The city as a territory of inequality: contestation of garage spots demolition in St. Petersburg

The article discusses the opportunities of civic participation for city dwellers in the urban decision making. The theoretical background of the article are L. Thevenot’s pragmatic sociology and S. Arstein’s “ladder of citizen participation”. The empirical base of the study is a series of semistructured interviews with members of garage spots owners in St. Petersburg involved in urban contestation against massive garage demolition. I conclude that the owners of garage spots resort to a large range of instruments of urban space contestation in view of low efficacy oflegal actions. Strong advocacy groups (city authorities and buildings developers) appeal largely to laws, but they employ a variety of other instruments for legitimating their actions as well. As a result, the interaction among urban activists and city authorities occurs on the level of “therapy”, “informing” and “manipulation”, according to Arstein’s terminology.