On Top of The City

Youth Culture and Urban Resistance on the Rooftops of St Petersburg

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My first monograph On Top of The City will be published with Bloomsbury in 2026.

Drawing on original, on-the-ground research, On Top of the City shines a unique spotlight on the hidden youth communities of St Petersburg, Russia, where space and power collide and co-exist. Focusing on urban exploration, I demonstrate how the city's panoramas - especially its rooftops - contribute to the formation of a local St Petersburg identity and a fascinating underground culture where young people turn the rooftops into safe spaces, where they can resist the encroaching political repression of Putin's Russia.

Eliot Borenstein, NYU

'In this fascinating contribution to urban studies, Abigail Karas shows that St. Petersburg’s underground culture thrives hundreds of feet above the ground. Both an ethnography of the “roofers” who co-opt public space for their own, often subversive, purposes, and an exploration of the role of risk-taking in Russia, On Top of the City brings the study of youth culture to dizzying new heights’