Concept – Strategy “Green Cities” on the Basis of Medium Industrially Developed Cities of Russia and CIS Countries

Abstract

1. Introduction Nowadays, success of a city depends on the living standards of its citizens--such is the reality of the global economy. The cities, in which educated, creative, and successful people would like to live and work, win. Most of the Russian cities are industrial cities with certain standards of transport services, accommodation, healthcare, and education. A modern man wants to live in a unique environment with many equal functions and individuality in everything. This need leads to creation of post-industrial cities, cities in the scale of man, in which management, economy, and environment are viewed through the prism of citizen's interests. Russia needs such cities. According to modern typology, cities are divided into global, large, medium, and small [Lynd, 1929; Lynd, 1937]. Modern state of urbanization processes cannot be described from the point of view of one main trend--domination of the role of global cities, and the global crisis of 2008-2010 proved that sources of economic growth can include other groups of cities, including medium ones. Authorities of the EU, taking into account the fact that by 2030, 80% of the Europeans will be living in cities, focus on the development of small and medium cities, as it is "easier to realize new initiatives and check their viability" in them; authorities of China, taking decisions on support of medium cities, explain it by the fact that "moderation and small scale of medium cities" provide better conditions for life of the population. In Russia, there are 90 medium cities with population of more than 15 million people, which are parts of territorial & economic structures of all regions, possess special institutional nature and mentality of population, but have comparatively low living standards [Buchwald, 2007]. Main criteria of medium city development should be the following: quantitative parameters of urban product growth, index of human potential development, technologies progress, and successive observance of ecological norms. In order to realize a huge total potential of medium cities, it is necessary to revise starting conditions, involve population into economic process, and provide local authorities with larger autonomy and responsibility for unification of efforts of all levels of management and business for creation of conditions for safe and comfortable life of all social groups [Friedmann]. Functions of the state are divided into traditional (defense, public order, state management) and modern (education, science, culture, healthcare, economic development). Globally, 5.3% of GDP is spent for traditional and 17.8%--for modern functions of the state. On the contrary, in Russia, 7% of GDP is spent for traditional and 4.7%--for modern functions of the state. Probably, traditional functions of the state in Russia should be performed by means of budget, while modern--by means of public consumption funds. At present, there are 90 medium cities with population of more than 15 million people in Russia, which are peculiar for institutional nature and mentality of population. Sixteen medium cities of the RF (with population around 5 million people) and four medium people of the CIS countries (with population of more than 1.5 million people), which initiate economic growth, are a part of the group of industrially developed medium cities. Ecological environment in medium industrially developed cities is still evaluated as rather tense, which is caused by high level of technological load on natural environment (from enterprises of energetics, industry, and transport) and lack of "green thinking" and careful attitude to living environment with most of Russians [Ennker, 2006; Friedmann]. Green economy of cities is a direction in economic science which has been developing over two recent decades. Supporters of green economy are M. Bookchin, J. Jacobs, R. Carson, E. Schumacher, R. Costanza, L. Margulis, H. Deli, D. Meadows, P. Hawken, etc. …