An innovative city in modern culture

Baraboshina Natal'ya Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0003-2312-9571 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor; Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies; Samara State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation 443041, Russia, Samara region, Samara, Korostelev Brothers str., 83, sq. 91 baraboshina@mail.ru

Ilivitskaya Larisa Gennad'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-3339-9946 Doctor of Philosophy Associate Professor; Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies; Samara State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation 443008, Russia, Samara region, Samara, Pobedy str., 99, sq. 123 l.g.ilivitskaya@samsmu.ru

Innovation is a concept whose popularity and active use in modern scientific and non–scientific discourse is difficult to overestimate. In fact, addressing any phenomenon in terms of its advantages or development prospects inevitably leads to a conversation about innovation. This is due to the role they play in modern culture. The focus on innovation is one of the dominant attitudes of modern culture. "For our civilization, change and progress become self-worth. It's like a two–wheeled bicycle, which is stable when it moves, and as soon as it stops, it will fall. Innovation is the main value here" ^{[1, p. 26]}. Innovations today permeate all spheres of human life and culture. They reflect the logic and dynamics of the development of society and culture.

A conversation about such a recently emerged phenomenon and concept as an innovative city can be built based on different research optics. Our focus is on the issues of which city can currently be considered innovative, what requirements should it meet and what difficulties arise in the implementation of its project? The search for answers to these questions in the work will be carried out, on the one hand, based on the interpretation of innovations inherent in cultural discourse, on the other, based on the understanding of the city as a special intentional subject – a phenomenon that arises during communication, dialogue of participants in urban realities ^[2].

At first glance, the above questions may seem very trivial, because in the XXI century. There are already numerous approaches evaluating the city in terms of its innovativeness. As an example, for example, the rating of innovative attractiveness of cities ^[3] or the global innovation index ^[4]. Since 2007, the global ranking of innovative cities in the world, compiled by the international agency "2thinknow" (Australia), has been calculated. This rating evaluates the potential of the city in terms of generating, implementing and broadcasting innovations – indicators of gross regional product (GRP), the development of industrial production, the presence of headquarters of multinational corporations, production clusters, the level of income of citizens, etc. ^[4]. The unifying basis for the above-mentioned examples (and similar ones) is the understanding of an innovative city as a territory of "synergy of scientific research, production and commercialization of scientific developments" ^{[5, p. 52]}. This interpretation stems from the economic view of innovations, which establishes a direct relationship between them and the economic efficiency of society (works by N. D. Kondratiev, G. Tard, J. Schumpeter).

However, if we take into account not the economic, but the cultural approach to innovation, which, by the way, belongs to the historical leadership, then understanding what should be understood by an innovative city does not look so simple. Recall that innovations in cultural discourse pointed (and still point) to changes in culture, acting as an antonym to the concept of "tradition". Moreover, these changes suggest a multi-vector nature of the movement, which does not always lead to a positive result. For example, E. Morin, speaking about the paradigm of innovative complexity, identified three types of possible consequences for the social system:

– unplanned from the very beginning, a "perverted" result;

– a "zero" result, in which innovations do not lead to tangible changes;

– achievements that enhance the state of uncertainty and risks, the implementation of catastrophic scenarios ^{[6, p. 24]}.

It should also be noted that innovations do not always represent a "breakthrough to the new." They often demonstrate only the appearance of innovation as a manifestation of additional potential for the development of the system, as a "rebranding" of the old, as a return to the lost, as an unexpected coincidence of the result with a hidden installation ^{[7, p. 51]}.

But still, a priori, the goal-setting of innovations, on the one hand, is associated with positive trends in the overall development of any phenomenon. According to S.S. Panarin's innovations reflect the desire to "make the world a better place than it is" ^{[8, p. 121]}. On the other hand, innovations are associated with changes that bring at least a novelty factor to the system. The current innovation is conceived within the framework of the "universal science of creative renewal" ^{[9, p. 24]}.

