TO BE LIVING, SENSING, DEVELOPING (NOTES ON THE TEXTURE OF THE CITY)

The relevance of the research is determined by the fact that the modern competitive struggle for resources, for the minds of people, is already spreading to the symbolic capital of the territories, which is an important factor in this struggle. In today's situation, urban competition has reached its peak. This paper, devoted to the analysis of the texture of the city, discusses such problems as the cumulative image process in time and space, cumulative associations related with texts of local culture; and draws attention to the poetic discourse as one of the distinctive ways of increasing the meanings associated with the uniqueness of the city. Methods. The methodological basis was the principles of analysis of the cumulative texture of the city, a qualitative strategy for the content analysis of poetic texts dedicated to the city of Tomsk, as well as methods of visual research of the images of the city, embodied in architecture, painting, and photography. As a methodological guide, a modern research approach to the nature and essence of the imaginary was used (A. Strauss, D. Suttles, R. Lindner). The nature of the imaginary is, on the one hand, a set of meanings that determine the characteristics of the city, on the other hand, a certain system of ideas about the sublime and low, secular and religious, earthly and heavenly, which exist at the moment, being not always understood and understandable, needing to be deciphered. An analysis of the poetic discourse and texts associated with Tomsk has revealed a set of constants passed down from generation to generation and a set of subjectively experienced meanings that create a particular pattern of the city's texture. Results. A certain result of the study was the systematization of words, images, metaphors, mythologemes that capture four dimensions of the city's texture: landscape, cultural-historical, anthropological, topological. Conclusions. The study of the texture of the city is an important process, which, as a result, represents an outline of the subjectively experienced images of the city that affect the entire set of transformations and reforms in the city; residents' attitudes can either help or hinder change.