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Russian urban system

The paper is devoted to the empirical analysis of the Russian urban system. As sources we use official data of the Federal State Statistics Service and resources from the «Economy of Russian cities» database. Analysis methods are kernel estimates of density functions, Zipfs curve, statistical functions of average, variation and dispersion, as well as Herfidal-Hirshman index. Estimation results show that the Russian urban system did not demonstrate the rapid growth expected at the beginning of the market reforms, the main reason for which was an unfavorable demographic situation in the country. The concentration characteristics of the Russian urban system are comparable with the ones of developed western economies. There are significant interregional disparities in the Russian urban system; they are related to the size and structure of the regional urban population. An essential heterogeneity among federal subjects is observed in the concentration of the urban population and the variety of the cities' sizes. Our conclusion is that a universal spatial policy is probably ineffective; we need to study regional and municipal experimentations to find successful models of urban system governance   

Kolomak Ie. A. ekolomak@academ.org

Keywords: urbanization urban system Zipfs law structure interregional differences empirical estimations