With regard to the city, this interpretation of innovations allows us to talk about the following significant features of it.

Firstly, an innovative city is characterized by a tendency to move forward. As A.N. Pavlenko notes, "the future is that which 'will go on', which only 'goes on'. The future is such a denial of standing, as is the "past"" ^{[10, p. 89]}. Cities should demonstrate sustainable growth in their development. Otherwise, they can be referred to as a "chronological province" (S.S. Averintsev). And this raises the question of the prospects of their existence. Cities have traditionally been (and are) considered engines of global growth, so improving infrastructure, expanding public spaces and communication systems, absorbing the periphery and, in general, megapolization is a steady trend of avoiding aging and decline of urban life.

Secondly, speaking about the innovativeness of the city, it is necessary to pay attention to the category of "opportunities". In the categories proposed by M. Epstein, possibility is defined through the modalities "to be", "to be" and "to know" ^{[11, p. 7]}. It is precisely these modalities that are documented in the city's mission and allow us to assess its innovative prospects. A new understanding of the possibility as a reference to another "existential alternative" (S.S. Khoruzhy) establishes its independent value and the irreducibility of urban life to a simple reality. It correlates with the transition of the city from its present existence to another state that has not yet become. M.K. Mamardashvili, speaking about the fundamental difference between the living and the dead, emphasizes that the living has the ability to be different, while the dead does not have this ability. "To be alive is to be capable of something else" ^{[12, p. 204]}. The city lives, outlining prospects, making plans for the future, thereby continuing itself in time.

Thirdly, there is always a hidden or obvious dissatisfaction with the existing existence of the city behind the need for innovation. S. Khoruzhy calls this state a "fundamental disadvantage", and J. Bataille "an excess of deficiency". The present of the city loses its value and is subject to replacement, transition to another, future state, which is devoid of contradictions inherent in the current moment. In this case, innovation appears as a compressed spring of expectation, which contains the potential for the development of the city, the "unstoppability of ontogenesis" (A.G. Gurvich). It lays down possible transformational expectations, regardless of the probability of positive dynamics. In a sense, an innovative city is always a Utopia. But as O. Wilde correctly noted, "if it [utopia] is absent in the world, it is not worth looking at such a world map, because we will not see the land where Humanity is striving all the time. <...> Progress is the realization of Utopias into reality" ^[13].

The highlighted features are more or less inherent in all types of cities associated with the development process. In particular, we are talking about such concepts similar in content as: "ideal city", "city of the future" and "fast city". It seems that their differentiation is determined by which aspect of the movement process is the leading one: substantive, operational or dynamic ^[14].

The substantive side of the development process focuses on the ideal model, the desired image that needs to be achieved. The "ideal city" and the "city of the future" correspond to it to a greater extent. The dynamic aspect of change implies an assessment of the city based on the rate of transformation. This is due to the division of cities into "fast" (more often they include megacities, capitals) and "slow" (small, provincial cities). The operational aspect of the changes indicates the factors that ensure the effectiveness of the future process. And it is in this case that we are talking, first of all, about the innovative foundations for the further development of the city.

It cannot be said that for an innovative city, the substantive or dynamic sides do not matter. They are certainly assumed, but they fade into the background. So, if we talk about the substantive side of the development process, then in the case of innovative cities, it rather outlines the general vector of movement, since "the loss of the idea and its future result ceases to work" ^{[15, p.42]}. However, the image that is given to her in this case is mobile, unfinished. He often only outlines promising scenarios for possible development. The potential of innovation, first of all, lies in the very idea of the movement, which requires the city to "keep its finger on the pulse", be on trend, embody the evidence of the future in the present.

