Urbanization Resource in Russia

The paper studies the urbanization characteristics and influence of the urban system on economic development of Russian regions employing descriptive statistics and regression analysis. The study shows the absence of urbanization growth in Russia, like in many other developed countries. The lack of dynamics in the scale of urban system is mainly due to the negative natality of recent decades. Based on empirical estimates, the author concludes that Russia is close to exhausting the possibilities of extensive expansion of the urban system. The estimates indicate that the economic resource of urbanization is connected with development of its internal structure (concentration decreasing and variety increasing) rather than scope growth of the urban system. The author concludes following: 1) there is positive influence of diversity of the urban system on the level of general regional productivity; 2) resources’ concentration in one centre negatively impact on the regional economic development; 3) a universal city policy is ineffective in Russia, due to the presence of significant regional differences in the urban system