Tendencies of Spatial Polarization of the Settlement System in the Russian Far East

ERI FEB RAS	Issue's contents	RUS
	Regionalistica 2023 Volume 10 number 2 pages 58-77

Title of the article	Tendencies of Spatial Polarization of the Settlement System in the Russian Far East
Pages	58-77
Author	Merzlyakov Igor Olegovich junior research fellow Economic Research Institute FEB RAS 153, Tikhookeanskaya Street, Khabarovsk, Russia, 680042 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ORCID: 0000-0003-1715-3225
Abstract	The concentration of population and economic activity in large cities can bring economic benefits due to the manifestation of positive agglomeration effects. At the same time, there is reason to believe that the manifestation of concentration benefits or positive agglomeration effects is not always strong enough to exceed the costs involved. In this paper, two hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis is that settlements, except for regional capitals, generally «lose» population, within the regions the diversity of settlement sizes decreases, which can adversely affect regional economies. The second hypothesis is the assumption that the concentration of the population at the expense of the far periphery occurs not only in the large cities themselves, but also in their suburbs, which form a single economic centre with a regional capital. To construct the distributions of 528 settlements in seven Far Eastern regions in 2013–2021, Rosstat data on the population and a method based on the use of Markov chains and transition probability matrices are used. Both hypotheses are confirmed for the studied regions of the Russian Far East as a whole. In the final distribution, the share of small settlements increases significantly against the background of a significant decrease in the share of larger settlements, which means a decrease in the diversity of settlements in the long term (the first hypothesis). The settlements closest to the regional capitals show significant growth with a decrease in the number of large settlements (the second hypothesis). The second hypothesis is also confirmed for the Khabarovsk Territory and the Amur Region, but not for the Primorsky Territory and the Jewish Autonomous Region.
Code	332.1
DOI	10.14530/reg.2023.2.58
Keywords	concentration, agglomeration, Markov chains, distribution, transition probability matrix, Far East
Download	2023-02.58.pdf
For citation	Merzlyakov I.O. Tendencies of Spatial Polarization of the Settlement System in the Russian Far East. Regionalistica [Regionalistics]. 2023. Vol. 10. No. 2. Pp. 58–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.14530/reg.2023.2.58 (In Russian)
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