On the Problem of Understanding the Cultural Status of the City

The study of aspects of the formation of cultural status in the modern social context allows us to get closer to understanding the key features of culture, its new meanings, symbols and spiritual and value potential. If in a traditional and industrial society the cultural status was set, prescribed, conditioned by the prevailing picture of the world and acted as one of the guarantors of social stability by maintaining a social hierarchy, in modern social space the specificity of cultural status is determined by the nature of activity, is a consequence of the chosen position and can be constructed depending on the goals of individual social actors and the needs of society as a whole. The general civilizational process of globalization has its systemic effect of glocalization – the strengthening of local entities, their acquisition of a subjective status, awareness of the importance of their role and functions as part of the whole. In the context of modern social transformation, the city remains a unique space that supports a person and determines the direction of his development. This is largely due to the cultural potential of the city – the ability to accumulate values important for life, different for each historical period. These values constitute the cultural capital that determines the status of the city – its ability to influence the organization of socio-cultural reality. The methodological potential of the chronotopic approach made it possible to describe the retrospective of the formation of the city as a socio-cultural phenomenon, to reveal the features of the development of a modern city associated with the active participation of citizens in the formation of the urban environment. The organization of urban space (the development of infrastructure, transport, the creation of recreational areas that meet the needs of the population, the introduction of technical and technological achievements with respect to historical and cultural heritage) can become a "soft power" of management, create resources and meaningful life guidelines for a person in an increasingly risky world. The modern city is designed to provide security, material well-being, comfortable living, effective development, which is impossible without actualization of cultural potential. All this becomes possible with the co-participation of the administrative elite and the urban population. Clarifying the mechanisms of cultural status formation is important for understanding the possibilities of optimization in today's dynamically developing world.