Volume 88, Nº 5 (2024): Специальный выпуск: Город и его окружение: современные вызовы и пути развития

Since 2022, the journal Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk. Seriya geograficheskaya is publishing special issues on actual topics in geography. This issue, already the seventh in a row, is the first one entirely devoted to sociogeographical topics, and the second (in this case out of eight), if we count the extensive special section prepared for the anniversary International Geographical Congress in Paris in 2022, which included seven review articles on areas of social geography in which the most striking results have been achieved and which are specific to Russia. The articles in this issue reflect the results of original scientific researches presented at the large-scale International Scientific Conference The City and Its Surroundings: Modern Challenges and Promising Development Paths, which took place in the spring of 2024 at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of the IV Geourbanistic Readings. The articles in the issue, as well as the reports at the conference, clearly show that Russian studies of current processes of interaction between cities and their suburbs, centers and peripheral territories, territorial transformation of cities and formation of new urban structures, development of agglomeration processes and pendulum migrations, as well as rural-urban migrations, fit completely into the international context and in this sense are characterized by two features. In a number of areas, the most advanced methodological approaches are applied. With the coincidence of many processes with those developing in other countries, the specifics of their course in Russia are revealed both at the national level and in the regions.

The article is based on the materials of the field research conducted in Krasnodar krai in the summer-autumn of 2023, as well as on the analysis of articles and projects devoted to the substantiation of spatial forms and boundaries of Russian urban agglomerations. The Krasnodar urban agglomeration was chosen for several reasons: (a) the intensive growth of the population of Krasnodar, (b) the “transboundary” nature of the urban agglomeration, which includes the territories of two regions of Russia—Krasnodar krai and the Republic of Adygea, separated in the Krasnodar area by a natural boundary—the Kuban River, and (с) the obvious mismatch between the large cells of administrative/municipal management of the territories included in the urban agglomeration and the small-cell structure of the space of everyday life. The authors aim to identify the principles underlying the allocation of Krasnodar’s area of influence, to understand the mechanisms of determining the external and internal boundaries of the urban agglomeration, and the semantics of the graphic images constructed with their help. In the center of attention are maps—a universal tool for fixing and reproducing significant aspects of the surrounding reality. Different types of cartographic products are considered: city plans, administrative maps and territorial development schemes, analytical maps presented in scientific articles and atlases, maps based on remote sensing data, folk and mental maps that project non-spatial relations into space. All maps and images are considered as a product of intellectual activity, a visual representation of knowledge/perceptions of the mapped territory. The authors conclude that the current practice of producing and representing the boundaries of the Krasnodar urban agglomeration, despite scientific justifications and technical calculations, is not so much a representation of the area of Krasnodar’s influence on the surrounding territories to resolve the contradiction between the habit of thinking of urban development in terms of growth and the difficulty of practical implementation of this strategy.

The article is devoted to the territorial projection of the warehouse real estate market development in the post-Soviet period using the example of the Moscow urban agglomeration and adjacent regions. The Moscow region has the largest and most geographically dispersed warehouse network, and against the background of record demand for warehouse real estate and the growth of regional warehouse networks, it is necessary to systematize the logic of market development in order to assess future prospects. The analysis is carried out using statistical methods based on data from consulting companies IBC Real Estate, NF Group on key indicators of market development and warehouse facilities. Stages of market spatial development have been identified: emergence, formation, stabilization, and saturation. At the first stage, market activity is concentrated in the core of the urban agglomeration and in the sub-periphery between the MKAD and the Central Ring Road (near the export-import terminals). At the second stage, it shifts to the sub-periphery along the main highways, and the core becomes a secondary market. At the third stage, activity remains in the sub-periphery, expanding into sectors between motorways and also moving further out to the periphery beyond the Central Ring Road (the most attractive areas are the intersections of the Central Ring Road and the main motorways). At the final stage, activity will be concentrated on the periphery, while the core of the urban agglomeration will be redeveloped. At the same time, at each stage, demand and new construction are shifting to neighboring regions, which are still at different stages of development: regions using external agglomeration effects (proximity to the Moscow urban agglomeration—Tver and Kaluga oblasts) or internal agglomeration effects (domestic consumer demand—Yaroslavl oblast) are developing faster. The onset of the saturation stage in the Moscow urban agglomeration slowed down the growth of online retail due to the transformation of consumption patterns after COVID-19, which returned the demand for warehouse real estate not only to the sub-periphery, but also to the core of the urban agglomeration.

