provided by Research Papers in Economics
Dmitri Piterski
D PITERSKI@IFL-LEIPZIG.DE
INSTITUTE OF REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY, LEIPZIG, GERMANY
Evaluation of the Development Potential of Russian Citiesi.
Paper prepared for the 41st Congress of the ERSA, Zagreb, 29th September - 1st of August
2001
Abstract
The quantitative expert evaluation encompasses all of the centres of constituent members of
the Russian Federation with resident population over 50,000 (which are discussed in this
paper) as well as significant industrial, transport, scientific, tourist centres etc. (almost 200
cities).
The expert evaluation was curried out with the aid of 22 indicators, which form the following
11 factor groups: demographic situation, administrative significance, industrial potential,
scientific and cultural potential, transportation, financial resources, quality of life,
infrastructure, ecological situation, political conditions, criminality.
The "million-cities", and large regional centres judging by the development potential and the
attractiveness of investment, form the group of the 20 most significant Russian cities (all of
them are the centres of the administrative regions of the Russian Federation) and Togliatti is
the large centre of motor-car construction.
Some industrial cities have got a relatively high, or low evaluation of development potential.
The latter affects to a large extent the cities with a marked monofunctional economic
structure, for example, in the regions of the textile industry, coal mining, certain branches of
the raw materials industry, and others.
The expert analysis affords a good opportunity of understanding what the contemporary
important cities of Russia are and thereby of formulating a representatively new re-evaluation
of the cities according to the present investment potential by demonstrating the further
development possibilities within the framework of the economic and geopolitical
transformational process in the strongly differentiated economic regions of Russia, including