Urban Population Resettlement in the Arctic Zone of Russia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theoretical problems of population resettlement in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation. It shows the changes in the settlement system in the 2000s. A grouping of settlements according to the number of inhabitants is carried out. The main attention is paid to thestudy of the urban population dynamics in the Arctic. The statistical material of population censuses for 1959-2010 and the data of the current population accounting at the beginning of 2017are given.

Sustainable Development in Sparsely Populated Territories: Case of the Russian Arctic and Far East

“…Nature and climate. Sparsely populated territories are characterized by barren and otherwise physically unattractive environmental conditions, which can incur additional costs for labor [38] and life-maintaining services, complicate access to energy supplies, and limit technological access and safety conditions [39]. Northern SPTs represent an area of significant natural capital, primarily in the form of mineral resources [27,40].…”

“…Sparsely populated territories are often home to demographic dynamism and a diversity of nationalities [30], urban-rural compositions [29], and reproductive and migratory behavior [44]. From the second half of the twentieth century, the SPTs of Australia, the EU, and Russia have demonstrated demographic vulnerability: population decline, negative migration balance, and rapidly-aging populations [38,[45][46][47][48][49]. All of these processes are considered to be negative trends and a "demography of disadvantage" [50], because the size, structure, and dynamics of the populations in question do not allow for their sustainable continuation in the territory.…”

“…Settlement system. Despite noting a wide variety of settlement types and developmental dynamism in SPTs [27], most existing literature on the topic has shown that the settlement systems of SPTs are closely related to the environmental capacity and physical characteristics of the territory: the sparse displacement is described as being "tapered" (situated along rivers, coasts, railway lines, and roads) [38,51,52] and "focal" (concentrated in areas containing natural resources, agricultural opportunities, or traditional indigenous communities and diffuse ex-urbanization landscapes) [29,52,53]. Many small settlements of urban primacy, between which there are few strong ties, have also been noted [38]; thus, small towns and urban settlements should either expand their functionality, or, in the absence of such opportunity, exist temporarily.…”