winter city

Abstract

When great and mighty winter stirs
And, like a chieftain wrapped in furs,
Upon us sends its shaggy soldiers
Of biting frost and stinging snow
It’s met with fire’s crackling smolder,
And wintry warmth of feasts aglow.
A. S. Pushkin, A Feast in Time of Plague.

Translated by M. E. Yankelevich

Traditionally, WINTER seems dangerous and hostile to people who live at high latitudes. Indeed, snow, frost and little daylight seem to be a heavy obstacle for a beautiful and easy life. Not for nothing do three-fourth of the humankind live in the tropics.
However, a deeper insight into the phenomenon of winter and winter cities makes us believe that winter can bring a lot of opportunities and advantages. This issue is particularly important for Russia, even strategically important. Not only because General Frost often helped the country in times of military danger.

Irkutsk citizens decided to find out what benefits they can get from WINTER. The Irkutsk National Research Technical University hosted a conference devoted to “Attractiveness and Economy of a Winter City”. The rector of the Technical University, Mikhail Kornyakov and the moderator of the conference, Sergey Mayarenkov invited the participants to search for the ways of life “in harmony with winter”. We are launching this theme on the pages of our journal to begin to accumulate concrete examples of how the presence of “winter factors” brings specific features to the people’s way of life, to the development of cities, to architecture and public spaces; and to collect ideas and technologies for the improvement of cities in severe climate conditions.