Russian cities at the crossroads : getting lost in transition or moving towards regeneration

The PhD thesis seeks to address the following issues: What the evolution of the Russian urban system in respect to geographical, economical and political context is, and how the city system has been altered due to transition from centrally-planned to market economy model. To what extent various urban settlements have gotten development impulses and why different cities were following different development trajectories. How federal policies are affecting the different types of Russian cities, why in this way, which is the dynamic factor, and what has been endowed for urban regeneration. The study is set out, on the one hand, to demonstrate within a historical and recent politico-economic frame the peculiarities of Russian urbanization which have to be taken into account for the creation of urban regeneration tools and, on the other hand, by means of neural network self-organizing map (NN SOM) application, to explore recently emerging types of cities which could serve the base for the development of urban regeneration initiatives. For making a comprehensive analysis, the transformation processes have been considered at the national, regional and local perspectives as different territorial-administrative levels of a city system which themselves are undergoing different political pressures and speed of transformation, even if at the same time they are deeply interconnected. The PhD study has provided a framework for rethinking Russian cities in a way to understand what supplements today's polarizing tendency towards Moscow with other cities along the huge territory of the Russian Federation. As the nation moves to increase its richness and welfare the thesis has looked at how the reorganization of the Russian city system can contribute to equity and welfare objectives. The study has proved that post-Soviet cities demand a complex regeneration which could be based on diversification and modernization of urban economic base, transport network extension, improvement of housing conditions. Launching the Russian urban regeneration policy demands a new awareness on the merit of cities in market-oriented economy. The urban system improvement requires a long term commitment and should be based on long-term strategic approach, that should counterbalance the short-term urban actions currently implemented by the government. Thus, there is no single quick solution for many years of disinvestment and urban decay. The pattern of urban extension which is promoted directly by the governmental bodies should be replaced by integrating urban regeneration initiatives, which encourage the sustainable compact urban development with reinforcement of interurban connection.