REGIONAL POPULATION REDISTRIBUTION IN THE USSR: 1979-84

This paper examines regional redistribution and population growth rate trends in the USSR from 1979 to 1984, and compares them to preceding intercensal trends for 1959-70 and 1970-79. Total and regional rates of population change for 1979-84 were generally lower than in preceding periods. The most pronounced regional shift continues to be toward rapidly growing Central Asia, which has surpassed the Center as the most populous Soviet region. However, Central Asia now has net out-migration, and the degree of shift to Central Asia was less than during 1970-79. Between 1979 and 1984 a noticeable northward and eastward shift occurred. In particular, there appeared to be a resurgence of Siberia. After two decades of decline, the share of the Soviet population residing in Siberia increased between 1979 and 1984. Another notable development was the slowing of the rate of rural population decline, especially in the Non-Chernozem Zone of European USSR and in Siberia. It is possible that policies to promote migration to Siberia and to stem rural depopulation may be having some effect. The shift to cities in general and large cities in particular, however, continues. (The author would like to thank Robert Lewis for his useful comments and Jane Rowland for her excellent typing).     

Contemporary Migration in the USSR

The predominance of individual migration and a lack of coordination among government agencies result in a situation in which migration in the USSR often works at counter-purposes, with people moving away from areas suffering from a labor shortage and into areas with a labor surplus. A system of economic measures is advocated to optimize Soviet migration patterns. Since differences in living conditions are the basic motive between migration, an effort should be made to establish relationships between region al living standards that would attract migrants to regions with a labor shortage and induce them to settle permanently, instead of taking temporary advantage of high wage rates.     

CHANGES IN THE METROPOLITAN AND LARGE CITY POPULATIONS OF THE USSR: 1979-85

This paper investigates the post-census growth of metropolitan areas and large cities in the USSR from 1979 to 1985. The Soviet population continues to be increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas and large cities, and although suburbanization occurs within metropolitan areas, a striking feature is that all central cities continue to grow and typically contain the vast majority of the metropolitan population. This reflects the fact that individual large cities continue to loom large, despite policies to limit their growth. Although the growth rates of large cities have slowed, so have those of smaller towns, and a merging of growth rates by size class is occurring.     

Social-Demographic Aspects of Urbanization in the USSR

A certain measure of agreement is found between rates of urbanization and industrialization, with the agreement far greater with total growth of urban population than with the concentration of urban population in big cities. This finding is thought to be significant support for those who contend that limitations on big-city growth are desirable and will not have an adverse effect on industrial development. Migration from the countryside continues to be the main source of urbanization, although its significance has greatly declined as natural increase of the urban population has risen. Migration in general is thought to be desirable because it helps redistribute the able-bodied population between the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy and provides a channel for social mobility of rural youth. However, the magnitude and composition of rural-urban migration in some regions is having an adverse effect on the economy and requires more effective regulation.     

FROM KARLO-LIBKNEKHTOVSK AND NEW YORK TO PROPOYSK AND RASTYAPINO?: HOW PLACE NAMES ARE CHANGING IN THE FORMER USSR

In a paper submitted directly to Post-Soviet Geography, the author presents as thorough a list of place name changes as possible for the former USSR for the period 1985 to mid-1992. The situation is assessed with respect to the former union republics, nationality-based lower-order administrative territorial units, oblasts and krays, and major cities and urban settlements. The list appears to represent the most thorough and authoritative compilation of its kind yet published in the West, given the absence of any official body now empowered with the approval and registration of place name changes across the entire geographic space of the former USSR.     

Problems in the Evolution of Urban Agglomerations

Large urban agglomerations, which have been viewed as undesirable by some authors, are described as legitimate and efficient forms of economic organization and settlement in a modern industrial society. A number of processes in the Soviet economy tend to foster the development of agglomerations; however, the trend toward agglomerations in the USSR is still at a very early stage compared, say, with the United States. If agglomerations are defined on the basis of a central city of 250,000 or more, the USSR had 75 agglomerations in 1970 compared with 240 standard metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. In contrast to the United States, where suburban development has outstripped central-city growth, three-fourths of the population of Soviet agglomerations is concentrated in central cities. In the author's view, control of the evolution of agglomerations should not be designed merely to curb big-city growth, but to foster the development of these urban clusters within the limitations of environmental constraints.     

