City Development in Contemporary Russia: Regional, Physical and Urban Planning under New Societal Conditions
Dmitri Piterski and Isolde Brade
Institute of Regional Geography
University of Leipzig
Germany
Changes in Geopolitical, Economic, Demographic and Social Situation in Russia
At the beginning of 1998 the urban population of Russia was 107,528.3 thousand. The total number of cities and towns was 3,058, with a population of almost 107.5 million residents. It is necessary to note that there are two types of urban settlements officially listed in Russian statistics: cities proper (1,095) and towns or settlements of an urban type (1,963). As a general rule, cities have a population of more than 12,000 and settlements of an urban type - below 12,000, although this classification depends on the function as well as the size.
The far reaching economic and social transformations, which have taken place in the Russian Federation since the beginning of the 1990s, have caused fundamental changes of the functional structure and in the basic conditions for economic development of Russian cities. Dismantling of the system of state planning was followed by privatisation of state economic facilities, formation of a net of commercial banks, stock companies and private enterprises, conversion of the military production, formation of a real estate market as well as development of other aspects of market economy in Russia. This triggered development of social processes that led to important shifts in the nature of the city-system in Russia. In the post-Soviet time new problems have appeared which previously were not characteristic of the urban-system of Russia, such as unemployment or structural economic depression of entire regions.
These developments required, in principle, a re-assessment of the development needs of large cities. In addition, drastic changes in the demographic trends were accompanied by an increasing depopulation of whole regions as well as a significant decline of the population growth in some Russian cities.
In addition to the above-mentioned factors, one should also take into account the consequences of the migration process, which in the last few years has become a serious problem. This includes the resettlement of Russians from the new states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Baltic republics back to Russia, the out-migration of population from the industrial areas of the Russian Far North and the Far East, the settlement of de-conscripted military personnel and their families, who were earlier located in Eastern Europe, as well as flows of refugees of other than Russian nationalities, who had arrived to Russia from areas with acute ethnic conflicts .
After the collapse of the USSR the geopolitical situation in Russia also underwent significant changes. It is generally known that the borders between the republics within the USSR during the Soviet period were formal. However, in the post-Soviet period this was no longer the case. As a result, many of the cities in Russia have lost their earlier central position and are located in what have now become outback districts of the country.
The ecological situation in the areas affected by radiation catastrophes, like Chernobyl, as well as in the areas with high industrial concentration and considerable air and water pollution remains tense. There is clear evidence that the environmental pollution in the cities is negatively affecting the state of the health of the population.
According to the official information, more than 10% of the cities in Russia are now in a poor ecological shape. One also needs to take into consideration that among Russian regions and cities that suffer from severe ecological conditions there are not only industrial and agricultural districts and centres, but also some recreational regions. For example, this includes the region of the Caucasian spa resorts, which will be discussed in a more detail below .
The social situation in Russian cities is complicated further by problems of the growing social-economic differentiation and polarisation of the population, which leads to rising social tensions in the cities. In Post-Soviet Russia, as in other Central European and ex-USSR countries, the majority of the population lives just above the minimum subsistence level while about 25% live below that level. In 1996 the level of unemployment in Russia stood at 9.3% of the workforce, while recent indications are that it can soon get to a critical (massive) levels (i.e., over 20%). At the same time, 80% of the Russian real estate belongs to just 10% of Russian families. This shows that the reforms of the 1990s have largely failed to modernise Russia, but rather led to the creation of a new elite. This process was also aggravated by an acute economic crisis and a deep social differentiation.
It is necessary to stress that the development of Russian cities reflects, in a concentrated form, all these processes and problems. It also needs mentioning that the economic and natural conditions of different Russian regions vary greatly.
Problems of Large Cities and City Agglomerations
These problems were discussed intensively for decades in economic literature and by academic and specialists. Although the process of urbanisation in Russia was as extensive as that all over the world, and was an integral part of a world-wide process, it has had particular features associated with socialist urban planning in the former Soviet Union and in Russia. The official policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet government included introduction of restrictions on the development of large cities and the stimulation of the growth of small towns and medium size cities.