And here it is quite appropriate to give an example of such models of urban development, which, despite the great terminological variability ^{[16, p. 3]}, are united under the umbrella name of an innovative city ^{[17; 18; 19]}. Depending on the intended transformation strategies, researchers talk about sustainable development cities and cultural cities, inclusive and adaptive cities, smart and creative cities, etc. The presented concepts currently do not have a clear classification, but for most of them, the potential for innovation (linking the progressive development of the city with the innovations implemented in it) acts as a semantic distinguishing feature. Moreover, we are not talking about economic innovations (which does not exclude references to economic characteristics, for example, efficiency, competitiveness). According to these concepts, innovations are considered here as a tool for solving problems in some cases and giving cities "magnetism" in others ^{[17, p. 37]}.

For example, the concept of a "creative city" focuses on the prospects of creativity and self-realization of the individual in the urban space. In this regard, the presence of creative territories (clusters, public places) and creative classes (up to marginal elements) is the basis of this type of city. Charles Landry, one of the creators of the "creative city" model, emphasized that it is thanks to these resources that the innovative image of cities is being constructed, allowing to develop tourist clusters, attract new investments, and provide support to creative people. Thus, creativity, according to Landry, is the most important prerequisite for innovation and the main task of the city is to create, maintain and develop this innovative environment ^{[20, p. 110]}.

Speaking about urban development models, it should be emphasized that most of the proposed innovative schemes do not give a clear idea of the final result of transformations. The criteria of innovativeness are rather controversial and rather point to the need for a continuous creative process of improving urban space. Researchers D.P. Frolov and I.A. Solovyova draw attention to the fact that with this approach it is necessary to abandon "... the illusion of the possibility of choosing one particular model and its full adaptation in any city" ^{[19, p. 166]}. Otherwise, the initial desire to move forward, to change, begins to weaken as it seems to approach the postulated ideal. But, since "falling out of the movement of time" deprives the city of the status of innovation, static, even if the ideal is achieved, seems impossible.

The dynamic aspect of the city's development process also contributes to the interpretation of an innovative city, taking as a basis not only changes, but also the speed of their flow. The innovative city in this version is opposed to the traditional city. It should be noted at once that this confrontation is not determined by evaluation scales, the extreme points of which are the positions "advanced – backward", "successful" – "ineffective". It is also not determined by the significance of the "historical experience": "historical city" or "new model". Other characteristics are important in the difference between traditional and innovative cities. It can be argued that a traditional city capitalizes on its past to a greater extent, while an innovative one capitalizes on its future. The traditional city shows a slow pace of development. It is characterized by the constancy of urban structures and cyclical dynamics, the repeatability of infrastructure solutions and traditional urban practices. The main distinguishing features of an "innovative" city can be considered the creation of a special, "urbanized" highly dynamic lifestyle, within the framework of an ever-updating, changing agenda of transformations.

Highlighting the dynamic aspect in the interpretation of an innovative city creates its own difficulties. On the one hand, they are related to finding answers to questions about the purpose of such changes, the speed and units of change in the results. On the other hand, the very formula underlying the understanding of an innovative city: the higher the rate of change, the more reason to consider the city innovative, does not always lead to the correct result. The dynamics of the life of a megalopolis of a city can be represented as a network interaction of information flows of varying degrees of intensity. But, at the same time, the high speed of changes does not always indicate processality, since the qualitative side of changes is not always understood by their participants, demonstrating a total tendency to global restructuring of all life. A.N. Pavlenko describes this dynamics as the effect of "sliding" on the surface, without qualitative deepening and understanding. At the same time, high temporality creates a situation of lack of "teleprovidness" of the present, which deprives it of fullness ^{[21, pp. 88-89]}.

In addition, the rate of change itself receives a mixed assessment from researchers. So, V.A. Emelin, A.Sh. Thostov notes that "it makes sense to talk about the speed of change not as a unipolar scale, where changes are opposed to comfort, but as a certain continuum, where comfort is inherent only in some middle zone. At one pole of this continuum there is a zone of "stagnation". At the other pole is the world in an era of rapid changes, both creating a sense of excitement, vitality, and passing at extreme points to instability, chaoticness, incomprehensibility, danger" ^{[22, p. 15]}. The presence of cardinal changes in the high-tempo zone can lead to procedural deformation, which is fraught with semantic "breaks", loss of coherence and sequence of the process, which will turn into a "kaleidoscope of torn fragments living a very short life" ^{[22, p. 20]}.

