Market Reforms and the Central City: Moscow and St. Petersburg

Central Moscow and St Petersburg have undergoing major changes since 1991. Commercialisation is palpable and figures prominently in the local administration's strategies to rebuild the urban economy. Land values are higher in the central city, and this fact of the market economy already impinges upon many of the remaining Soviet-era central city land uses. The populations of both central cities have dropped substantially. Gentrification is on-going, yet there remain substantial numbers of poor, mostly elderly females who subsist in communal apartments. Sample surveys indicate that social stratification was more evident in the late 1990s than earlier in the decade.