Unevenness and Structural Diversity of the Economy’s Spatial Development As a Scientific Problem and Russian Reality

Abstract

The article contains an attempt to analyze the unevenness and diversity in general and in the context of spatial economic development at the level of scientific concepts with examples of countries of the world, Russia, and its regions. Unevenness and diversity in spatial economics are shown as not independent but different phenomena. Diversity may include unevenness as a special case but is more often associated with qualitative features, including structural ones. Unevenness is generated by inequality and generates inequality time and again at certain stages. Various combinations of two spatial phenomena are probable and exist in reality. In simple terms, unevenness is diverse, and diversity is uneven. Enlarged structural types are distinguished, whose dynamics identify directions of shifts in both spatial and sectoral structure of the GRP (GVA) and employment inside Russia. The main shift is from predominantly industrial structures to predominantly service ones, which is not unique but is complicated by several crisis-driven and other deviations from the trend. This shift is not quite logical, affecting both the center and the periphery and being accompanied by simplification and complication of economic structures. In industry, the prevailing loss of sectoral diversity and complexity of regional structures is shown to combine with the growing concentration of production, i.e., its unevenness, within regions (Russia’s federal subjects), while larger parts of the country equalize due to a shift to the east. Russia is generally not a dropout from the common trends of structural economic transformation, typical of large countries of the global semiperiphery; these trends make their way despite all various fluctuations and failures.