From 20–22 July 2026, the Cities.Building.Culture project participated in the RC21 Conference on Urban and Regional Development, “Inequalities and the City: Old Issues, New Challenges”, hosted by the University of Vienna, Austria. As a major international forum for urban and regional research, RC21 brought together around 1,200 participants from 96 countries across more than 120 sessions. Alongside academic panels and round tables, the programme included keynote lectures, book discussions, networking events, and thematic urban excursions across Vienna.

As part of the conference, Albina Davletshina presented research conducted jointly with Elena Batunova within the Cities.Building.Culture project. The presentation, “Reconfiguring Responsibility after Mass Privatisation”, compared housing governance in three post-socialist cities: Narva, Daugavpils, and Gyumri, and examined how responsibilities for the management and long-term development of multi-apartment housing have been reorganised following mass privatisation.

The presentation explored a central paradox of post-socialist housing transformation: while ownership was transferred extensively to individual residents, responsibility for collectively owned buildings did not necessarily become equally clear or actionable. Comparing different institutional arrangements across the three cities highlighted how responsibility, authority, and capacity are distributed among homeowners, management organisations, municipalities, the state, and other actors.

The discussion at RC21 provided valuable feedback for further developing this comparative research and helped position the Cities.Building.Culture project within broader international debates on housing governance, institutional transformation, and urban inequality.