Paper abstract:

The specificity of border urbanization on the eastern borders of Russia consists in the creation of extraterritorial urban spaces that creatively combine a common socialist aesthetic and neoliberal hope for a better life in the region. Cross-border urbanization at Sino-Russian Border is actually called into question by the global epidemiological risk, which has dramatically increased the repressive functions of the border and reduced mobility. This forces us to prepare for the revision of the accepted standards of success and to pay more attention to the price paid by the participants of the cross-border exchange. The sharp increase in the production functions of cross-border cities, reinforced by the imperatives of automatization, practically deprives the previous model of social functions and the possibility of exclusive economic growth. It is possible that the former symbols of success will evolve to a discrete model, where automated closed areas of a smart city will be separated from areas of high social risk. Globalization has closed the circle, economic growth is once again becoming a privilege and cross-border mobility is an achievement not accessible to most residents of border areas. In this perspective, the pandemic forces us to concentrate on the crisis of globalization platforms and threats to their preservation in the same form. The very possibility of subordinating economic life to the economy of expectations with a sharp reduction in the presence of the state as a guarantor of a critical level of social development is called into question. The analytic approach into these border global regions in the time of de-bordering intent to describe what are the specific social and economic features of the specific city-development model? What is the relation of a “border city without border” to ordinary life, gentrification, and commodification of city space? What are the de-territorialization effects of new models of development, and its new form of security protocols? How are the rights of new citizens and labor supported in an epidemic context?