However, contrary to this policy and the subsequent planning decisions, numbers of inhabitants in the large Russian cities, as well as in the entire former USSR, differentiated at a very high rate (see Tables 2 and 3). It should be made clear that the formation of the settlement- and especially of the city-systems of Russia, as presently portrayed, was essentially driven by the rapid industrialisation process. This process was started during the 1930s and in just few decades transformed the economically backward agrarian state with a low degree of urbanisation into a highly industrialised state, where settlement net to a large extent was dominated by the city agglomerations. Accelerated growth of these large cities provoked many changes to general plans, schemes of regional planning and to other Soviet planning documents.
This led to an appearance and growth of problems in city planning and resulted in the surface area, intended for building, used to overlap industrial-living and rest and recreation areas, as well as in an irrational development in the transport and engineering infrastructures. During the 1960s and the 1970s an intensive discussion of these problems broke out in the USSR between advocates of incisive limiting measures and specialists, who insisted that an arbitrary limitation of growth of the cities was a dangerous and ineffective scenario.
Nevertheless, in reality the growth of the large cities continued at an impressive pace. From 1959 to 1989 the population of some large cities doubled and in some cases tripled. This process took place in Moscow as well, in spite of all the administrative measures aimed at achieving stabilisation in the tempo of growth of this giant city. During the same period (1959-89) the population of Moscow increased by three million and that of St. Petersburg by 1.7 million.
In 1970 C. Harris argued that Russia, as well as the former USSR, was a land of large cities. And that was true for the later period as well: between 1970 and 1990 the number of Russian cities with more than 500,000 residents increased rapidly from 17 to 34.
Principles of the settlement systems of the USSR and Russia were developed back in the 1970s and 1980s. Independent research undertaken at the Institute of Regional Geography in Leipzig has indicated that in these planning documents the development of large cities was underestimated while the growth of small and middle cities and towns was often overestimated. In 1990, almost all centres of the larger settlement systems in Russia (and in the USSR) had more urban dwellers than was planned for according to the Scheme for the Settlement Systems of the USSR (1975).
During the 1990s, however, the population of Russia first stabilised and then began to decrease. In 1992, for the first time since the Second World War a negative population growth was registered in Russia, caused by demographic change and the economic crisis. In 1996, the birth rate in Russia dropped to 8.9 per thousand, compared with a death rate of 14.2 per thousand. That amounted to a natural decrease of - 5.3 per thousand (in 1960 the latter figure was +15.8). At the beginning of 1998, Russia had 107.5 million urban dwellers. That meant that between 1989 and 1997 the total urban population in the country did not increase. Moreover, between 1991 and 1998 the total number of urban dwellers in Russia actually went down by 2.3 million. This decline could have been even more rapid without the massive in-migration from other areas of the USSR to Russia.
In the recent years those large cities that earlier had a continuing increase in the numbers of inhabitants have shown a tendency of stabilisation or even a decline in population dynamics. On the whole, numbers of declining cities and towns have increased dramatically, especially in multifunctional administrative and industrial centres located in major industrial areas of western Russia. Greater absolute losses in population numbers have occurred in cities with more than one million residents. For instance, among large cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Samara and others there is a constant trend of either zero growth or even of decreasing populations. (In the case of Moscow it might still be considered a matter of opinion, because the official statistical figures actually reflect only "registered" urban dwellers, but not the total population.)
On the basis of this negative trend, it is possible, on the one hand, to come to the conclusion that this situation reflects a reversal in urban processes in Russia during the 1990s and a turning point in urban growth in this country. On the other hand, there is also a problem of the length of the current period of deceleration. One thing is clear, however. The emergence of a new economic, demographic, geopolitical and social situation in Russia has made a re-evaluation of the future development and growth of its large cities more necessary than ever before.
In this regard it becomes especially interesting to analyse the development of the two largest city agglomerations in Russia: Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the post-Soviet situation these two cities became "locomotives" of the economic and social-political development of Russia. Functional structures in both cities are much more intensive and perceptible than elsewhere in the "vastness" of Russia, they are in the process of constant change, while city economies underwent rapid change along market lines.
