The attractiveness of the city of Barnaul in the assessments of students

Akhmedova Angelina Rustamovna Assistant, Department of General Sociology and Conflictology, Altai State University 656049, Russia, Altai Territory, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, room 520 axmedovaangelina@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Zheldakova Arina Vladimirovna Student, Department of Sociology and Conflictology, Altai State University 656049, Russia, Altai region, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, room 520 arina.zheldakova@gmail.com Other publications by this author     Kolegaeva Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Student; Department of Sociology and Conflictology; Altai State University 66 Dimitrova str., Barnaul, Altai Territory, 656011, Russia kolegaeva2020@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Maslov Vladislav Sergeevich Graduate student; Institute of Humanities; Altai State University 656011, Russia, Altai Territory, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, room 520 agutsyarutsrfao@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Perin Sergei Aleksandrovich Graduate student; Institute of Humanities; Altai State University 656011, Russia, Altai Territory, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, room 520 Ssaynirov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Klimova Anastasiya Alekseevna Student; Institute of Humanities; Altai State University 656011, Russia, Altai Territory, Barnaul, Dimitrova str., 66, room 520 nastysha.klimova.2000@list.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction. Today, the phenomenon of social attractiveness is becoming more and more significant, as individuals begin to form a certain social rating in the system of any interactions, which affects their choice of moving, shopping, etc. The more attractive one or another object of reality is from the position of a certain social group, the more desirable, necessary and important it will be for representatives of this very social group.

For students, the assessment of attractiveness, as a rule, is of particular importance, since many medium-sized cities during the academic year are literally filled with students seeking to get an education or to gain a solid foothold and develop in this area.

The city of Barnaul is the capital of the Altai Territory, thereby attracting students for higher education from all over the region. Assessing the degree of its attractiveness will help to understand how many university graduates will remain in the city and identify the main problems that need to be solved. The study of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul in the assessments of representatives of student youth will reveal the key problems, strengths and weaknesses of the economy and infrastructure of the capital of the Altai Territory, which is important for its further development. It is important to note that modern student youth has a whole set of socio-psychological characteristics that suggest the presence of fundamental differences between representatives of student youth in other spheres of society. In particular, generational characteristics determine the presence of qualitatively different demands on the environment, social institutions, the state, and the city of residence. Socially, representatives of the student youth are the labor reserve, and also constitute a stratum of intellectuals in society in the short and medium term. All this ultimately affects the assessment of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul by representatives of student youth.

The degree of scientific elaboration of the problem. The degree of scientific development of social attractiveness is quite high. The theoretical basis of the presented research was the works of such scientists as Yu.E. Razumovsky, E.Ya. Nechipurenko, A.K. Naumenko, E.A. Anisimova, Sh.D. Achilov, A.N. Boikova, D.Ya. Guseva, etc.

The phenomenon of attractiveness is considered by many disciplines, in particular, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and other sciences.

The psychological phenomenon of attractiveness is based on the totality of an individual's ideas about what to consider remarkable and interesting for himself, the philosophical approach to the study of attractiveness is based on considering attractiveness as a thing in itself, without reliance on the outside world. That is, attractiveness is considered as an ephemeral category, one way or another related to the assessments of the cognizing subject. From the point of view of the philosophical approach, attractiveness in any case is associated with an estimated load, because without an assessment it is impossible to determine the presence or absence of the phenomenon of attractiveness. From an anthropological point of view, attractiveness is considered as one of the facets of human existence, as well as one of the categories of forming a person's attitude to the world. In fact, what a person finds attractive becomes positive and approved for him, and vice versa ^[1].

The sociological approach differs in that attractiveness is considered as an assessment of an object of reality in the context of a set of phenomenological interactions of an individual. The object must be part of the social reality so that the individual can appreciate its attractiveness. According to Guy Debord's theory of the "Society of the Spectacle", the category of attractiveness is formed not only based on the totality of those objects that an individual can directly touch, but also from those that he saw in the virtual world, forming a certain attitude towards it. If earlier society evaluated only what it saw with its own eyes, now it is enough to see a certain program on television to form some kind of critical assessment of what is happening as a whole ^[2].

