Constituent Entities Of The Russian Federation With Cities Of Over One Million Inhabitants: The State Of And Trends In Their Internal Disparities

Tatyana M Pozdnyakova

doi:10.24057/2071-9388-2020-69

Abstract

Sustainable development in Russia requires work to be done in a number of areas. One of the mechanisms for solving internal problems is to decrease the gaps in the level of socioeconomic development between the country’s regions. This article provides an overview of the current state of the internal disparities in the socioeconomic development of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation that include cities with a population of over one million.The constituent entities of the Russian Federation were analyzed in terms of the concentration of their population in the administrative centres. The population concentration ratio for cities of over one million inhabitants and the population polycentricity ratio for the corresponding entities were calculated. The ranking of entities was carried out based on these indicators. An analysis of the “contributions” of cities and peripheral areas to the formation of the gross regional product of the studied entities of the Russian Federation was carried out. The economic concentration ratios of cities with over one million inhabitants were calculated. The relationship of this indicator with the population ratio was established. Based on this, the following categories were identified: entities that are not in danger of a population or economy hyper-concentration in the administrative centre; entities with moderate population concentration in the city of more than one million inhabitants combined with an upward trend in their economic concentration; and entities with a high concentration of the population and economy in the administrative centre and signs of decrease in the population and economic concentration.

Highlights

The involvement of Russia in global economic processes inevitably leads to the transformation of the spatial development of its regions
The purpose of this study is to review the current state and some trends in the development of internal disparities among entities with cities of over one million inhabitants by establishing a relationship between their population and economic concentration ratio
Based on the obtained data, the ratio of economic concentration was calculated for the administrative centres of the studied entities of the Russian Federation

Summary

Introduction

The involvement of Russia in global economic processes inevitably leads to the transformation of the spatial development of its regions. The need to ensure the competitiveness of the constituent entities of Russia leads to the use of their strengths In this regard, the current spatial organization of the socioeconomic regions of the country has been deformed, which typically reinforces the exiting disparities in territorial development. The current spatial organization of the socioeconomic regions of the country has been deformed, which typically reinforces the exiting disparities in territorial development One of these disparities is associated with stable settlement trends in recent decades. This trend is expressed in the powerful migration outflow of the population directed from east to west and from north to south (Obedkov 2018) as well as from peripheral areas to regional centres (Zubarevich 2013) and the largest megacities in the country (Varshavskij 2018; Blyahman 2014). The most noticeable and ever-increasing trend is the “contraction” of the population into cities with over one million inhabitants and the “desertion” of rural areas

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