In absolute terms, Moscow occupies a prime position within Russia. In addition to the functions of a capital city, Moscow also is the centre of Russia's economic power and financial capital. 80% of investments in Russia actually went to Moscow. There are many reconstruction sites, next to old and new skyscrapers of large economic and finance conglomerates, newly constructed image-making monuments, large business and trade centres that all together increasingly reform the city structure of the former socialist capital of the Soviet Union. At the same time the post-Soviet development of St. Petersburg was largely framed by changes in its geopolitical position, which led this city to become again an important gateway from Russia to Western Europe.
Perspectives of development of other large Russian cities are unclear. For example, in such areas as the Urals (Yekaterinburg, Perm, Cheliabinsk, Ufa), the Volga Region (Samara, Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Volgograd, Ulyanovsk), the Central Chernozem Region (Voronezh), and the North Caucasus (Rostov-on-Don), as well as in southern Siberia and the Far East (Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tyumen, Tomsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok), one might find both winners and losers of the current transformational process. The attractiveness of large cities points to a necessity of changes caused by out-migration from countryside. The big cities profit above all from the innovative changes of the economic structure (privatization of the economy, starting of deindustrialization, connected with the development of tertiary sector of economy).
Small and Medium-Sized Cities
In the Soviet times many industrial ministries were eager - in contradiction to the official policy of limiting of the growth of large cities - to promote the settlement and development of industrial areas which were located in already established cities, in order to be able to save money on development of land and housing construction. This resulted in an extremely slow process of development of small and medium-size cities, where provision of social structure, including engineering and technical supplies, became very much neglected.
The gap between the official policy of stimulating growth of the small and medium-size cities and in reality retarded growth is seen clearly in an analysis of the general model of the settlement structure of the USSR: the prognosis of this model for the growth of the majority of the small and medium-size cities amounted as a rule the 1.3 to 1.5 times, in a series of cases also twice the number of its actual growth.
Today the small and medium-size cities of Russia face a number of big problems. The introduction of market economy structures in this category of cities underlined the need to overcome their typical mono-functional economic orientation, to develop their extremely backward communal economy, to strengthen the significance of these cities as administrative centres as well as to significantly rise their status as central places in adjacent rural areas.
Small cities that are located in the vicinity of large cities (with numbers of inhabitants of one million or above) or large industrial agglomerations greatly depend on these areas for their survival. At the same time small and medium-size cities which are situated outside these areas and that fail to generate investors' interest through innovative measures are the main losers in the current developmental process.
Transfer of an increasing share of central state power in Russia to the regions and communities together with their increased tax independence, has opened new possibilities for the development of some small and medium-size cities. However, this also led to an escalation of conflicts between decision-makers of various administrative and territorial units of the Russian Federation (republics, districts and territories). Local politicians were often criticised by central authorities for lacking a clear political focus and for inability to develop and control territorially differentiated tendencies within the national democratic process.
Development of Highly Specialised Cities and Cities with a Special Status
After the end of the Cold War a whole number of Russian cities, which traditionally were linked to branches of defence and armaments industries, found themselves in an extremely complicated situation. These cities were among principal losers of the dismantling of the Soviet Military Industrial Complex and the subsequent conversion of the armaments' industry. It should be noted that the military complex of the former USSR was located mainly in Russia and accounted for at least 40-45% of the total industrial output of the country.
Many of these specialised military cities were barred to visitors and were known as "closed cities" (for example, Arzamas-16 south of Nizhni Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk-26, Chelyabinsk-40 and many other). In the Soviet period they enjoyed a privileged position with regard to facilities and social welfare, and their population was well supplied with industrial goods and foodstuffs. After 1991, volumes of military orders were greatly reduced, leading to a general withdrawal of the state as main contractor. The armaments industries in these cities were generally unable to re-orient their production to civilian output or to generate much needed investment. However, the existence in these cities of highly qualified labour force and high performance production capacities form essential prerequisites that, under favourable conditions, in the future can be transformed into growth of these "Conversion Cities".
Other prerequisites for growth of these cities include reversal in investment flows, introduction of modern technologies in civilian production, as well as skilful communal and economic management. Problems of "closed cities" have been outlined in a number of recent publications. However, very few articles go beyond a general discussion, while concrete recommendations for the development of these cities are often missing.
