Abstract
Cities play an important role in promoting sustainable development. In the Arctic, most particularly in Russia, cities concentrate the majority of residents and economic activity. Sustainable development initiatives are often deployed through programs that operate at different spatial and jurisdictional scales. While national and regional policies and programs have received some attention, the understanding of urban development policies and programs at the municipal level in the Arctic is still limited. This paper presents a case study of municipal sustainable development programming in Arctic cities and examines municipal programs in two larger Russian northern cities: Murmansk and Magadan. While both are regional capitals and the most populous urban settlements in their regions, the cities have district historical, economic and geographical contexts. Through the content analysis of municipal programs active in 2018, we aim to understand, systematize and compare the visions and programmatic actions of the two municipalities on sustainable development. Ten sustainable development programming categories were identified for using a UN SDG-inspired approach modeled after the City of Whitehorse, Canada. While the programs in Magadan and Murmansk are quite different, we observed striking commonalities that characterize the national, regional and local models of urban sustainable development policy making in the Russian Arctic.
Highlights
Cities have been at the center of the global sustainability scholarship since the very beginning of sustainability scholarship (e.g., [1,2])
Close to threequarters of the Arctic population resides in cities and towns [6], with the majority living in the Russian Arctic, the knowledge about Arctic urban sustainability is quite limited
There are a number of tools and benchmarks that could be used for assessing municipal sustainable development efforts, for this study, a system that has been used in an Arctic urban community would be most useful
Summary
Cities have been at the center of the global sustainability scholarship since the very beginning of sustainability scholarship (e.g., [1,2]). This is not surprising given that the majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and large urban communities play a crucial role in shaping the global path to sustainability. Close to threequarters of the Arctic population resides in cities and towns [6], with the majority living in the Russian Arctic (a home for two dozen settlements with more than 100,000 people [7]), the knowledge about Arctic urban sustainability is quite limited. The understanding of urban sustainability in its relationship with urban development policies and programs at the municipal level in the Arctic is still rudimentary
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