ИСТИНА

Abandonment and vacancies in a contemporary city may indicate very different processes – from economic crisis to environmental problems and demographic decline. Growing uncertainty and high speed of global political and economic changes place erosion and perforation of urban fabric among the ‘normal’ phases of in urban development. Disused properties are found in shrinking and growing, large and small cities and rural settlements. Such properties create bad images of a place, increase rates of crime and decline value of the neighbourhoods. At the same time, such places can become opportunities for introducing new urban functions or improvement of urban environment. However, dealing with abandoned buildings and land plots is a big challenge for the local authority when most of such objects are privately owned. Our paper is an attempt to compare the existing legislation and empirical solutions, at different scales, that addresses the issue of abandoned public and private properties in Italy and Russia. In particular, in both countries, the percentage of privately owned real estate is very high although the story behind is contrasting: while in Italy private property was the main feature of urban development during the centuries, in Russia the concept of the private land ownership was totally abolished in the socialist period and re-introduced in 1990 only, which also means different maturity of legislation in this field. A comparative study will help evaluate the meaning and effectiveness of the existing policy and regulations of geographically disparate, but similar in its impact on urban and territorial development phenomenon that is becoming worldwide. We conclude by reflecting on the political implication of legislative and policy experimentation for urban theory and practice.