Further discussions about an innovative city require a shift in emphasis from the concept of "innovation" to the concept of "city". As already mentioned above, we proceed from the interpretation of the city, according to which it is thought of as "a space of meaning, a symbolic space in the broadest sense, when a symbol is understood not just as a sign, but something ontological, having a common being with what is symbolized. <...> A city is a place that is always full of meanings, its history, signs and values" ^[23]. On the basis of these meanings, his special image is formed, as an a priori mental construct that is formed in the structures of the life world. And it is precisely the recoding or changing of the meanings of the city that serves as an incentive for the transformation of urban space: understanding new functionality and choosing new priorities that the city will represent. The search and acquisition of relevant meanings by the city acts as a powerful catalyst for innovative development. In other words, it is the meanings that can be considered as factors of urban innovation.

The presence of a wide range of semantic alternatives in the city serves as the basis for its innovative capabilities. The development of the city is an opportunity to choose "other" meanings. Yu.M. Lotman, speaking about St. Petersburg, wrote that it "was conceived as a seaport of Russia, Russian Amsterdam (there was also a stable parallel with Venice). But at the same time, it had to be both a "military capital" and a residence – the state center of the country – and even, as the analysis convinces, a New Rome with the resulting imperial claims" ^{[24, p. 219]}. The struggle of diverse meanings and their testing in practice in the shortest possible time allowed St. Petersburg to acquire that complex socio-cultural "core", the implementation of which, in sharp competition with the "first capital", retains its innovative dynamics to this day.

A small set and immutability of urban meanings, in turn, generates static, immutability, "falling out" of the city from time, stopping its development. The historical and cultural code of such a city turns out to be outside of history, as its sights "are perceived as primordial, eternal, unchangeable representatives (and dominants) of certain territories" ^{[25, p. 18]}. T.Y. Bystrova defines such a state as degradation – "loss of function and meaning for people and the territory in which This object is located due to an underestimation of its value and socio-economic and cultural potential" ^{[25, p. 27]}. The way to overcome degradation is to find and actualize new functions and meanings designed to ensure the emergence of relevant links between the city and man. This process is interpreted as "rehabilitation" ^{[26, p. 28]}.

However, the difficulties of innovative growth, in this case, may lie in pronounced binarity – the attraction to a combination of features that make up absolute semantic opposites; inconsistency – a constant transition from extreme to extreme; utopianism – a craving for absolute values and the associated tendency to global restructuring of all life; affectivity – the predominance of the effect of the significance of mega-events over practical results etc. The transition to the level of management decisions and practices of innovative semantic formation should involve the qualitative completion of the spatial and temporal organization of the city, the identification of strong semantic dominants to be forced, the assessment of the prospects for the formation of a new imagery of the city, etc. This is a difficult task, since it is about discovering the meanings that are inherent in the city as a whole at the present stage of its development, and correlating them with specific local specifics. After all, the semantic multiplicity that makes up a city cannot be created, repeated or reproduced elsewhere. In this regard, cities have a high-quality diversity and uniqueness.

And here another difficulty arises, characteristic of understanding an innovative city in a cultural aspect. We are talking about the localization of meanings that can be taken as samples for the realization of a "different" existence of the city. Turning to the analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of Russian civilization, D.G. Gorin resorts to such methodological tools as the "chronotope of renewal". Justifying it, he argues that the patterns on which Russian culture relied in its development were inherent in both local and foreign cultural characters. In the first case, they showed evidence of its identity, in the second, they pointed to borrowings, which are manifested, most often in Westernization ^{[27, p. 176]}. Extrapolating this approach to the city, we can talk about both global trends in urban development and the uniqueness of each particular city.

