Definition of the city in the legal aspect of urban development

Abstract

The article provides a general overview of the definition of a city in the legal aspect of urban development. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of a generally accepted legally fixed definition of a city at the federal level, the variety of interpretations of this concept at the regional level and the identified cases of inconsistency of administrative boundaries with real urban boundaries. This leads to the fact that the established categories of settlements are often a reflection of administrative management, rather than the real spatial structure; there is no clear understanding of the degree of real urbanization of Russia and the number of cities in it. The study examines cases of inconsistency between the administrative boundaries of cities and their actual spatial characteristics. The object of the study is the definition of the city, the subject of the study is the representation of the concept of the city in the legislation regulating urban development.The article analyzes the upper-level regulations, laws on the administrative and territorial structure of various subjects of the Russian Federation, and statistical data. Various approaches to the concept of a city in the legislation on the administrative-territorial structure of the subjects of the Russian Federation are identified and the signs of classifying a settlement as a city contained in them are considered. It is established that the definition of a city in the legal field is vague, its urban planning and spatial planning aspects are lost. The city ceases to be considered as a real physical space and is replaced by administrative-territorial and municipal categories. It is necessary to develop a unified conceptual framework and criteria fixed at the federal level for classifying settlements as urban, taking into account regional peculiarities. The development of a unified methodology for determining the criteria of urban structure based on spatial characteristics will help determine the number of cities in Russia and determine the real degree of urbanization of the country.