Another group of special cities is formed from the so-called economic cities, which were in large numbers created between the 1950s and the 1980s, especially in the areas surrounding large cities. In this group are academic centres for fundamental research as well as centres for applied nuclear, aerospace and other sciences. Few of these centres are located near Moscow (Dubna, Pushchino, Protvino, Troitsk, Zhukovsky, Chernogolovka and others). Another well-known centre of the kind is Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk in Siberia. The new problems, which these cities are facing, in many respects are identical to the problems of "Conversion Cities". In the last decade prerequisites for a further development of these cities has changed completely. There is a great need to review the status and development strategy of these cities particularly taking into account large concentration of high intellectual potential in these cities and existing possibilities for the development of innovative scientific disciplines and new technologies. It needs noting, however, that a large share of the total of about 40 of these high technology centres is not to be found on any Soviet map. In the current situation chances of including these settlements in the overall framework of the democratic reform process remain rather slim.
The developmental possibilities of the cities demand a re-evaluation, which is bound to mining and the raw materials industry: in the areas of coal mining and oil exploration, in the natural gas industry, the mining of non-ferrous and rare precious metals. Back in the mid-1980s, at the start of perestroika the existing differences in spatial structures of these cities became apparent. In the coal mining areas of Kuzbas, the Urals or Vorkuta, as well as in the areas around Moscow and in the Rostov oblast' in the Donbas coal basin a long-term restructuring of the local economy is the only recipe for the future development. That entails dismissal of a considerable part of the workforce in the coal mining industry and the development of new technologies. In the regions of oil and natural gas industries, most of which are in Siberia, as well as in the areas of non-ferrous and precious metals' industries (mainly areas of the Far North in Siberia and the Russian Far East), a new situation has developed since the collapse of the USSR. There has been a mass out-migration of the population from these areas to the European parts of Russia resulting in a population decline between 4 and 7%. In some areas (Magadan, Chukotka) the decline was far larger at around 30-40%. On the other hand, the development needs of some resource-rich areas of the Siberian North and the Far East demand creation of a well-organised and an effective settlement system. New exploration of natural resources in these areas (oil, gold, non-ferrous metals) is the only viable way to reverse the current negative trend in the development of these areas and adjacent specialised cities.
Resort towns form another group of specialised cities. Under the Soviet planning system a special importance was given, in planning of settlement systems, to the establishment of special complexes of spacious and generously laid out health resorts and rest and recreation areas. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of these resort towns have seen a rapid decline in the numbers of tourists that prompted development of deep economic depression in their local economies. Many of the problems that these regions face are similar to that in other specialised cities. There are, however, some more specific problems as well. For instance, the problem of critical ecological situation in some of these towns. One of major resort areas in Russia, the region of Caucasian Spa Resorts, consists of four famous resorts (Kislovodsk, Yessentuki, Pyatigorsk and Zhelesnovodsk). It is one of the largest and most important recreational regions in Russia. Before the collapse of the USSR, 7% of all health facilities in the Union was concentrated in this resort area. During the 1990s, with the abandonment of strategic city and regional planning, this region changed into a zone of unsystematically built sections, which include industrial, transport, agricultural and other enterprises. These are mixed with residential and resort areas. The region was, until recently, a multifunctional city agglomeration with over 560,000 urban dwellers and a population density of more than 950 inhabitants per square kilometre. It is worth noting that these figures were comparable with that of many city agglomerations in Russia in non-resort regions. Due to lack of planning or poor industrial licensing standards currently there are more than 1,300 potential sources of environmental pollution located in the region of Caucasian Spa Resorts. High levels of pollution led to a situation that it is now impossible to use all of the mineral water resources in the region for medical purposes without an expensive purification. The ecological crisis in this region has started to develop since the early 1960s and by 1990s has reached a critical level, as stated in the State Report on the Environmental Conditions in Russia.
Due to falls in living standards of the Russian population in the post-Soviet period, particularly after the 1998 financial crisis, the financial flows directed to the local tourism industry and health resorts have dried up considerably. It still remains unclear as to what extent the concept of development of rest and recreation areas, that was designed under the Soviet system, can be modified to the new conditions. For instance, it is unclear whether it would possible to transform rest and recreation areas, which were earlier heavily subsidised by the state, into commercially viable tourist entities. There is little doubt, however, that any new construction of resorts of the same type is not among immediate goals. Instead the current tendency is to create new recreation zones that are in close proximity to major settlement areas.
