Moscow Must Manage Shrinking of Its 800 Small and Mid-Sized Cities or Face Their Collapse, Russian Urbanist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – Moscow must come up with policies to manage the shrinking of the country’s small and mid-sized cities or watch as they collapse into chaos with serious consequences not only for themselves but for the country as a whole, Russian urbanist Yuliya Zubarik says.

            The head of the Master’s Plan Bureau says that demographic trends make the decline of such cities inevitable, and the government must  come up with a plan to manage that trend or face a cascading series of disasters (realty.ria.ru/20250627/urbanist-2025649914.html and on-news.ru/regions/kontroliruemaya-gibel-urbanist-dala).

            More than 800 of the 1125 cities in the Russian Federation have populations under 50,000; and the impact of the continuing decline in the population of the country as a whole on them must not be ignored, especially as 80 percent of these cities are already losing population, a figure that will only grow in the future.

            There is no universal solution for the problems these cities face, but there are models abroad, including the reaction of American officials to the collapse of Detroit’s population a half century ago. So far, there have been very few Russian efforts to address this trend, Zubarik continues.

            In her view, such cities will survive only by ensuring that they have some economic basis. Those who place their hopes in tourism as many are now doing will be disappointed. At tourism supports only 10 to 15 percent of all Russian cities, and that share is unlikely to increase dramatically in the future.