There are few sociological works on the phenomenon of attractiveness, since this topic is more often considered from the point of view of psychology. Nevertheless, some sociologists have indirectly touched upon this phenomenon. From the point of view of structural functionalism, social attractiveness is a set of features of a particular fragment of reality that performs a set of functions ^[3]. The more conditionally useful functions one or another fragment of reality performs, the more attractive it is considered to be for an individual. In total, two components can be identified in the phenomenon of attractiveness, namely the objective component, this is how the object of attractiveness looks by itself, without any evaluative categories, and the subjective component, namely, evaluating a thing through the prism of a set of judgments of other individuals ^[4]. Of course, it is difficult to determine the objective components of attractiveness due to subjectivity, but there are socio-cultural, philosophical and psychological determinants that form the essence of the phenomenon of social attractiveness. The philosophical component allows us to consider the thing in itself as a category of an objective component, and the psychological component allows us to characterize the subjective nature of this phenomenon.

In his writings, V.R. Kosmachev notes that social representation is a set of beliefs, judgments and explanations that emerge from the phenomenological practices of an individual's life ^[5]. The phenomenon becomes socially attractive when two key conditions are met. First, it must be understandable to the individual and unambiguously interpreted ^[6]. Secondly, the social phenomenon must be known to significant others and discussed by significant others. If the reference group has no interest in this fragment of reality, it is likely that the individual himself will lose interest in this fragment of reality, and he will not consider it socially attractive ^[7].

P.L. Berger examines the mechanism of the emergence of social attractiveness, which consists in the fact that an individual within his social field finds objects of reality that arouse sympathy. These elements form his ideal and desired idea of the surrounding reality, which ultimately allows him to describe the existing ideal picture objectively, in accordance with the views of the individual. As a rule, representatives of one social group identify similar components of a reference city or other social construct, which helps to identify an individual's belonging to a particular social group. Despite some subjectivism of this mechanism, it is effective from the point of view of the theory of constructing social reality, but still not universal enough, so it has not been widely used in practice ^[8].

When considering the phenomenon of social attractiveness from the point of view of structural functionalism, it is important to note that attractiveness is based on the presence of a core - an entity that a person pays attention to when evaluating key parameters of an object and periphery. The periphery influences the dynamics of attractiveness and helps to differentiate objects of a similar category. The core includes collective experience and values that allow an individual to differentiate an object of social reality into attractive and unattractive, and the periphery allows you to adapt attractive things to the world of everyday life. Moreover, it is not necessary that these things will have an exclusively material nature ^[9].

Social attractiveness can be both endogenous, that is, internal, and exogenous, that is, external. The external side of social attractiveness is the expression of a thing in the outside world, as it is in objective reality ^[10]. Internal is the consideration of the essence of a thing in itself, the definition of its key determinants, which are attractive. On the other hand, the external side of social attractiveness is a set of internal and external features of an object of social reality that is potentially interesting to an individual. But the inner side of social attractiveness is the individual's attitude to this thing, as a set of into-determinants that are in a person, determining the attitude to this very thing. Of course, even sociological knowledge in this context will have to face a set of existential difficulties in determining the essence of the phenomenon of inner attractiveness. Nevertheless, it is the second variation of the study of the inner and outer sides of social attractiveness that seems to the author of the work to be the most reasonable, heuristically valuable and scientifically meaningful ^[11].

The problems of urban crises and the possibilities for their development and improvement of comfort are discussed in the works of J. Jacobs, recognized as a classic of modern urbanism. In his book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," the author identifies four key conditions that contribute to the emergence of diversity and active social life in cities. These conditions can make the city more convenient and attractive for its residents ^[12].

So, the phenomenon of social attractiveness is quite extensive, methodologically developed, which makes it applicable to the study of the attractiveness of a single city, as well as any other locality. Social attractiveness serves as an important indicator of the social development of the territory and is related to the quality of life, determining the comfort of living of the population. Accordingly, to determine social attractiveness, many indicators can be identified, such as income, career growth, infrastructure development, quality of public transport, urban environment, etc. There are indicators of an objective order, for example, the level of population migration, the level of economic activity, the rate of population growth or decline, and so on.

As a result, there are six aspects of the attractiveness of the city for residents, depending on the social group. The first group includes indicators of a political nature, namely the quality of work of local authorities, the degree of development of civil society, the quality of work of legislative authorities and executive authorities. The second group includes economic indicators, including the specifics of the region's economy, the rate of inflation, and opportunities to improve the quality of life by increasing income and access to basic benefits. The third group covers financial indicators, such as budget expenditures and household incomes, which are both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The fourth group is related to geographical factors and includes the economic characteristics of the region and climatic conditions. An infrastructural indicator, namely the comfort of the urban environment, public transport, and social infrastructure in general, turns out to be quite important in assessing attractiveness. Of course, estimates depend on the requests of the population, but the larger the settlement, the more requests of the population can be detected and vice versa. The last block of indicators is social, which include housing provision, the opportunity to purchase a dwelling, the unemployment rate, job satisfaction, the purchasing power of the population, the price ratio and the possibility of acquiring basic goods for the full–fledged life of an individual.