Regional Differences
There is a wide range of diversity between various Russian regions, given the size of the country's land area, as well as different economic, democratic and ethnic conditions that exist in different parts of Russia. Therefore, any analysis of conditions and perspectives for city development in Russia should take into account these important regional differences.
The situation is especially fluent in those regions that are close to Russian state borders, as well as in the nation's largest cities. Cities that are located on coast and that often function as seaports form a special case. After the fall of the Soviet Union, European parts Russia became virtually landlocked. Large Black Sea ports as well as ports on the Baltic Sea that earlier were used as major entry ports to Soviet Russia have now become foreign ports. In order to secure Russia's access to oceans, locations for new ports need to be found soon. This includes new harbours as well as expansion of some existing port facilities, like St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, Novorossiisk and Tuapse on the Black Sea, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, and Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. That means that in the new national city system, these cities will assume a new status and will play an important role.
Similar is the case with those Russian cities that after the collapse of the USSR found themselves in a unique situation as important border or transit crossings to states, which were formerly part of the USSR or the Eastern Bloc. These include, for example, Smolensk on the Moscow-Minsk-Warsaw highway, Orenburg on the Volga-Kasakhstan-Central Asia route, other Russian cities on the border with European states (Pskov, Belgorod, Bryansk, Rostov-on-Don etc.). Changed geographical position of these cities have resulted in medium- and long-term changes in their economic and spatial relations and, at the same time, have brought further changes to the functional profile of these cities and their inner city structures. A special case within this group of cities are border settlements neighbouring Transcaucasian countries (Georgia, Azerbaijan) where political situation remains to be highly unstable. In contrast to the Russian-Ukrainian border where the installation of state border controls hindered the development of relations on societal, economic and interpersonal levels, but did not halt it altogether, intercommunications across the Russian-Georgian border have been virtually stopped with the introduction of a strict border control system. Nowadays even the former major railway connection Rostov-on-Don - Sochi - Sukhumi - Tbilisi ends at the Russian border station of Sochi - Adler.
A common problem for all Russian regions is the necessity of restructuring of the local economy and the formation of the new market-economy structures. This is a major problem especially for regions that have a marked mono-functional economic structure, for example regions of textile, coal and raw materials' industries. Thus, cities located in the traditional textile industry area of Ivanovo (within the Central economic region) are experiencing a dire crisis that was triggered by a combination of factors, such as low productivity of many textile works and the inability of local production to compete with cheap imports.
Problems that exist in Russia's largest multifunctional centres are probably less critical but by far greater in their scope. There is a need for gradual restructuring of the diversified local economy, which can be achieved through a development of modern high technological branches of production. The latter includes stimulation of the growth of research-intensive industries. This, however, can be accompanied by a decline in other traditional sectors of economy, like was the case of Moscow where development of high technological branches in aerospace, electronics, machinery and the instrument-building industries was offset by stagnation in metallurgical and textile industries. There are other industries (heavy machinery, iron and steel industry, oil processing) that also experience growing problems. Any smooth restructuring of Moscow's local economy will require creation of additional jobs in consumer goods production or services' areas that will be able to absorb the growing numbers of unemployed in the traditional industries.
When one makes estimates of development perspectives of Russian cities, forecasts of future migration processes are of paramount importance. For example, let us consider the issue of population migrations between former Soviet republics and Russia. According to the 1989 census, 25.3 million Russians lived outside Russia, mainly in the Ukraine and Belorussia (12.7 million), Kazakhstan (6 million) and Uzbekistan (1.7 million). According to some independent estimates, the total number of Russian-speaking population in the USSR was over 30 million. In the post-Soviet period living conditions of Russians in many of the former republics of the USSR have greatly deteriorated. In addition, Russians often find themselves politically and socially discriminated. That caused an outflow of Russian-speaking population with more than 3 million people migrating to Russia between 1989 and 1995 (net migration). In 1992 77% of them were ethic Russians, in 1993-94 - 63%. At the beginning of 1996 the number of Russians living outside Russia was estimated at the level of 23.5 million. In the forthcoming years it is estimated that between 8 and 10 million new immigrants will arrive to Russia. These include not only refugees (or the so-called "involuntary immigrants") but also economic migrants.These forecasts were incorporated into Russia's recent major documents on regional planning, in particular the General Scheme for the Settlement Systems of Russia that plans establishment special areas for settlement of immigrants in European parts of Russia, in Siberia and in the Far East. Ii is important to note that in the conditions negative natural growth of the population in-migration has become the main source of re-population of Russia, particularly of its urban growth.
