New Industrial and Transport Construction in Russia: Economic and Geographical Aspects

Abstract

The authors have conducted an inventory of investment projects implemented in post-Soviet Russia. The trends of the territorial organization of industry associated with new construction have been determined. An exceptionally high territorial differentiation of industrial construction, which is expressed in its concentration in a small number of industrial areas and its overconcentration in metropolitan regions, has been revealed. In the course of market reforms, the total fragmentation of a single national economic complex was replaced by an unstable trend of the spontaneous formation of complexes. When analyzing the structure of the new industrial construction, no signs of its greening have been identified—two-thirds of new facilities belong to environmentally aggressive industries. The newly constructed objects of transport infrastructure are aimed mainly at ensuring conditions for export, but not at strengthening the connectivity of the territory. This vector of Russia’s territorial development is negative from both geopolitical and environmental standpoints.