Cities, rural areas and urbanization: Russia and the world

Abstract

The paper starts a thematic unit based on the results of International Laboratory (Groupe de recherche international) project “Urban Areas and Networks”, which was launched in mid-2012, according to the agreement between the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and the French National Center for Scientific Research. Besides the Russian researchers from the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences and their French colleagues from a number of universities, specialists from the Institute for Regional Geography (Leipzig), the Institute of Geography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kiev) and the University of Debrecen (Hungary) took part in the work of the laboratory. Approaches to defining the key terms and concepts and their content used in research on urban geography in Russia, France, and other European countries are revealed in the five papers published in this journal under the heading “Urban Geography” (in addition to this one, also see the following papers: “City and Countryside under World-Wide Urbanization”, “Integrated Forms of Urban Settlement Pattern in Russia, Europe, and Worldwide”, “Types of Cities in Russia and Across the Globe”, “Cities and Social Processes: Rethinking Notions and Concepts”). The first paper deals with the criteria for the level of urbanization in a number of countries and the applicability of various criteria for distinguishing cities from rural areas.