Is there a nuclear urbanism?
ENThis chapter argues that there is a distinct mode of urbanism characterizing the Soviet nuclear industry. Its four co-constitutive features are: first, an embeddedness of nuclear sites into a Cold War planetary infrastructural totality via the risks nuclear technology poses; second, an institutional and normative isomorphism of the network of Soviet nuclear sites via the controlled distribution of a mobile workforce and strategic technologies; third, the particular meanings of comfort and belonging, as well as respective planning practices, crystallized within this network that result in the exclave socio-spatial condition of a Soviet nuclear town; and, fourth, an impossibility of full de-industrialization due to the highly demanding standards that need to be met when dismantling nuclear facilities and due to the necessity of nuclear waste management in a timeframe of hundreds and thousands of years. The empirical setting for the development of this argument is the town of Visaginas in Lithuania, built from 1975 to 1990 to service the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. From 1975 to 1992 the town’s name was Sniečkus (after the Lithuanian communist leader, Antanas Sniečkus); and from 1992 – Visaginas (after the adjacent lake). The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant produced power from 1983 to 2009; and is expected to be fully dismantled by 2038. [p. 18].
- Economic sector performance and growth: contemporary approaches in the context of sustainable development. Intelektinė ekonomika 2013, 7, 3(17), 355-374.
- Economy structure, productivity and economic growth: towards methodological perspective.. Business and management 2014, 8, 528-535.
- Mapping Visaginas: sources of urbanity in a former mono-functional town. Vilnius : Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2016. 141 p. + 1 sulankst. žml.
- Plausible foreign direct investment’ impact on sustainable development indicators of differently developed countries. Journal of security and sustainability issues 2011, 1 (1), 27-38.
- Post-Soviet 'nuclear' towns as multi-scalar infrastructures: relating sovereignty and urbanity through the perspective of Visaginas.. Post-socialist urban infrastructures. London : Routledge, 2019. P. 89-104.