Methods and methods of research. The main methods of data collection in the context of this sociological study are a mass survey of student youth representatives as a quantitative method of data collection, as well as a focus group with student youth representatives as a qualitative method of data collection. The use of two methods together allows us to show both the objective and subjective side of this issue, as well as to collect the necessary data in the shortest possible time to form meaningful conclusions and recommendations.

The sample used for the survey consists of students of higher educational institutions in Barnaul, namely Altai State University, Altai State Technical University named after I.I. Polzunov, Altai State Medical University, Altai State Pedagogical University, Altai State Agrarian University and the Altai branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.

The sample is based on a system of cluster selection of respondents. To increase the reliability of the survey results, as well as the comparability of data on different professions, the sample will be distributed evenly among these educational organizations, 40 students from each university. These students will be selected spontaneously based on the principle of accessibility. Thus, the sample set of the study consists of 212 students of Barnaul universities – 12 participants for the focus group and 200 for the questionnaire.

Analysis of the research results. To begin consideration of the results of a sociological study of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul in the assessments of student youth, it is necessary to describe the geographical attractiveness. When considering the degree of success of the location of the city of Barnaul in geographical terms, it should be noted that there are a number of components that create an overall image of a favorable location. Such components are the absence of serious cataclysms, a stable climate of a sharply continental nature, the presence of a large number of sunny days per year, as well as sufficient precipitation for agricultural activities. In fact, the city of Barnaul combines all the advantages of the forest-steppe zone and the foothill zone, and the combination of these zones makes it possible to offset the disadvantages of aridity as the main criterion of the forest-steppe zone, as well as sharp temperature drops and recurrent frosts, such as in foothill areas. Many residents of the Altai Territory do not want to move just because they like the climate, topography and a combination of other geographical factors, the participants of the focus groups note. So, the following answers were received to the question "How well do you think Barnaul is geographically located?" (see table 1). Every third respondent surveyed notes that the city of Barnaul is geographically located definitely well – 32%, while 24% of respondents say that geographically the city is located rather well, and 27% of respondents say that the city is located rather poorly. The presence of negative assessments is determined by the lack of minerals and areas of employment associated with these very minerals, and 17% of respondents, in fact, one in six notes that Barnaul is geographically poorly located. Still, the sharply continental climate is not suitable for all residents of this city.

Table 1. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "How well do you think Barnaul is geographically located?", %.

Next, let's consider the set of components of the economic attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. First of all, let's consider the career component of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. The focus group participants noted: "In some economic sectors, rapid career growth of an individual is quite possible, but there are very few of them. In general, Barnaul is not a city for careerists, you can create such an average capital here and live a confident middle man throughout your life," "I must admit that I do not particularly know the stories of success and development in the city of Barnaul, but I admit that there is such an opportunity. At the same time, the population tries to move up the career ladder as much as possible, where it is possible in principle." Consequently, the city of Barnaul, according to the participants of the focus groups, has insufficient opportunities for career growth, nevertheless, if certain efforts are made, it will be possible to reach certain heights. In fact, there are not so many enterprises that can really provide career growth. To a greater extent, hope remains for various projects related to the Federal level of government, but, as a rule, not all citizens have equal access to them. Accordingly, representatives of the student youth are clearly aware of the current state of affairs, its key features, which is why they consider Barnaul a city in which there are not enough opportunities for full-fledged career growth. There was even such a position of a focus group participant: "It is better to choose another, larger city for career growth. Everyone here knows each other and the probability of a quick shot is reduced to zero. Take the same Novosibirsk. There are more opportunities there and a bigger city, respectively, and more prospects," therefore, some respondents do not consider Barnaul at all as a city of career and personal growth."

So, to the question "Do you think there are enough career opportunities in Barnaul?" – The following responses were received (see table 2). Most of the respondents surveyed believe that Barnaul rather lacks opportunities for full–fledged career growth - 52%, which is due to the provincial specifics of the city of Barnaul. At the same time, 18% of the respondents surveyed, in fact, every fifth respondent notes that there are definitely not enough career opportunities in Barnaul, and every fourth respondent notes that there are rather enough career opportunities in Barnaul – 25%. One in twenty respondents notes that Barnaul definitely has enough opportunities for career growth – 5%. The participants of the questionnaire also noted that Barnaul is not the best city for career growth in general.