PANEL ON THE SOVIET UNION IN THE YEAR 2000

A panel of geographers debates possible future developments in the Soviet Union in regional and environmental policy, water resource management, agriculture, industry, energy, population, urban growth and planning, transportation, and foreign trade. The present emphasis on modernization of existing plant capacity in cities of the western, more heavily settled regions of the USSR seems destined to continue, although it will be constrained by a growing shortage of industrial labor, declining terms of trade and resource oversupply in increasingly competitive export markets, and the continued resistance of Central Asian populations to urbanization and industrial employment.     

Confronting Out-Migration and the Skills Gap in Declining German Cities

High-skilled groups are regarded as a key asset for economic growth and urban development and are thus increasingly targeted by cities. Within this context, the paper analyses the effects of urban decline and intra-national migration trends on cities. The impact of both processes on population development varies considerably between cities and regions and calls for micro- and macro-level policy responses. The contribution focuses on the local impact of the (out-)migration of higher-skilled groups and addresses the research questions: how do local stakeholders and decision-makers evaluate the consequences of the out-migration of highly qualified residents and how are they responding? Our analysis combines the findings of two research projects and draws mainly on qualitative data. The case studies are located in Germany and comprise three medium-sized cities outside of major agglomerations and three large cities within metropolitan areas. The six cities share the common characteristic of urban decline as a result of structural change and have been experiencing population decline. While medium-sized cities lose the highly skilled after they complete schooling, larger old industrial cities lose them after they complete higher education degrees. The paper discusses the implications of intra-national migration for these cities.     

On the Implications of a Stationary Urban Population For the Size Distribution of Cities

The paper analyzes the limiting case for a modified Yule-Simon model of city growth. The aim of the paper is primarily to reintroduce geographers to the notion of a closed system of cities, i.e., a system of cities where the aggregate population is stationary in size. The Yule-Simon model, while successful in dealing with the observed properties of open systems, is seen to break down for closed systems. Moreover, incorporating Simon's assumptions regarding intercity migration into the model produces implausible results. Also, the traditional approach of employing entropy-maximizing procedures assumes a certain pattern of intercity migration. This pattern, while not inherently implausible, does present features which are questionable. The authors conclude that an adequate theory for closed systems has yet to be developed.     

WHY ARE SMART CITIES GROWING? WHO MOVES AND WHO STAYS*

ABSTRACT This paper examines why smart cities are growing by investigating who moves to smart cities and who stays. Smart cities are often centers of higher education, so students moving to pursue higher education may play an important role. I find that the greater in‐migration to smart cities is mostly due to persons enrolled in higher education. Smart cities are growing in part because in‐migrants often stay in the city after completing their education. The growth of smart cities is also mostly attributable to population redistribution within the same state and has little effect on population growth at the state level.     

Methods Of Evaluating The Natural Environment For Transport Development (with reference to the north of Tyumen' Oblast)

A landscape map of northern Tyumen' Oblast, an area of intensive oil and gas development, is used as the base for compilation of an applied landscape map evaluating the environment in terms of suitability for various means of transportation. In terms of such criteria as the carrying capacity of the ground, dissection of terrain and slope angles, climate, distances between trees, bog and lake cover, 16 regions offering distinctive conditions for transport development are delimited and mapped. The technique is offered as an aid in estimating transport-development costs and may be applied for similar purposes in other regions of USSR.     

E. G. Ravenstein and the “laws of migration”

E. G. Ravenstein's three articles on migration, the first published one hundred years ago, form the basis for most modern research on migration; if the three articles are collated, his “laws” or perhaps more accurately, hypotheses, total eleven. This article considers, briefly, Ravenstein's career, the sources on which his “laws” were based and some of the difficulties of interpreting the British Census place of birth data. The bulk of the article reviews subsequent work on his eleven hypotheses with reference to nineteenth-century British internal migration. Subsequent work has confirmed that migration was mainly short distance and that there was relatively little increase in the average distance travelled by migrants until after 1850. His step-by-step hypothesis remains untested, but his belief that most migration was from the countryside to the towns is confirmed as is his identification of counter currents. His ideas on sex and age differentials have been borne out. However, his assumptions about the relative importance of natural increase and migration in the growth of cities and the relative importance of “push” and “pull” factors in causing migration merit further research. His original hypotheses have for the most part been confirmed. However, the defects of the published data suggest that nineteenth-century migration will not be properly understood until the enumerators' schedules for the century have been analysed.     

