City-Agglomeration: Production and Representation of Krasnodar’s Spatial Influence Boundaries

The article is based on the materials of the field research conducted in Krasnodar krai in the summer-autumn of 2023, as well as on the analysis of articles and projects devoted to the substantiation of spatial forms and boundaries of Russian urban agglomerations. The Krasnodar urban agglomeration was chosen for several reasons: (a) the intensive growth of the population of Krasnodar, (b) the “transboundary” nature of the urban agglomeration, which includes the territories of two regions of Russia—Krasnodar krai and the Republic of Adygea, separated in the Krasnodar area by a natural boundary—the Kuban River, and (с) the obvious mismatch between the large cells of administrative/municipal management of the territories included in the urban agglomeration and the small-cell structure of the space of everyday life. The authors aim to identify the principles underlying the allocation of Krasnodar’s area of influence, to understand the mechanisms of determining the external and internal boundaries of the urban agglomeration, and the semantics of the graphic images constructed with their help. In the center of attention are maps—a universal tool for fixing and reproducing significant aspects of the surrounding reality. Different types of cartographic products are considered: city plans, administrative maps and territorial development schemes, analytical maps presented in scientific articles and atlases, maps based on remote sensing data, folk and mental maps that project non-spatial relations into space. All maps and images are considered as a product of intellectual activity, a visual representation of knowledge/perceptions of the mapped territory. The authors conclude that the current practice of producing and representing the boundaries of the Krasnodar urban agglomeration, despite scientific justifications and technical calculations, is not so much a representation of the area of Krasnodar’s influence on the surrounding territories to resolve the contradiction between the habit of thinking of urban development in terms of growth and the difficulty of practical implementation of this strategy.

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