Сжатие освоенного пространства в Центральной России: динамика населения и использование земель в сельской местности

Abstract

The article is based on a comprehensive approach that includes joint examination of reducing agricultural land, increasing share of small and abandoned villages, and expanding new recreational potential of rural areas around Moscow and Moscow oblast. Statistical indicators for Russian federal subjects and municipal districts, as well as satellite images used in the article give a multi-scale and fractional picture of the land use shrinkage which, in recent years, has been more and more clearly repeating the historical process of spatial development, but backwards. Agricultural production is shifting to areas with better natural conditions, including those seen at the intra-regional scale. The trend of concentration in the suburbs, where agriculture takes advantage of accumulated investment, labor resources, sales opportunities, and development of infrastructure, is gradually changing to development in areas with better natural conditions, sometimes remote from cities. At the same time, the population continues to concentrate in large cities and suburbs of regional centers, promoting the shrinkage of populated space. Calculations by municipal districts for the period from 1990 to 2017 confirm these divergent trends. The conclusions are illustrated by maps for the territory of Central Russia, compiled with the help of satellite images that show cultivated and unused agricultural land, as well as the spread of abandoned and small villages. Calculations based on information obtained from maps also allow to adjust the data from statistics and to reveal the real picture of changes in rural settlement and land use. The cartographic method also revealed the possibilities and limitations of re-development of rural areas by city dwellers, including not only expanding areas of garden or dacha associations and cottage settlements, but also single dacha residences in depopulating villages.