Table 2. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "Do you think there are enough career opportunities in Barnaul?", %.

Next, let's look at the political aspect of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. It is worth paying attention to the fact that representatives of the student youth did not name it as important and significant both within the framework of focus groups and within the framework of a questionnaire survey. So, to the question "How would you characterize the political activity of the residents of Barnaul?" – the following responses were received (see Figure 1). An absolute minority of respondents noted that residents of Barnaul, in general, have no political activity - 6%, while 12% of respondents noted that residents of Barnaul have low political activity, and 62% of respondents noted that the political activity of residents of Barnaul is average: "Whenever possible, residents of the regional capital try to defend their rights within the framework of legal marches, rallies and other forms of political activity, in addition, according to election statistics, Barnaul residents willingly vote in elections." Every fifth respondent surveyed notes that the political activity of the residents of Barnaul is generally high – 20%. Therefore, within the framework of the political component, Barnaul should be considered rather an attractive city, especially for representatives of student youth.

Fig. 1. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "How would you characterize the political activity of the residents of Barnaul?", %.

So, based on the above, it becomes clear that, in general, the political activity of the residents of Barnaul is at a fairly high level. On the one hand, this is due to the specifics of the inhabitants of this provincial city, on the other hand, it is due to the combination of efforts of civil society, which determined the availability of the opportunity for the residents of Barnaul to actively express their position. The focus group participants noted: "In Barnaul, the population has the opportunity to express their position exactly the same as the national average. Representatives of local and regional authorities, in general, do not prevent the expression of an active civic position, as well as political views," "It seems to me that the majority of residents of the city of Barnaul, one way or another, can freely and actively express their political views." Therefore, according to this component, Barnaul is an attractive city for representatives of modern student youth, since it gives the most active citizens the opportunity to freely express their political views, beliefs, civic position, and so on.

Next, let's look at the social aspect of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. An important component of the overall attractiveness in the social context of the urban environment for representatives of modern student youth is the degree of accessibility of higher education. As a rule, even in towns or small villages there are institutions of secondary vocational education, but higher education institutions are located in larger cities, capitals of the region, which attracts potential visitors. The focus group participants noted: "There are quite a lot of universities in Barnaul, and there are both public and private institutions of higher education. The range of educational programs is so wide that there are no problems with choosing a profession, there are almost all the most popular areas of study", "Higher education in Barnaul is generally available, a sufficient number of budget places, as well as various areas of study within which individuals can realize themselves."

So, to the question "How would you rate the availability of higher education in Barnaul?" – the following responses were received (see Figure 2). The majority of student representatives noted that higher education in Barnaul is more likely to be available – 51%, while 16% of respondents noted that higher education is definitely available. At the same time, 27% of respondents say that higher education is rather inaccessible: "Despite a fairly significant number of budget places, there are not enough for everyone, many are forced to either study for a fee or go to college. Paid education is currently too expensive and not every family will be able to afford it," "In the paid version, medical education is not at all affordable. The cost of educational programs per year starts from two hundred thousand rubles, which is not considered affordable for an individual." At the same time, 6% of respondents noted that higher education in the city of Barnaul is definitely not available: "I know many examples when people could not enroll on a budget, and they did not pull the commercial basis of education. As a result, we have a situation where a person would be happy to study under higher education programs, but simply could not afford it due to lack of funds."

Fig. 2. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "How would you assess the availability of higher education in Barnaul?", %.

Next, let's look at the cultural component of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. The thing is that representatives of modern youth, including students, need developed forms of cultural leisure, this is due to generational characteristics to a greater extent. The focus group participants noted: "In my opinion, Barnaul has enough cultural leisure facilities for every taste and budget, there are no problems with this," "I find it difficult to answer which institutions may be missing in the city of Barnaul in terms of cultural recreation, it seems to me that there is more than enough of everything." At the same time, there were responses from focus group participants noting that there are not enough museums or opera houses, and there are also no ballets. Although such answers are isolated and they are not suitable for mass cultural requests. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Barnaul, in terms of cultural institutions, is a fairly developed and attractive provincial city.

So, to the question "Do you think there are enough institutions of cultural significance and cultural leisure in the city of Barnaul?" – the following responses were received (see Figure 3). The majority of respondents noted that institutions of cultural significance and cultural leisure are rather sufficient in the city of Barnaul – 72%, while every fifth respondent noted that these institutions in the city of Barnaul are definitely enough -20%, and 6% of respondents noted that institutions of cultural significance and cultural leisure in Barnaul are rather insufficient, while At the same time, an absolute minority of respondents, namely 2%, noted that cultural leisure facilities in the city of Barnaul are definitely not enough.

