catalyst for students engagement, the AL curricula plays out as problem-based learning centered around an question that needs to be solved by interacting with the AL online environment. Students interact with their peers, experts, and teachers, to solve the problems that are driving the curriculum modules (Doering, 2006).

As a full professor at the University of Minnesota, Doering is the director of their Learning Technologies Media Lab (LTML) where he teaches his students to design online learning environments (UMN, 2017).  Doering himself has created more than 15 online learning environments that have reached over 15 million learners worldwide.  In the years following his professorship at University of Minnesota, Doering was nothing short of prolific, publishing over 15 research papers from the years 2002 to 2008.  

More recently Doering began collaborating with National Geographic to develop another  online learning program, “GeoThentic”.  Doering, Veletsianos, Scharber, and Miller (2009) describe GeoThentic as a technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge framework (TPACK) that places students in the role of a geographer, working toward solving a geographic problem.  It employs a scaffolded program, developed from his earlier research, wherein educators choose the level of scaffolding appropriate for their students. Geothentic software creates opportunities for students to solve authentic complex problems within an online environment, while concurrently providing teachers with the necessary TPACK foundation necessary for teaching modules available within the digital learning environment (Doering, 2017, February 23).    

Additionally, teachers or students visiting Doering’s website chasingseals.com will find WeExplore, a platform where individuals plan and share their own personal expeditions in nature, Raptor Lab, another online learning environment where students engage in scientific investigations by role-playing various scientific careers involved in wildlife rehabilitation.   Earth Explorers, and the Changing Earth, are both programs where Doering and his team travel to communities around the globe and engage with local communities as members of those communities describe the ways climate change is impacting their lives.  

In researching Aaron Doering, I am humbled by the breadth of his work, the scope of his projects, and the grandness through which they are implemented.  Here is a man, who while teaching in a classroom, believed there was a better way to reach students.  Over the past 15 years, Doering has brought that belief into being.  But more importantly, Doering is motivating students to become responsible citizens of the planet earth.  Furthermore, he makes room for those who are most often silenced to be heard, to become empowered and to support each other through digital medium.  As a researcher, I am passionate about deepening student’s ecological literacy and sense of engagement around environmental issues.  Additionally, I firmly believe that today’s children will be tasked with addressing environmental issues on a scale humans have never encountered.  Educators and educational communities must dedicate significant mental and physical resources to develop programs of study that instill in today’s children the cognitive and cultural capabilities for mitigating the effects of climate change through creative, innovative design and planning.   Doering, by engaging students and motivating them to learn about both technology and Earth, is doing the hard work of preparing the future so that they may solve problems where we have failed.

The Importance of Public Transportation for Sustainability in Arctic Cities

 

Public transportation is an important contributing factor to urban sustainability. Effective transportation networks that incorporate public transit help lower a city’s per capita carbon footprint, and make cities more livable by easing commute and transportation needs and increasing accessibility. But the mere presence of public transportation—the number of buses, trains, trolleys, and trams available—does not paint a complete picture. The Sustainable Cities Institute names five principles of sustainability for municipal transportation: accessibility; affordability; connectivity; holistic transportation and land use planning; and planning with the environment in mind.

 

Holistic transportation, land use planning, and planning with the environment in mind means that transportation systems include many elements including streets, sidewalks or pedestrian networks, transit, bicycle routes, plus private and public fleets. Those elements interface effectively with both the physical geography and commercial and residential development, and account for other environmental factors such as seasonal trends and extreme weather.

 

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a development approach that focuses on land use around a transit hub or within a transit corridor. The Sustainable Cities Institute describes TOD as characterized by mixed use land, moderate to high density, pedestrian-oriented, reduced parking, and multiple transportation choices. The definition may be relatively new, but the fundamental idea of development built around transportation is ancient. Cities have always sprung up alongside rivers not only for the water source for personal and commercial consumption, but especially as modes of transportation for people and cargo, facilitating trade. The oldest known human civilization, Mesopotamia, developed in a river valley, along with settlements along the Nile, the Indus, and the Yellow Rivers. In the U.S., historically industrial cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati, Ohio, are clustered around rivers.

 

Though an ancient idea, TOD responds to modern calls for sustainable urban development in response to climate change, increased urbanization and demand for walkable cities, rising energy prices, and increased road congestion with increasing urban density. TOD can address some of the environmental, social, and economic challenges in implementing sustainable transportation networks including fuel sources including fossil fuels and resultant greenhouse gas emissions, and renewable energy; funding challenges; commuting costs; and human health.

Anchorage City Bus “People Mover” (photo credit: Mel Green)

In May 2017, Arctic PIRE researchers travelled to Anchorage, AK, where many civic and community leaders expressed that one significant sustainability challenge that the city faces is a poor relationship between the physical layout of the city and the transit network. The city is low density, sprawled over quite a large area, and was not developed around a transit corridor, nor has the transit network been adequately developed to connect the city. This has resulted in reliance on personal automobiles, low ridership on city buses, and poor accessibility for those who rely entirely on public transportation. The bus system was also not particularly accessible to tourists- as visitors, the system seemed labyrinthine and service was too infrequent to be functional for our needs. Forthcoming changes to the system (planned for October 2017) promise a more sustainable transit system with streamlined service, bus stops in closer proximity to people and jobs, and increased frequency of routes particularly during weekday commutes.

