ФАКТОРЫ ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННОЙ ДИФФЕРЕНЦИАЦИИ ГОРОДСКОГО РАССЕЛЕНИЯ ПРОМЫШЛЕННЫХ РЕГИОНОВ УРАЛА И ЗАУРАЛЬЯ

Abstract

Introduction. The article deals with current issues of the territorial organization of the social and economic space in the industrial Urals and Trans-Urals regions. The issues have been brought up by growing unevenness in economic development and the living standards in Russian regions, caused by the active process of spatial differentiation of settlement, ultimately leading to the destruction of the established settlement structure under which all social service networks were formed as well as to deterioration of the age and educational structure of the population, and a decrease in the level and quality of life. The aim is to determine trends in the spatial differentiation of urban settlements in the industrialized regions of the Urals and the Trans-Urals and to test the hypothesis that the settlement landscape in Russia resulting from implementation of the regional development policy inevitably leads to segregation of the economic and social space of Russia's regions. Five regions of the Urals and the Trans-Urals, administratively related to the Urals and the Volga federal districts were chosen as the object of the study, namely the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan regions, the Perm Region and the Republic of Bashkortostan. Methods. The analysis of the spatial differentiation of urban resettlement was based on Zipf's law. Results. The analysis revealed the growing disproportion trend in urban resettlement at regional level, especially in industrial areas. It has been identified that the most significant deviations from stable urban settlement system are typical of the largest city in the region, i.e. the regional or republican capital city. Conclusion. The dynamics indicators analysis based on both statistical and spatial methods has revealed negative trends in the current spatial differentiation of urban resettlement in the industrial regions of the Urals and Trans-Urals.