In addition to factors listed above, the abolishment of the passport registration system (propiska) in the post-Soviet period has also led to a considerable growth in internal migration flows. In the future this can lead to a further growth in population density, especially in the largest cities of the European Russia and in the spatially populated agrarian regions of southern Russian Steppes. On the other hand, it is to be expected that thereby a further depopulation of the sparsely settled regions of Russia (the non-chernozem Areas and in the north of the European land areas as well as the northerly areas of Siberia and of the Far East).
Regional and Physical Planning and the Development of Settlement Structures
In Soviet planning policy there was a clear differentiation between the terms " regional planning" (regional'noe planirovanie) and "physical planning" (rayonnaya planirovka). "Regional planning" meant that the Communist Party and the Soviet government were in charge of directive planning, which formed an integral part of the central planning system. It was aimed at reaching certain economic objectives in the regions and, as a rule, it dealt with grand economic projects in the Union republics and in the economic planning regions. The planning directives were worked out by the State Planning Commission of the USSR (Gosplan) as well as by the planning commissions of the Union republics and administrative regional units. These included one-year, five-year and perspective plans. After these directives were adopted by respective legislative organs of the republic and the Union they became the law.
"Physical planning" in the former Soviet Union included an entire range of project planning for putting into action the planning directives. It included environmental planning and a detailed outlay of city planning, like position and location of all buildings in a long-term period (5, 10, or 20-25 years). These documents were checked and approved at many levels of government: at the local government, State Planning Commission of the USSR and planning commissions of the Union republics. Some projects were subject to approval by the government of the Soviet Union or that of a Soviet republic. Due to their rather long-term planning period these documents were only advisory in character. The general and regional schemes for settlement systems had similar legal status. These latter schemes had a conceptual, orientating character and were subject to approval by the governments of the USSR and Union republic.
All these documents formed the basis of formulation of planning and development concepts at district and community levels.
Some Problems of Regional Planning in the former Soviet Union and Russia
The forecasting of economic developments was of decisive significance within the framework of "physical planning". As experience shows, mistakes and miscalculations made in the selection of a location were often irreversible. The choice of an industrial or settlement location with unfavourable natural conditions (geographically determined confined surfaces, unfavourable weather conditions, locations over places where raw materials have not yet been accessed, etc.) created growing problems in the future. The construction of municipal territories and city agglomerates without considering perspectives for a long-term development created confusion in industry, traffic flows and in living areas. This also often led to increased air pollution and had a detrimental effect on city water supplies, creating hurdles, which were difficult to overcome in the development of housing areas. For a long time one of the most important tasks of physical planning consisted in determining of the development prospects of each individual settlement. One of the most serious problems here was limiting the continuing growth, especially that of the largest cities. A special importance was given to determining the size of a city. Davidovich (1964) explained this task as follows: "Dwarf cities and giant cities are uncomfortable and disadvantageous".
An optimal city size was interpreted differently by various sources. According to Davidovich (1964) this was somewhere between 30,000 and 150,000 inhabitants. Belousov (1983) quoted others like Baranov (100,000 to 120,000), Artemchuk (100,000 to 200,000) or Osnovy sovetskogo gradostroitelstva (20,000 to 300,000). All attempts to develop an optimal city based just on theoretical calculations remained, however, unsuccessful. According to Belousov, the most fundamental mistake was the assumption, "that political-economic effectiveness ... of a settlement can be estimated separately for every settlement". In Soviet planning it was also not taken into consideration that in determining of an optimal size of a city the advantages of a location of a large city (concentration of scientific facilities, administration, education centres, and cultural and recreation facilities, etc.) cannot in every respect compensate for the disadvantages cited above. Instead, it was preferable to reach a balance by including relatively smaller settlements into city agglomerations and thus overcoming a large potion of their own problems, like limitations of a local economy or an insufficient development of cultural and goods supplies. It was only after the general scheme for settlement systems was adopted that the optimising of individual settlements to complex planning of regions and large city agglomerations was begun.
