New Kyiv Suburbia: Moral Economy of Comfortable Life and Informal Practices

Today Kyiv suburban area passes through the stage of active infrastructural growth. The city of Irpin belongs to the rapidly developing Kyiv suburbs. New high-rise buildings are being actively built in the city; its population is increasing. Irpin attracts a large number of new residents with its green areas, affordable cost of property, and small remoteness from the metropolis. Investing money in construction, future residents expect to receive not only the living space of their own apartment but also certain conditions for comfortable living, which include legal and properly formalized utilities (electricity, water, gas), as well as the well-established management of the household.Buying housing, new dwellers possess certain ideas about the appearance of the surrounding area. The latter concerns predominantly green zones. People experience disappointment when they see residential complexes replacing gardens and parks. In cases when the expectations of newcomers about their place of residence and the quality of communal services are not fulfilled, they feel a moral right to defend the desired benefits. Nevertheless, they cannot always operate with legal mechanisms for defending their rights. Instead, they often use informal ways of interaction to achieve their goals. However, it should be emphasized that the informality, used by inhabitants of new buildings for solving problem issues, arises from informal and half-legal practices used by developers to reduce their own costs during building and construction work.