Vol 8, No 1 (2018)

Housing construction in the Moscow urban agglomeration is the main incentive mechanism for migration inflow via the lowering of such important barrier as housing prices. There is a positive feedback between the extensive development of the Moscow urban agglomeration and migration inflow to the metropolitan area, leading to hyperconcentration of population and economic activity. Theoretical analysis has shown that there is an equilibrium ratio between the new housing supply and the net migration into the Moscow metropolitan area. Empirical evidence shows that the ability of the Moscow urban agglomeration to accumulate migration in the 2000s at the respective rate of construction fell by half compared to the 1990s. Migration inflow is mostly contributed by extensive model of agglomeration development and urban sprawl due to the dominance of large-scale economy-class construction projects on unoccupied lands in a 30-km zone between the Moscow Automobile Ring Road (MKAD) and the Moscow Small Ring Road (MMK). The construction in this zone is a key regulator of the migration balance in the Moscow urban agglomeration and at the national level. Extensive development is subsidized by regional and federal budgetary investments, including transportation infrastructure, which contradicts state efforts to mitigate interregional inequality through fiscal redistribution.

The paper considers the dynamics of the socioeconomic development of 75 cities, administrative centers of Russian regions. The main objective of the study is to test the authors’ methodology, which makes it possible to determine and classify the trajectories of change in the relative position of a city in the investigated set in each year of the period. Unlike the common analysis scheme, when situations at the beginning and end of the period are compared, the authors investigate changes over 11 years on an annual basis, i.e., the trajectory of change in the relative position of an object in the selected set. The study and comparison of the trajectories makes it possible to (a) see inflection points, i.e., the years in which the development of a city was relatively accelerated or decelerated in order to further reveal the factors of the change in trajectory and (b) to suggest a basis for grouping cities by trajectory type. The methodology calculates the city development dynamics index by integrating the nine indicators and constructing a rank vector. In addition, the characteristics of a sampling, such as the minimum and maximum values and variation coefficients, are calculated for each of the nine primary indicators for each year. Cities are grouped by the rank vectors that describe the trajectory of the dynamics. Groups of cities that are steadily growing faster than others, stably lagging behind, and with changing trajectories are identified. Hypotheses explaining the acceleration or deceleration of the development of individual cities are put forward. No significant relationship between acceleration of development and development of official strategies has been established.

This article considers the “Comprehensive monitoring of living conditions” of the Russian population to determine the level of mobility of residents in different regions of the country. The subject matter of the study is the tourist mobility of Russians. A system of equations from the binomial logistic regression model revealed that the probability of a Russian citizen taking a travel tour is mostly influenced by personal factors, such as economic status and physical condition. The impact of transport infrastructure characteristics is absorbed by the income characteristics of individuals; i.e., regional differences in standard of living correlate with the density of the transport infrastructure. Spatial mobility for tourism purposes was found to be associated to a greater degree with land transport infrastructure rather than with air service. Differentiation of Russians with respect to the parameters of spatial mobility of travel actually reproduces economic inequality, while the density of the transport infrastructure, which differs from region to region, tends not to mitigate the impact of economic resources on spatial movement.

Air service has become one of the most dynamically evolving components of the integrated transportation system in Russia and around the world. It is a major type of medium- and long-distance transportation. The spatial structure of air service has been extensively studied in geography; however, we propose an analysis of this structure using such characteristics of highest passenger importance as air travel frequency and travel time in light of all additional expenses and weighted-average fares on each route. This type of passenger travel studies is not a common practice because of the complexity of actual data collection. This work is aimed at filling this gap; it analyzes the distribution of the network of operating airports in EuropeanRussia. A typology of airlines by weighted-average fare level is presented. Three major centers that attract air passengers are identified: Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Black Sea resorts. A classification of cities is proposed according to transport accessibility from these centers in terms of air travel frequency, travel time, and fares, integrated in a single technique. It is found that assignment of a particular city to a specific class depends on its remoteness from the centers of attraction, the structure of airlines, the availability and character of alternative transport, and average time on the road from the city center to city airports. According to calculations by the proposed technique, the best transport accessibility is characteristic of the major cities of European Russia, some cities in the Extreme North and the North Caucasus; the poorest transport accessibility is characteristic of most cities in Central Russia.

The article discusses the implementation of the Power of Siberia project in terms of the opportunities for integrated subsoil development, including the creation of gas, petrochemical, oil-and-gas transportation, and helium industries in regions of the Russia’s East. Within the framework of the project, the following tasks have been accomplished: an analysis of the natural gas resource base of Eastern Siberia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and its extraction; the directions of transport infrastructure development are validated; the key problems, with which the project is associated, are shown; the possibility of implementing a public-private partnership is considered. It is shown that the implementation of the Power of Siberia project faces a number of serious difficulties. So, in particular, neither in Russia nor in the world are there superextensive gas pipelines, by which multicomponent gas would be transported. The intentional reduction in the helium concentration will lead to a sharp rise in the cost of its isolation, which calls into question the entire helium program. In addition, the current concept of developing the gas potential of Eastern Siberia does not envisage the use of the Irkutsk processing cluster, which already has a significant infrastructure for the hydrocarbon raw materials processing, as well as are personnel and production potential, unlike the projected gas processing plant in Amur oblast.

The article considers some aspects of the current state of strategic planning in the Russian Federation with emphasis on regional strategic planning. The Russian practice of national and regional strategic planning and implementation of critical strategic decisions is illustrated by model “success stories” and cases of missed opportunities and implementation failures. The basis is a case study of the strategies and development programs of the country’s eastern territories, the Program for Reindustrialization of the Novosibirsk Oblast Economy for the Period up to 2025, the Program for Reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the strategic initiative Siberian Science City. It is concluded that successful examples of regional strategies show that their positive results have been essentially achieved by activating a mechanism for interaction and cooperation of the main stakeholders (federal and regional authorities, business structures, institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and civil society institutions). At the same time, failure of a number of national strategic initiatives was largely predetermined by neglect of such a partnership, which resulted in the wrong choice of strategic guidelines and implementation mechanisms. Several new trends in the strategic planning system are analyzed.

The article analyzes the transformation of institutions regulating traditional nature management of indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East with a case study of the Udege population of the Pozharskii district of Primorskii krai from the end of the 19th century until now. It uses materials from field studies conducted by the author in 2011 (study of the conflicts between the Bikin Udege people and the Les Export company) and 2015 (a study of the socioeconomic situation in the village of Krasnyi Yar in connection with the organization of Bikin National Park), as well as the results of an analysis of ethnographic and geographical literature, publications in the media, and statistical data. The main rules and norms governing hunting and collective decision-making in nature management are considered. The main factors determining changes in institutions regulating traditional nature management are revealed, such as market relations, isolation and remoteness from the regional center, proximity to China and Korea, and richness of ecosystems, including rare plant and animal species and unique landscapes.