Пространственная динамика численности населения малых городов Центральной России в постсоветский период

Abstract

Small cities are the most vulnerable part of the urban settlement system of Russia: their depopulation has been rooted not only in the demographic crisis of the 1990s, but has also been triggered by the rapid migration outflows. In Central Russia, this process is more obvious due to Moscow metropolitan area which is absorbing the migration flows even from the big cities that are also losing their population. However, the pace of population shrinkage is not even and depends on the ability of the city’s economy to make the most of the city’s functional profile and adjust to the changes of the economic environment. This article focuses on the analysis of the most important factors which enable some small cities of Central Russia to maintain or even increase their population and cause population outflows from other cities. The article identifies the patterns of those factors in the spatial aspect. The results of the study suggest that the spatial dynamics of the population of Central Russia observed in the post-Soviet period leads to a thinning of the urban settlement framework which is a consequence of the transition of a number of medium-sized cities to the category of small ones and an increase in the share of “ultrasmall” cities with a population of less than 10 thousand people.