Despite the general sufficiency of cultural institutions in the city of Barnaul, it is worth noting that there are certain problems within the cultural component of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul. In particular, respondents noted the uneven distribution of cultural institutions in the city, as well as an insufficient number of parks and green areas, in addition, some respondents noted that there are not enough cafes and restaurants in Barnaul, and one in twenty respondents noted that, in principle, there is nowhere to go. At the same time, only 2% of respondents indicated a lack of cultural institutions, we are talking about museums, theaters and so on. Thus, the cultural component of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul is at a fairly high level. There are places to go in the city, where to spend cultural leisure activities, improve your cultural level, and so on. Of course, there are certain problems within the cultural component, but, in general, they are insignificant and do not spoil the overall impression of the cultural attractiveness of the city of Barnaul.

Fig. 3. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "Do you think there are enough institutions of cultural significance and cultural leisure in the city of Barnaul?", %.

Next, let's consider the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul in the context of the tourist component of attractiveness. It is worth noting that if the city is attractive in terms of tourism, then it is potentially attractive for moving to a permanent place of residence. The focus group participants noted: "It is very important that the city is both attractive for life and tourism. For some reason, it seems to me that these are interrelated categories. After all, who wants to live, for example, in Prokopyevsk, Kemerovo region, where there is not even anything to see? Of course, the city should be attractive both for life and for tourism,""I would not say that Barnaul is something attractive in terms of tourism. Probably only that the Altai Mountains are relatively close by… Well, we have a beautiful embankment, a couple of parks that have been put in order and Lenin Avenue with Stalinist buildings, that's all."

So, to the question "In your opinion, does the city of Barnaul have a tourist potential?" – The following responses were received (see table 3). The majority of respondents noted that the tourist potential of the city of Barnaul is more likely than not – 51%, while 22% of respondents noted that the tourist potential of the city of Barnaul definitely exists, and 18% of respondents, almost every fifth respondent noted that there is rather no tourist potential, and 9% of respondents It is noted that the city of Barnaul has absolutely no tourist potential. Generally speaking, local and regional authorities simply do not develop the tourist potential of the city of Barnaul, although this is very valuable, significant, necessary and important. Nevertheless, within the framework of various projects, in particular the "Civil Initiative", the tourist infrastructure of the city of Barnaul is being put in order, it is quite possible that in the medium or long term, Barnaul will become a very popular holiday destination.

Nevertheless, as part of the tourist attraction component, the city of Barnaul has a number of problems. In particular, we are talking about an insufficient number of architectural monuments, a small number of natural features, a small number of attractions, the underdevelopment of the tourism category as a whole, as well as insufficient advertising of the city in terms of tourism. All of the above are listed in descending order of importance, from the most significant to the least significant indicator. Most likely, if the above comments were eliminated, the tourist potential of the city of Barnaul, as well as the overall attractiveness index, would have increased significantly, and, in general, would have a positive effect on the prevailing circumstances regarding the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul as a whole.

Table 3. Distribution of respondents' answers to the question "In your opinion, does the city of Barnaul have a tourist potential?", %.

The main conclusions. The attractiveness of a territory or the social attractiveness of a city is a complex multidimensional category that includes a set of land, water and air space with specific boundaries characterized by a set of favorable factors that shape the well–being and positive attitude of citizens towards a given territory. It includes six key parameters, namely: geographical attractiveness, economic attractiveness, political attractiveness, social attractiveness, cultural attractiveness, tourist attractiveness. The most appropriate and universal methodological approach in the study of the attractiveness of territories is structural functionalism.

The overall assessment of the attractiveness of the city of Barnaul is at an above average level. This assessment is predetermined by the fact that there is a high degree of attractiveness within the geographical component. Barnaul combines all the advantages of the forest-steppe zone and the foothill zone, and the combination of these zones makes it possible to offset the disadvantages of aridity as the main criterion of the forest-steppe zone, as well as sharp temperature drops and recurrent frosts. Within the framework of the social, tourism, innovation and technological components, there is an average degree of attractiveness, while within the economic component there is rather a low degree of attractiveness. Barnaul has insufficient opportunities for career growth. In fact, there are not so many enterprises that can really provide career growth. But, if certain efforts are made at the regional level, it will be possible to reach certain heights and it will be possible to generally increase the level of attractiveness of the city of Barnaul for the life of citizens, which will ultimately prevent the migration outflow of citizens. Further research on this topic is heuristically valuable both within the framework of theoretical and empirical sociology.