10
Figure 2. Cities of more than 1,000,000 population
—Y— Yekaterinburg
—∙— Moscow
N N. Novgorod
—×— Samara
St. Petersburg
The expert evaluation encompasses significant industrial, transport, resort and other centres in
different parts of the country as well. On the one hand, some industrial cities have got a
relatively high (Nishnekamsk/chemical and oil processing industry/Volga Region,
Cherepovets/iron and steel industry/Northern Region, Naberezhnye Chelny/motor-car
industry/Volga Region), or on the other hand, low (Prokopyevsk/coal industry/West Siberian
Region, Kineshma/textile industry/Central Region), evaluation of development potential.
The development potential of Russian cities with different economic functions will be
discussed in the next paper in every detail.
There is much room for interpretations of the development potential of cities in the strongly
differentiated economic regions of Russia. The expert analysis may serve as the first step in
this case and affords a good opportunity of understanding what the important cities of Russia
are (those which bear the economic and social development of the country) 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.
Acknowledgements
The paper is a result of a research carried out at the Institute of Regional Geography in
Leipzig within the framework of a scientific project „Change of significance of the urban
settlement system in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union”v (Project Director Dr. I.
Brade) in collaboration with the Moscow University (Prof. Dr. E.N. Pertsik), taking into
account the suggestions and observations at the 14th ERSA Summer Institute in Groningen.