 

Some cities in Sweden’s Arctic demonstrate more sustainable transportation systems. At a national level, Sweden has committed to a fossil-fuel independent public bus fleet by 2030, already resulting in a 43% decrease in public bus emissions between 2007 and 2014 (Xylia and Semida 2017). These gains have been more pronounced in southern counties, while in the northernmost counties of Norrbotten and Västerbotten, buses still rely overwhelmingly on fossil fuels. At a municipal level, both Umeå (in Västerbotten) and Luleå (in Norrbotten) are making strides towards decreasing their bus emissions. Umeå has recently begun transitioning their bus fleet to battery-powered buses, a move that has been a proof-of-concept of the suitability of battery-powered vehicles for cold environments. Luleå’s intent to limit the environmental impact of transportation in spite of continued growth, part of its aspirational sustainable development plan “Vision 2050,” is illustrated in the growing fleet of biogas buses.

Luleå city bus, with real time information posted at bus stop

In addition to high efficiency vehicles, alternative fuel, and TOD, Luleå is also building its sustainable transportation network through demand management, traffic calming, and connectivity between multiple forms of transportation. Systems that use real-time data to provide information for planners on ridership and help manage demand while also providing riders accurate information on bus timetables, routes, and arrival times. Restricted access for vehicles in the city center, designated lanes for bikes and buses, and narrowed city streets act as traffic calming measures keeping the city center pleasant and accessible for workers and residents. The transit hub in the city center is a stop on nearly all local bus routes, and is immediately adjacent to the pedestrian and bicycle thoroughfare. Bicycle parking is plentiful near bus stops, city buses are equipped with bike racks, and regional buses allow bicycles as cargo. A central bus station serves both local and regional buses and is located across the street from the train station, thus providing seamless connectivity for those traveling to and from areas outside the city. These connections, along with a city that has protected pedestrian and bicycle networks, means that individuals can travel easily using a combination of walking, biking, buses, and trains.

 

Urban transportations that increase affordability, accessibility, and connectivity, while incorporating good land use planning and environmental considerations significantly contribute to urban sustainability. As Arctic cities grapple with increasing urbanization, migration, climate change, and economic challenges, sustainable transportation systems can decrease environmental impact while increasing social and economic sustainability.

 

 

Resources

Beim, Michal, and Martin Haag. 2011. Public Transport as a Key Factor of Urban Sustainability: A Case Study of Freiburg. Badania Fizjograficzne. R. II—Seria D—Gosrodarka Przestrzennia. January: 7-20.
Buzási, Attila, and Má Csete. 2015. Sustainability indicators in assessing urban transport systems. Periodica Polytechnica.Transportation Engineering 43, (3): 138-145.
Kennedy, Christopher, Eric Miller, Amer Shalaby, Heather Maclean, and Jesse Coleman. 2005. The Four Pillars of Sustainable Urban Transportation. Transport Reviews 25 (4): 393-414.
National League of Cities: Sustainable Cities Institute http://www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org/topics/transportation
Nilsen, Thomas. 2017. Umeå paves the way for green electric bus revolution. The Independent Barents Observer. June 13. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2017/06/umea-paves-way-green-electric-bus-revolution
Xylia, Maria, and Semida Silveira. 2017. On the road to fossil-free public transport: The case of Swedish bus fleets. Energy Policy 100 (January): 397-412.

The Ninth Congress of International Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS-IX)

Nearly 800 Arctic researchers representing dozens of countries and indigenous groups traveled to Umeå, Sweden, this week for the ninth meeting of the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS-IX). The conference, put on by the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), included nearly 200 sessions, with three to five researchers presenting at each session. Topics ranged from Arctic security to environmental management policies to youth development to indigenous adaptations to climate change. The presenters included anthropologists, geographers, pathologists, historians, sociologists and others.

Many members of the Arctic PIRE team attended the conference and several presented their recent research.

 

Matt Berman presented his research on the “effects of resource development, sovereign wealth funds, and land claims settlements on poverty reduction in rural Alaska,” which demonstrates the significant impact of Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend distributions on poverty, and cautioned that the impact of diverting these funds to pay for state government operations will significantly increase poverty rates in rural Alaska.

 

Aileen Asperon Espiritu presented “Strategies of sustainability: long-term urban planning strategies in an Arctic city,” comparing planning strategies towards social and economic sustainability in three Arctic cities: Luleå, Sweden; Tromsø, Norway; and Rovaniemi, Finland.

 

Vera Kuklina presented her research on “The rhythms of trains and work along the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM)” exploring the power of railroad rhythms on workers, families, and small businesses along the BAM, based on field work completed in Ust’-Kut, Severobaikalsk and Tynda in 2016.

 

Bob Orttung and Carrie Schaffner presented the preliminary work on the Arctic Urban Sustainability Index, including the parameters for defining and identifying Arctic cities, the draft indicators for measuring urban sustainability in the Arctic, and preliminary data on a representative sample of twelve Arctic cities.

 

Andrey Petrov chaired sessions on the current research on extractive industries and sustainability, and Arctic sustainabilities in the Anthropocene. Andrey was also elected as the new president of IASSA beginning in September of this year. Congratulations, Andrey!

 

Jim Powell’s presentation entitled, “Adaptive Governance: A comparison between two Alaskan and two Swedish Municipalities facing climate change,” highlighted the results of in-depth surveys that were conducted as part of a study that compares and contrasts adaptive approaches to governance in two municipalities in Alaska and two municipalities in Sweden.

 

Luis Suter’s presentation, “Tundra to Table: Vertical Farming and Food Security in the Arctic” examined the use of indoor farming in Alaska and other Arctic regions as a way to offset the high cost of shipping food and increase local food security. Luis explored some of the challenges and opportunities for this relatively new form of Arctic agriculture.

 

Nadezda Zamyatina shared her research on the idea of “remoteness” in Arctic cities, as a factor of Arctic cities’ development and mobility processes. Nadezda presented several theoretical points of view on remoteness, as well as possibilities for overcoming the challenge of remoteness through mobility, flexibility, and creativity.

 

Bob Orttung presenting the Arctic urban sustainability indicators during a session on sustainable cities