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

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 borders of Russian urban agglomerations. The Krasnodar urban agglomeration was chosen for several reasons: (a) the intensive growth of the population of Krasnodar, (b) the “cross-border” nature of the urban agglomeration, which includes the territories of two subjects of Russian Federation—Krasnodar krai and the Republic of Adygea, divided in the Krasnodar area by a natural boundary—the Kuban River, and (с) the obvious mismatch between the large cells of administrative/municipal governance 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 delineation of Krasnodar’s area of influence, to understand the mechanisms of determining the external and internal borders of the urban agglomeration, and the semantics of the graphic images constructed with their help. Attention is focused on maps as an 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 Earth 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 Krasnodar urban agglomeration borders, despite scientific justifications and technical calculations, is not so much a representation of the area of Krasnodar’s influence on the surrounding territories as a way 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.