The essay explores Russia’s dormitory districts (urban periphery) as spaces where homely attachment and spatial anxiety co-exist. It introduces lampovost’ – a term for the warm, intimate affect of everyday attachment to ostensibly “unremarkable” panel-block neighborhoods, produced through embodied routines, subjective rhythms, and practices of domestication. In parallel, it analyzes the city’s “dark” side – topophobia – that surfaces when everyday order breaks down or perceptual regimes shift (night, emptiness, infrastructure failure). The theoretical frame draws on the city-as-hyperobject (Vileykis, Khanova), the phenomenology of the uncanny and place-memory, and “dark urbanism.” The essay argues that lampovost’ and topophobia form a dialectical pair manifested within the same locale: the former relies on cohabitation and affective architecture; the latter signals ruptures in environmental tuning and use-scenarios. It concludes with implications for design and governance on the periphery: avoid romanticizing coziness or demonizing darkness; instead, finetune light, sightlines, everyday routes, and neighborly participation to match the area’s emotional complexity.
dormitory districts; urban periphery; lampovost’ (homelywarmth); topophobia; topophilia; hyperobject; everydayness; affectivearchitecture; phenomenology of place; rhythmanalysis; dark urbanism; urban anthropology