Green and Digital Economy for Sustainable Development of Urban Areas

Abstract

The article proposes an original typology of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030, which makes it possible to formulate methods and criteria for sustainable urban development (SDG-11) via other SDGs. Due to digitalization, all ten branches of the green economy can give breakthrough effects in ensuring the sustainable development of urbanized areas. Although the elements of the green economy are historically organic to Russian urbanization, it is not possible to solve the main problem of sustainable development of Russia’s modern spatial development on the existing technological basis: the growing contradictions between the trends of hyperconcentration of the population and the economy in a small (for Russia’s size) number of megacities and, in parallel, their critical deconcentration on the periphery. The consistent implementation of the capabilities of the technological mode based on integration of the digital and green economies creates opportunities for significantly increased productivity in the infrastructural and industrial sectors of cities and development of the knowledge and experience economies in them, at the same time improving the quality of the urban environment and urban life and ensuring sustainable development. A consistent and balanced multiscale spatiotemporal and functional polarization of urbanized areas is an adequate form for implementing this technological mode, which makes it possible, by deepening the geographical division of labor and coordinating the turnover of material, natural, and human capital, to solve problems of sustainable spatial development for Russia by harmonizing its ecological, economic, and social components. The principles of spatiotemporal, morphological, and functional polarization are manifested at various territorial levels. With the development of the set of indicators and expansion of the statistical base for analyzing the green economy, the dissemination of smart city technologies and management of the life cycle for land use, a constructive-geographical, project-based approach in urban planning and ensuring the sustainable development of cities and urban agglomerations in Russia will become as common as the prevailing research approach.