DOMUM
architectural
company
Sociological survey of residents in Toropets
Карта Торопца
Проведение соц опроса
Toropets City Preservation Project, together withToropetsk Historical Society
Tver region, 2013
On July 28, City Day took place in Toropets. By this date, participantsTIO developed and printed a tourist map with the designation of all the architectural and historical monuments of the city. The card was handed out to residents and guests on the day of the holiday, in exchange for which people were happy to participate in a small sociological survey.
The purpose of the survey:
- find out the attitude of residents to their city, analyze the difference in the perception of the city by the natives and those who have moved to the city recently.
- highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the city in the opinion of people, the vision of the future of Toropets
- to determine the level of knowledge of the history and culture of the city among residents
- collect a picture of the image of the city
One of the hypotheses was the assumption that indifference to the fate of the cultural heritage and history of the city is manifested mainly by that part of the modern inhabitants of Toropets who are visitors from other cities and nearby villages and who are not familiar with the culture of the city.
The questionnaire consisted of 11 questions, the answers to which were given by 52 people, mostly aged 20 to 40 years, men and women in a ratio of 50%:50%
The respondents were people of different professions, 4 people are retired, 6 are not working.
When asked about the ratio of natives and visitors, the authors of the study received the following answer: 58% of the respondents turned out to be natives, 41% of the respondents were newcomers, 3 people did not answer this question. It is impossible to judge the full picture from a survey of several people, but nevertheless this allows us to present an approximate ratio of visitors and indigenous citizens on a city scale.
Conclusion: migrants in the city are slightly less than half of the population.
The active process of migration is also evidenced by Scheme of the main migration flows of the Tver region: the balance of external migration for 2002, people (on the website of the NISP) http://atlas.socpol.ru/portraits/
tver.shtml
The next set of questions was directed to clarification of the purpose of moving people to Toropets. We wanted to understand what formed the basis of the move - a voluntary choice or forced circumstances, and whether any attractive individual characteristic of the social or physical environment of the city served as the motivation for the move. As a result, 3 people replied that the reason for the move was the circumstances 5 people – moved for work and for work, 5 person - for family reasons, and 8 the people answered that the move is connected precisely with the desire to live in the city of Toropets.
At the same time, they would like to change their place of residence: from visitors - & nbsp;3 a person from the locals - 8 man. And most of the 41respondent - do not want to leave the city.
It can be concluded that the majority of respondents are young able-bodied population under 40 years old (about 70% of respondents), most of which (79%) do not want to leave Toropets.
To the questions about what you like and dislike in the city, we analyzed the answers and highlighted the most frequently used words. It is significant that there are much more comments on the question of what “does not like”. When asked about what they like, the factors that are not related to the urban space, the urban lifestyle and the culture of the city are in the first place. The most used are natural benefits, the positive qualities of the territory and its physical characteristics, and not the characteristics of the internal structure of the city. There are optimistic statements that like “everything is my favorite city” and “everything is fine”!
However, the characteristics of the SOCIAL urban environment associated with social deprivation or affluence, conditions and living standards are often mentioned among single, non-repeated answers. So, from positive reviews, these are: "goodwill" of the city, "people", "security", "communication", "aura". Of particular note is the only surprising comment on the development of the social sphere - "there is no unemployment."
It is significant that among the dissatisfaction in the third place in terms of frequency of statements is "Administration", as well as comments related to the decline of social infrastructure ("high prices", "standard of living", "no shops", "the school was closed", "the infrastructure is not developed”, “no job”, “no housing”, etc.)
There are many phrases describing the material urban environment - both positive (“churches”, “sights”, “cleanliness”, “color”, “streets”, “square”, “an old beautiful city”), and negative (“garbage” , "dirt", "roads", "emergency houses", "lack of infrastructure").
A positive quality is the characteristic related to the size and density of the city - "small", "small population" and "few cars".
The next question was aimed at identifying the "public" image of the city - a picture that belongs to many residents. The researcher K.Lynch calls them “zones of agreement that arise in the interaction of a common material reality, a common culture and a basic physiological community”. Despite the fact that individual images differ from each other, they always contain a certain core, which makes it possible to compose a generalized image.
In this case, the majority of respondents first of all recall the nature and recreational properties of the territory. A little less often - temples and the history of the city. Again, the most often mentioned qualities seem to be opposed to urban life, as they gravitate more towards describing the countryside landscape.
The following 3 questions, also related to the image of the city, were intended not only to obtain information from the respondents, but also to make residents think about the history of the city and its resources, to think about the current state and future of the city.
The last question about the monument (the plane that stands at the entrance to the city is its “face”, but it has nothing to do with the historically important events of the city) is aimed at finding out the degree of readiness of residents to change something in their hometown. ;
1. It can be concluded that almost all respondents understand that the urban infrastructure is in decline, that there is a demographic crisis, and the current state of the physical urban environment can be described as critical, and the standard of living is low. But at the same time, most of the respondents admit that they love their city and are not going to leave it.
2. It is interesting that most of the positive emotions associated with Toropets are mainly related to the extra-urban space - the nature surrounding the city. In addition, all the positive characteristics that residents see in the city lie in the plane of its past - the history of the city and the surviving heritage. However, most people associate these values with the future of Toropets as a resource for the development of the city and for attracting tourists.