HOW DOES CITY SIZE DISTRIBUTION IN RUSSIA CHANGE?

Abstract

The abolition of centralized regulation of the economy launched processes changing the settlement system and the structure of the urban system. At the same time, it is the urban settlement system that determines the resource efficiency, and space is one of these resources. In this work, we studied the dynamics of the city-size distribution in Russia in the post-Soviet period and the patterns of cities mobility within the distribution that had induced it. The research method is based on the use of the apparatus of Markov chains, estimation and analysis of transition probability matrices. The results showed a difference, and in some cases the opposite direction, of mobility patterns and dynamics of the city size distribution for the groups of cities located in the western and eastern parts of the country, as well as for groups of cities of different sizes. In general, the identified features of mobility patterns and the dynamics of the city size distribution reflect the trend of population concentration in large cities, the degradation of the urban periphery, the “compression” of the urban system of the eastern part of the country, the decrease in the diversity of the urban system in both western and eastern parts of the country, and the increase in territorial contrasts between their urban systems.