This system of planning led to further mistakes in forecasting of the population growth of municipal and industrial regions, because it was based only on a short to medium-term forecast and did not incorporate planning for a longer time interval of 30 to 40 years or longer. The final regional plans were often a summary of plans provided by powerful individual ministries. These plans failed to produce a developmental prognosis for the region in its entity, including a comprehensive and complex spatial analysis.
A further problem in Soviet planing was associated with the priority given to industrial development over the environment. Most strongly affected by this problem were intensely developing industrial regions and centres, and the emerging city agglomerations. The damage incurred by a false location selection, unrestricted exploitation of natural resources, structural mistakes in the geological analysis is not always visible. Its effects can often reveal themselves in the distant future. A timely estimation and avoidance of a potential damage is even more difficult if a preferred option is proven to be the most effective solution from an economic standpoint.
Physical planning in the Soviet Union reflected both accomplishments and deficiencies of the Soviet economic and social system. The development was often based on extensive and wasteful approaches to the use of land and natural resources, was dominated by narrow thinking based on interests of ministries and government departments. It often lead to an excessive concentration on industrialisation of the country, especially of the further development of the Military Industrial Complex, and to an insufficient investment in the civilian construction.
The system of regional and urban planning in the former USSR and in Russia was well developed. But in this regard there is an important consideration that needs to be taken into account. The specific features of this system provided for a leading role, in the process of realization, of ministries and enterprises rather than the so-called complex regional plans of social-economic development as well as schemes of regional planning and general plans of the cities and towns. The system provided territorial bodies with a relatively small influence over economic and social developments in their regions, because the major part of that or other regional economy was under full control of various central ministries, departments and union managerial bodies. Caucasian Spa Resorts provide a good example of this situation. At a planning stage, there were all necessary regional and city plans designed for this region, as well as for its various resorts. However, during realisation of these general plans since 1970 there were more than 200 violations of these documents revealed. Here again it is necessary to emphasise that the above-mentioned serious ecological situation in the region of the Caucasian Spa Resorts (as well as in many other regions and cities in Russia) also had its roots in the Soviet system of regional planning when just few original general and regional planning schemes were implemented in full.
Physical and Regional Planning under New Social and Economic Conditions in Russia
Though still in transition, one might say that there is a new legal and functional mechanism for the development of cities and physical and regional planning that is currently emerging in Russia. In the last few years a series of important judicial and normative documents for a further development of cities were issued in the form of laws of the Federation Parliament, decrees of the president, government acts, directives and methodical instructions, as well as recommendations of leading planning/projecting research institutes. In these new conditions the former two-tier system of regional and physical planning have been generally abolished. Dismantling of the system of central planning have created a situation where the former directive (regional) planning had received a strengthened regulative function in connection with regional policy of federal and local authorities in the context of community self-administration. The increasing decentralisation of state power in Russia and the elimination of state central planning mean that the state has very limited influence upon economic decision-making structures. Under these conditions spatial planning receives a new character in the context of regional policies (national, regional and local levels).
In post-Soviet Russia the objectives and goals of physical planning remained generally intact. Under new conditions the physical planning was supposed to increasingly take over the task of creating a balanced development of the regions that was earlier performed by the state planning structures. However, until now, much in the same way as before, it is economic agents, not local authorities, that continue to determine planning in most of Russia's regions. Like in the Soviet times, the government-approved General Scheme for the settlement systems continues to form the general framework for physical planning in Russia.
During the 1990s there has also been growth of significance of regional and communal groups and authorities as major decision-makers in regional planning questions. Under the Soviet system, the design of regional or general plans for cities was the task of a few large state planning institutions. In order not to repeat the mistakes of the past, Russia first has to develop at the community and regional levels a public awareness of the necessity of regional/physical planning, as well as a sense of responsibility for the future. If one reads or talks to Russian planning experts, (s)he would notice a dominance of the marked "centralist" thinking, much as before. Available legislative possibilities are still hardly being used by decision-makers at regional or community levels, and at present are not even widely officially recognised. Frequently one might find among regional and community leaders a gross lack of understanding of the existing problems in city planning, despite the fact that these problems demand urgent and innovative solutions on a daily basis. In general, it needs mentioning that the influence of the centre on planning and decision-making in the regions remains strong as before. Most of leading state bodies, central scientific research institutes, independent commissions of experts or consulting firms in the areas of city planning are still located in Moscow and continue to play a key role in the design of most significant planning projects. Physical planning can still be made only at two planning institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg. There are still no private planning offices.