Migration between large cities and their suburbs is considered from the perspective of two conceptual approaches: models of urban development and urban agglomeration development; life course concept. Research objectives come down to, firstly, analyzing the migration flow of the population between large cities and suburbs, and secondly, to identifying its age-related characteristics and assessing the applicability of migration models described using life course concepts to Russian realities. Individual depersonalized data on internal long-term migration of the population in Russia for 2011–2020 was used, which makes it possible to detail the directions of migration and identify different age groups of migrants. 137 Russian cities with a population of over 100 thous. people were considered as large cities; the suburbs included territories formed around cities of a given size at a certain distance from them (20–100 km depending on the population of the city). An indicator of migration efficiency is analyzed, which makes it possible to evaluate not only the directions of flow, but also its effectiveness. The results obtained showed that every year large cities lose population in exchange with suburbs on average of about 50 thous. people. Almost all of these losses occur in the surrounding suburbs. Distant suburbs are losing population in migration exchanges with the centers. High efficiency of migration is recorded between the centers and their nearby suburbs. Without identifying individual age groups, of the 25 migration directions considered, 16 are directed towards the suburbs, and only 9 - towards large cities; these flows are also characterized by lower efficiency. The analysis of migration at different stages of the life course in the migration flow between large cities and their suburbs does not have a clear focus. The most active movers to the suburbs are families with children aged 0 and preschoolers, as well as people of older working and retirement age. In this sense, the Russian case is characterized by the same patterns that are observed in other countries. However, these rules do not work in Moscow and its suburbs, which raises a number of questions at this stage that require further research.

The article examines the territorial structure and development of suburbs of small towns, as well as the territories around district centers that do not have city status. The observed processes fit into the general process of population concentration around local centers, which is inherent in settlement systems of almost all hierarchical levels. Modern geographical studies often consider the growth of the largest urban agglomerations and the development of their suburbs, but similar processes are also observed at the level of municipal districts. At the same time, the development of suburban areas in this case does not occur against the background of urban growth, but against the background of depopulation of both cores and peripheral territories. The study is based on the materials of field studies in three municipal districts of Vologda oblast, which included in-kind observations, expert and in-depth interviews with representatives of district and rural administrations, residents of both suburban and peripheral rural settlements, as well as the collection of statistical data on population dynamics. Field studies are supplemented by office processing of population statistics. Studies have shown that population growth and the development of individual housing construction occur in the vicinity of settlements with the status of a district center, regardless of the presence of urban status. Suburbanization in the classical sense is rarely observed, since small towns and rural district centers most often have low-rise and individual development, but the movement of city dwellers from the city to the suburbs still occurs. The move of rural residents to the suburbs, and not to district centers, is explained by both the lower price of real estate and the desire to preserve rural benefits. The development of suburban areas of local centers is not homogeneous; the most attractive are either large settlements with developed infrastructure, or settlements with an attractive natural environment and high transport accessibility.

The study is devoted to assessing the scale, dynamics and factors of uneven development of Russian cities with a population of more than 100 thous. people by key socioeconomic indicators in 2000–2021. The assessment was carried out using the Theil index and its decomposability property and was based on Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data. The results make it possible to clearly identify the stage of a general decrease in socioeconomic differences between cities during the period of economic growth before the crisis of 2009–2010 and the stage of growing differences during this crisis, while in the 2010s the trends of interurban inequality became multidirectional and unstable. It is shown that macroeconomic crises have a short-term, significant, but diverse impact on the inequality of large cities by key parameters. A significant gap between Moscow and St. Petersburg from other cities has been confirmed while measured with indicators comparable to ones of municipal statistics; the enormous scale of the contribution of these cities to the overall scale of inequality of large centers is shown. It has been revealed that the differentiation of large cities by most socioeconomic characteristics is most significantly influenced by the factor of geographical (primarily macroregional) position, and in recent years macroregional differences between large centers have increased. At the same time there is no stable significant impact of specialization on the differentiation of cities—this factor makes sense in ensuring the differences of cities only by wages, while its contribution in interurban differences by other economic indicators is manifested only in certain years and is closely associated with industry cycles. The decrease in the differentiating role of the regional capital status over the past decades has been proved simultaneously with the growth of the population factor role, which confirms the increasing influence of agglomeration effects. An important result is that the impact on interurban differences by a number of indicators turns out to be insignificant for all the factors that are considered to be key, which means that the competition of large centers is much more complicated than it is commonly believed.

In the post-war period, the USSR developed a unique practice for the world of hiding many cities and towns, whose activities were related to the country’s defense capability. More than 1 mln people lived in the nuclear industry cities in the Urals, Siberia and the Volga region, cities and towns at the bases of the navy, strategic rocket forces and the space industry, which were not marked on any map. This population was considered as belonging to other cities (acceptors) and even other regions. Therefore, the official data on the population of many cities in the postwar censuses of the USSR are not reliable, and the calculations of dynamics based on them are incorrect. Subsequently, the data from the Soviet population censuses were never recalculated. There are no publications estimating the population of the closed and acceptor cities in the Soviet period. The author developed a methodology for such an assessment and based on it calculated the population of 46 closed settlements and 89 acceptor cities on the territory of the RSFSR as of the dates of the 1959, 1970, 1979 and 1989 censuses. In addition to Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data on the population, information from the Dom.MinZKH Online service on the number of apartments in closed settlements by year of commissioning was used. The analysis showed that most of the population of the closed cities in the nuclear industry was considered in other regions, and therefore the population of 8 regions was consistently overestimated, and 6 were underestimated. As a rule, the population was attributed to regional centers, but in some regions, it was attributed to other cities. The population of other closed settlements was considered in their regions: in nearby urban settlements or in regional centers. The result of this practice was an overestimation of the population of 21 regional centers of Russia and 68 other cities, as well as settlements located mainly in the Urals and Siberia.

