Approaches to the organization of management of environmental protection within the framework of introduction of Smart City technologies are reviewed in this article. For this purpose, a retrospective analysis of transformation of the Smart City notion has been carried out and basic characteristics of a modern smart city interpretation have been distinguished: the use of information technology in all functional areas of the city ecosystem, active involvement of residents in the processes of city management through organization of a system of user services, commitment to sustainable development of a city to the benefit of future generations. In the research process the key factors of the environment pollution in cities were reviewed having identified systemic challenges in the environmental field, which can be solved by introduction of the Smart City technology. For each environmental factor promising technologies of the Smart City system and effects that may be reached by means of their introduction are provided. Analysis of the existing technological solutions of the Smart City made it possible to identify the complex nature of environmental problems of cities, the solution of which requires introduction of smart technologies in all the spheres of functioning of the city. In the practical part of the article smart city’s technology development and implementation experience is presented, aimed at environmental protection in the cities of Russia and Kazakhstan. The empirical basis of the analysis is constituted by the results of the studies carried out within the framework of the research work “Enhancement of the State Regulation Policy of Accelerated Clustering of the Industrial Regions” implemented on the grounds of the grant funding of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

This article investigates the changing concentrations of population and economic activity in the largest regional capitals during the socioeconomic transformations at the turn of the millennium. The study focuses on million-plus administrative centers of Russian regions (federal subjects). In post-socialist and developing countries, population and economic activities tend to be increasingly concentrated in the regional capitals, which now occupy the leading positions among other second-tier cities in the national settlement system. The authors explore the reasons behind this trend and propose a methodological approach to assess the population concentration and economic activity in the largest regional capitals and compare these figures with those of the national capitals. In the empirical part of the study, the cities' performance is assessed by applying a set of indicators, such as population size, production output, retail turnover, investment, and construction output, and compared with corresponding figures from Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a result, large regional capitals are classified according to their role in the country's socioeconomic performance and according to the disparities between these cities and Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was found that none of the largest regional capitals are able to compete with the country's current and former capitals. Moreover, this gap has been widening over the last decade as the role of regional capitals in national economic development has been steadily declining. However, there are some positive dynamics, as some regional capitals have been outperforming the national average in certain spheres of socioeconomic development.

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