The article is devoted to the description of manifestations of civilizational changes
in the local community of small cities in the regional territories of the North-West of Russia. The
local community of small cities, including monocities, is not only socially and culturally restructured. A whole spectrum of local effects of micro-civilization processes arises in the space of the
local territory, which we designate as a civilization complex. Social, cultural identity, the behavior of various groups of the settlement, manifested in civic activity, in a change in attachment to
a small homeland, to a place of residence, and solidarity with the local community are changing.
At the same time, a certain steady resistance is formed to the new imperatives of economic, environmental, social territorial development, which we define as one of the effects of a civilizational
nature. The local community acts as the subject of the whole spectrum of forms of the established
traditional and new culture, introduced social technologies (social capital), ways of managing in
a market economy (innovation), skill change and professional development (human and labor
resources), contradictory patterns of everyday life of different generations , new communication technologies and practices (media, social networks, mobile communications), slowly developing
institutions of civil society, new forms of regional governance and municipal self-government.