The article provides an assessment of sectoral and territorial changes in the industry of Moscow. According to the SPARK database, the analysis of images and field observations and data from Moskgorstat author revealed that the trend of deindustrialization of Moscow, dominant in the post-Soviet period, was replaced by a complex multi-vector process when the closure of enterprises and a change in the function of industrial zones were combined with the trend of reindustrialization as a result of the emergence of small and smallest enterprises producing computers, electrical engineering, refrigeration equipment. Moscow’s industry has become more diverse, and the long-term formation of industrial zones has been replaced by a trend of their disintegration, three quarters of enterprises are located outside industrial zones, but since large enterprises inherited from previous periods are concentrated in industrial zones, their contribution to the city’s emissions is 70%. The geographical projection of reindustrialization leads to a change in the territorial structure of Moscow’s industry. Industrial zones in the central part of the city and with the specialization on machinery industry have been completely renovated, industry has partially been preserved in industrial zones with an advantageous transport and geographical location, where enterprises serving the transport infrastructure of the city, food processing plants, and the printing industry have been preserved. The closure of enterprises continued during 2018–2022, when they lost more than half of their employees, production volumes and emissions into the atmosphere also decreased. The peripheral industrial zones near the Moscow Automobile Ring Road (MKAD) have been preserved to the greatest extent, which are most effective due to the proximity of the combined heat and power plants, with large enterprises of the construction industry, food industry, and oil refining. They are characterized by changes in pollution in proportion to the volume of production for industrial zones specializing in the food industry. Industrial zones specializing in oil refining and the construction materials industry in recent years have been characterized by an increase in pollution at a higher rate than industrial production. The decline in pollution with an increase in production is typical for new small enterprises in industrial zones of the second type.

The 15-minute city concept suggests redesigning cities and urban areas in such a way that every resident could reach basic necessities and services, including education, medicine, shopping, leisure, etc., within a 15-minute walk or bicycle ride. The underlying goal of the concept is to improve urban environment, to reduce pressure on transportation systems, and to make cities more resilient to events like the COVID-19 pandemic, when many cities imposed restrictions on cars and public transport. In this paper, we use the 15-minute city concept as an analytical framework for an accessibility index describing the quality of the urban environment in contemporary Russian cities. The study is based on the assumption that the morphologically heterogeneous environment of the post-Soviet cities creates different conditions for the location of facilities that provide residents with basic necessities and services; as a consequence, the accessibility of these facilities varies greatly within cities. Three large and morphologically different post-Soviet cities, Krasnodar, Saratov, and Naberezhnye Chelny, were chosen as the study cases. The investigation draws on publicly available data as well as data from 2GIS on social, commercial, and transportation infrastructure. From our results, the highest accessibility of the facilities is observed in the historical city centers, which concentrate the facilities that provide unique and city-wide services. The Soviet microdistricts show the higher accessibility values compared to modern high-rise apartment buildings, while the lowest accessibility is observed in the low-rise neighborhoods: the average walking time to the basic services and facilities here is three times longer than in the historical centers, and twice as long as in the Soviet microdistricts. Among the three cities studied, Naberezhnye Chelny is the closest to the 15-minute city model. For daily demand facilities, the accessibility varies little between the cities, with 86.0 to 92.2% of residents living within 15-minute walking distance. The strongest differences between cities and urban areas of different morphological types in the accessibility of the facilities are observed only when including in the index rare facilities that provide unique and city-wide services, such as hospitals, theaters, universities, etc. Their accessibility can be improved, for example, by developing public transport systems or creating sub-centers of urban activity in high-density residential areas.

A new type of urban planning document—a master plan that includes both socioeconomic and spatial aspects of urban development—is increasingly being discussed in Russia. The article is devoted to the experience of preparatory socio-geographical research, which was carried out for the master plan of a small city in Tver oblast. The advantages of the geographical approach are revealed, which lie in complexity and multi-scale nature. The example of Bezhetsk shows how geographical concepts and ideas can be implemented in strategic spatial planning activities. Despite the fact that Bezhetsk is a small town, it is a well-defined inter-district center in the northeastern part of Tver oblast. In addition, one of the largest investment projects in the region in the field of livestock farming is being implemented in the city and its district. All this makes the development of a master plan for the city relevant and timely. The article proposes a scheme for preparatory research and identifies two frames of analysis—external and internal. The external frame includes general issues of the functioning and development of the city: analysis of its role in the regional settlement system, features of the economic and geographical position and analysis of the current socioeconomic situation. The internal frame is associated with the features of the internal structure of urban space. With the help of expert interviews and a population survey, the main urban problems and prospects for the city’s development have been identified. Particular attention is paid to studying the ideas of schoolchildren and students about Bezhetsk. The paper shows how a list of priority urban development projects is formed on the basis of a preparatory study. In particular, in Bezhetsk, this list includes projects for the development of social infrastructure, tourism and the agro-industrial complex. The implementation of these projects will help strengthen inter-district functions and stabilize the city’s economy.