The article is dedicated to a critical analysis of the theoretical and methodological developments of Soviet and Russian scientists in the field of urbanism and sociology of the city. The relevance of this work is seen in the fact that today the desire of a significant part of Russian citizens (especially young people) to move to Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of large cities - centres of the subjects of the Russian Federation leads to a weakening of the spatial framework of the country. This makes it important to study the topic in the context of urbanisation processes in general. The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of the approaches of domestic scientists to the problems of the city, and non-capital cities in particular, as well as their general dynamics in the late Soviet, post-Soviet and modern periods.

In the 1970s–1980s urbanisation processes in the USSR were subordinated to production (the leading theme was “city and labor”); the settlement strategy continued, the advantages and contradictions of new cities were noted, the importance of including small towns in the agglomeration was emphasised. The foundations of urban social planning were developed, the ideology of "developed socialism" contributed to the formation of the problematics of the urban way of life and communities.

During the Perestroika period, many of the principles of urban development were formulated in opposition to the Soviet ones. The city was understood as a self-developing system, the individual was declared the measure of urban processes. The settlement system, that determines the most acute problems of new cities, was critically assessed. Differentiation of the capital and non-capital cities of Russia, serious contradictions in the development of small towns, and the weakening of agglomerations were noted. The focus was made on maintaining the large and largest urban centres.

In the 2000s, extreme criticism of Soviet urbanisation was overcome, strategic urban planning, the idea of preserving the network of small and medium-sized cities, and the development of agglomerations as the basis for the country's spatial development were promoted. The direction of research of intercity and intracity stratification in the context of problems of spatial inequality, urban activism and urban social environment was being developed.

The authors come to the conclusion that Russia has accumulated a wealth of experience in studying urbanisation processes. This suggests that in the future it will be possible to successfully combine the use of cities as reference points for the country's integration with the planning ideas developed during the Soviet period and models for the formation of a comfortable urban space, based on the activities of local communities.

city, city sociology, non-capital cities, urbanisation, social planning, spatial development, urban communities

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