Urbanity has been a key concept to describe western cities since the beginning of the 20th century. But the importance of urbanity is no longer self-evident in global cities since the pivotal moment of 1980/90, when we witnessed the acceleration of flux, the emergence of megacities and the transformation of capitalism. At the same time, urban heritage became of greater interest. Then, as urbanity weakened, it began to be defended by public policies, local commitments and activists in a new way: as collective memories and palimpsest traces. In this article, I consider two examples in the French city of Saint-Etienne to illustrate the heritagization of urbanity: an exhibition about the memory of Algerian miners, and the dramatic demolition of a high-rise building that created a great stir because of its local symbolic significance. These two examples show that urbanity keeps a great place in the imaginary of urban dwellers, including the elites. From a general point of view, we try to preserve the values that we attach to cities, perhaps more than trying to preserve the cities themselves.

The article examines the ideas and arrangements referred to as nonterritorial autonomy (NTA) in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet states. Many scholars regard NTA as a theoretical breakthrough and as a way to drastically rearrange diversity policies. The author seeks to clarify whether NTA had been a groundbreaking innovation and an area of political contestations. Two short periods of NTA-related initiatives after 1917 and in the late 1980s–1990s may look like attempts (albeit ineffective) to replace the earlier forms of diversity governance. The author shows that the ideas of group societal separateness, differential treatment of individuals, group agency, and cohesiveness, as well as a group’s running of its internal affairs, were present in varying degrees in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments’ thoughts and practices. Academia and civil society were also appropriating and developing these views, and group self-rule on a nonterritorial basis was their logical extension. However, the practical implementation was, in most cases, on a top-down basis, and group agency and self-rule were affirmed mostly rhetorically. The continuity of discourses and practices demonstrates that NTA was an integral part of “normal” and broad ethnopolitical developments across the major historic divides in Northern Eurasia.