Trends in the Development of the New Moscow Sector of the Metropolitan Agglomeration

Abstract

The article concerns the development of the spatial structure of the Moscow agglomeration in the first years of implementing plans for the development of New Moscow in comparison with Moscow with the old borders and the entire Moscow agglomeration. A case study of the southwestern sector of the agglomeration is used to analyze the transformation of the central–peripheral self-organization of the given territory, which lost its barrier in the form of administrative borders and received a necessary impulse for infrastructural development. The analysis is based on housing and labor market dynamics (including work commuting), as well as the transformation of the housing and communication spheres, in which center–peripheral diffusion appeared earlier. The acquisition of metropolitan status by part of the external belt of the agglomeration has been accompanied by a redistribution of the intensity of intracity development in Moscow. The near belt of attached territories, owing to the opening of metro stations and building-up of transport infrastructure, is coming increasingly closer to the old peripheral parts of the capital as new bedroom districts. The far periphery of New Moscow retains the features of a typical rural area with operating agricultural enterprises and a countryside style of living in dachas during summer. The administrative expansion processes had virtually no effect on the development of the core of the agglomeration (Old Moscow), but they are clearly manifested when the city is considered as a whole.