Apart from central state bodies, other most important economic decision-makers, such as banks, corporations, industrial-finance groups, all have their headquarters in Moscow. More than 80% of the financial resources of Russia are concentrated in Moscow banks. It is in Moscow where crucial decisions on investment distribution are being taken. Regional and local investors are in most cases closely linked to Moscow-based companies. As in the Soviet times, when large Union Industry Ministries were exercising their influence over regional policies, in contemporary Russia it is again the economic structures that continue to exert considerable influence on the regulation and implementation of the regional city planning policy.
Since 1993 a new directive has been in existence. This document introduces a few new stages of urban planning. Under this new regulation the planning work is no longer to be carried out within political-administrative regions and is no longer bound to concrete planning projects, as was the case earlier. Instead a new concept of regions with transcending borders was introduced. Ecological aspects of future planning projects have also been given a central importance.
It is worth noting that under new economic conditions it is necessary to re-evaluate the perspectives for the development of cities of different types and that of the Russian urban system as a whole. Such a re-evaluation is even more necessary due to the fact that the great majority of schemes and projects in the area of regional planning, and many of general (master) plans for Russian cities were drawn up before 1985.
Conclusion
The development of cities reflects, in a concentrated form, the process of economic and social transformation, which is under way in contemporary Russia. In addition, it needs stressing that due to different economic and natural conditions in various Russian regions, their developmental needs are also very different. There is an urgent need to re-evaluate the prospects of city development and urban planning in Russia.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the geopolitical position of a great number of Russian territorial units has gone through important changes with many cities and regions which previously were in the centre of the country now located near the new border or on vital transit highways. This led to significant changes in the functional structure and in the socio-economic basis of development of these Russian cities.
Recent far-reaching changes in the demographic situation in Russia are of paramount importance to the future development of Russian cities. These changes include increasing depopulation of a number of regions, stagnation or decrease in the population numbers in those cities that for years have been able to register constant growth in numbers of residents, as well as rapid increase in migration flows between Russian regions and across Russia's borders.
The ecological situation in the majority of cities of the Russian Federation remains critical. This is true both for the industrial centres and the areas with high radiation levels (sites of nuclear tests and accidents) as well as for some resort areas (for example, the region of the Caucasian Spa Resorts). Today one in ten Russian cities has an unfavourable or dangerous ecological situation.
Reassessment of the problems related to the development of Russian cities requires an independent evaluation. Two groups of problems need to be analysed. First, the problems of development of the big cities as well as of small and medium sized cities. And, second, the specifics of development of certain functional urban settlements. Many of these issues are currently studied within the framework of the research project on "Change of significance of the urban settlement system in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union", which is being carried out at the Institute of Regional Geography in Leipzig, Germany.
It needs stressing that problems of development of each Russian city need to be analysed in the individual regional context. This approach will allow taking into account in planning of environmental policy and settlement development those significant differences that exist between various cities in their natural conditions, economic development, demography and ethnic and social conditions.
The focal point of this study was an analysis of the various periods of the development of physical planning which formed the basis of the Soviet settlement policy. Physical planning work made a great contribution to the formation of regions which developed rapidly in the USSR. Although the system of planning strategies for regional policy that existed in the USSR and in Russia was largely construction-oriented, practical implementation of projects was often halted due to a number of reasons, foremost because of the shortcomings of the system of the socialist planned economy.
Transition to a free market economy in Russia has led to an increasing decentralisation of central power and to the elimination of state central planning. Russian state now has a relatively small influence upon economic decision-making structures. Under these new conditions regional planning receives a new status within the context of regional policies, both on national, regional and local levels. In conclusion it can be noted that the physical planning continues to maintain its objectives and functions, but has now received a new legal status as the basis for development of widely differentiated Russian regions.