Urban shrinkage: an unspoken challenge of spatial planning in Russian small and medium-sized citiesстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 21 октября 2020 г.
Аннотация:Shrinkage since the collapse of state socialism has been evident in
many Russian cities, especially in small and medium-sized (SMS)
ones. The Russian state, de jure, has been promoting the idea of
self-governance; thereby, urban municipalities ought to develop
and adopt own planning decisions to cope with various
challenges, including those related to depopulation. The current
research focuses on planning responses to urban shrinkage. It
aims at understanding how the phenomenon is conceptualized in
the planning documents of Russian SMS cities and what solutions
are proposed to cope with it in the conditions of inherited from
the Soviet times housing and infrastructural deficit. The empirical
evidence for the analysis is drawn from over 70 SMS cities located
in Central and Southern Russia. Results state that despite the
obvious and persisting urban shrinkage, most of the reviewed
documents ignore or underestimate the phenomenon. Instead of
suggesting flexible solutions, which would help overcome the
shortage of urban infrastructure not aggravating shrinkages’
effects in the cityscape, long-term spatial plans are being
developed with hope for future growth proposing measures that
contribute to the intensification of urban sprawl and fragmentation.