Leaving aside global trends in our case, let's focus on the issue of finding samples that allow you to show an extremely important personality for any city. The significance of the latter was very accurately determined by V.L. Glazychev, saying that "the city is itself, i.e. it approaches the ideal exactly as much as it is individual" ^[28]. A unique image, the preservation of a unique atmosphere, ensure the city's existence and the ability to grow. Romashko writes: "Cities don't die when something happens to them, but when their time axis breaks. Cities were rebuilt after fires, earthquakes and floods, revived after ferocious epidemics, experienced enemy invasions, a change of population, religion, and nationality" ^{[29, p. 97]}. The loss of the city's "own face" deprives it of its potential for development.

Interest in the uniqueness of urban space in modern Russian humanities arose at the turn of the XX-XXI century. At this time, a large number of studies appeared, focusing on the specifics of a particular city and its cultural space. The idea that all Russian cities are characterized by common development trends that offset their uniqueness has been replaced by the recognition that any locality has its own specific features. "Local stories create their own imaginative historical, cultural and geographical spaces that are not reducible to the traditional spaces of large regions, countries and civilizations. Such small and often little-known image spaces can be introverted, not deployed to the "big" history and geography, but their serious role is to accumulate, process and deeply interpret local events, as if invisible from afar and from above" ^{[30, p. 547]}.

But it was this situation of the simultaneous existence of the city in the general and local history, in our opinion, that largely determined the situation, according to which many practical urban solutions were largely associated not with the search for their own semantic uniqueness of the city, but with the desire to correspond to one or another "imaginative fashion". For example, at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries. The phenomenon of third capitals was particularly popular. Researchers even identified basic tactics for the formation of this imagery ^[31]. Of course, each city found its own justification for declaring itself a specific capital, but at the same time tried to fit into a popular trend.

Speaking about an innovative city from the point of view of meanings, one should not lose sight of the level of necessary consistency between urban meanings and images. As V.L. Krutkin notes, "only geometrically the space of the city is unified, the cultural space is plentiful, it is understood and experienced in different ways, it forms a contradictory and conflicting environment in which and through which people act" ^{[32, p. 40]}. In other words, the semantic space of the city is not homogeneous. Its vision and significance may differ significantly at the level of specific residents, certain social groups, and urban communities, giving rise to a multiplicity of semantic realities. And this poses the problem of their coexistence and compatibility. As J. Baudriard notes, "each space/time of urban life forms a special ghetto, and they all communicate with each other" ^{[33, p. 157]}. The development of innovative solutions in this case requires taking into account the consistency of semantic constructs along various lines and intersection points. The prospects for the development of urban space depend on this process. In extreme cases, ignoring the issue of the neighborhood of various urban meanings can lead to dissonant relations between them, which can give rise to the "facelessness" of the city, "frustration of perception, feelings of anxiety, danger" ^{[34, p. 56]}, conflict and traumatic situations, behavioral anomalies. After all, as G. Held rightly argues, a city is always a prerequisite for sociality ^{[35, 238]}.

In general, speaking about an innovative city from the standpoint of cultural thought, it can be argued that semantic multiplicity can serve as a basis for determining the most significant directions of development for the city, which are subject to forcing and moving the city forward. At the same time, one should not forget that the imagery of the city, acting as an innovative factor, contains a number of problematic points. The first of them is associated with a possible shift in priorities, the substitution of the process itself as evidence of innovation, the ultimate goal, which can become a condition for static and immaterial. The second is due to the speed of the changes taking place. Its insufficient level will not allow evaluating the city as innovative, too fast generates a conflict between the anthropological and innovative dimensions of the city. The third aspect raises the question of the relationship between innovation and trendiness in urban development. The priority of the latter, in fact, does not allow the city to build its own unique imagery. And the last aspect shows the need for consistency between the various semantic constructs that form a new urban imagery.