Understanding Spatial Differentiation in Urban Decline Levels

The economic and demographic changes currently manifest in many Western cities—referred to as urban decline or urban shrinkage—are receiving increased attention in public and academic debates. Although the general processes driving these changes have been identified, such processes cannot explain why regions and cities which have been exposed to similar processes still differ in their economic and demographic developments. This Western European and US-based literature review attempts to answer the question of how this interregional and intraregional variation in levels of economic and demographic decline can be understood. It is argued that the degree to which wider societal forces (such as deindustrialization, changes in international and domestic migration and changing fertility levels) impact on a particular area depends on how these forces are filtered, first, through the institutional and, second, the spatial context that the region or city is located in. To understand the differences between the cities within one region (being part of the same institutional and spatial contexts), we need to descend to the city level and take account of the local (dis)amenities, comprising its physical, social and economic assets, and the influence of (the place characteristics of) other cities in the vicinity and the socio-political framework.     

DISTANCE FROM URBAN AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES AND RURAL POVERTY*

ABSTRACT Despite strong national economic growth and significant poverty reduction during the late 1990s, high poverty persisted in remote rural areas. This study uses a geographical information system county database to examine the nexus between rural U.S. poverty and remoteness. We find that poverty rates increase with greater rural distances from successively larger metropolitan areas (MAs). We explain this outcome as arising from the attenuation of urban agglomeration effects at greater distances and incomplete commuting and migration responses to lower labor demand in rural areas. One implication is that remote areas may particularly experience greater reductions in poverty from place‐based economic development policies.     

Urbanization patterns: European versus less developed countries

This paper develops a model in which the interaction between transport costs, increasing returns to scale, and labor migration across sectors and regions creates a tendency for urban agglomeration. Demand from rural areas favors urban dispersion. European urbanization took place mainly in the 19th century, with higher costs of spatial interaction, weaker economies of scale, and a less-elastic supply of labor to the urban sector than in less developed countries (LDCs) today. These factors could help explain why primate cities dominate in LDCs, whereas a comparatively small share of urban population lives in Europe's largest cities.     

Where does all the talent flow? Migration of young graduates and nongraduates,Canada 1996–2001

It has recently been suggested that cities and regions should focus upon attracting talented individuals as a means to develop. Such a suggestion implies two things: first that it is possible to meaningfully alter migration flows by way of local policy, and second that these flows have an effect on local growth (and not the reverse as has generally been admitted). In this paper, we begin to investigate the empirical foundations of such assertions by examining some structural determinants of graduate migration flows by comparing them, in a gravity model context, to flows of nongraduates. Our contention is that, if migration flows are structured by such factors, then policies aimed at modifying flows—and any research purporting to give such policy advice—must first take them into account. We show that migration flows are strongly dependent on basic gravity variables such as size and distance, but that these and other variables (such as income differences, presence of graduates and border effects) do not affect all flows equally. Furthermore, we show that certain factors that are assumed to be local (such as wage levels) in fact only operate at a provincial level. Thus policies implemented locally may have little or no effect if they are manipulating factors that operate at a different scale.     

A Study of the Functional Structure of Urban Places of the USSR (in connection with the tasks of an economic-geographic typology)

The author, following previous work by himself and A.A. Mints, offers a functional typology and classification of Soviet cities based on the percentage of the urban labor force employed in industry and transportation combined and in industry alone. The classification is apparently based on unpublished employment data supplied to the author by the Central Statistical Administration USSR. The classification distinguishes major capital cities, diversified industrial, transport, local organizing, recreation, and other types of cities.     

Devolution,Constitutional Development,and the Russian North

A prominent American Sovietologist examines a range of issues surrounding the involuntary migration of Russian populations from the non-Russian republics of the former USSR. Among the questions addressed are possible magnitudes of in-migration into Russia (with special attention paid to conditions in one of the major source regions, Central Asia), attitudes in Russia regarding appropriate policy with respect to treatment of co-nationals in the near abroad and whether their return to Russia would have a positive or negative impact, and conditions in areas of Russia that presently are absorbing the greatest numbers of migrants. The assertion that Russian policy should seek aggressively to prevent the out-migration of Russian populations in the near abroad is assessed critically. 1 table, 1 figure, 10 references.     

地方性中心城市空间扩张的多元动力--基于葫芦岛市的调查和分析

葫芦岛市近年来的空间扩张主要有三种表现方式:其一是在建成区内部和边缘的零散开发;其二是采用园区建设的方式进行组织化和规模化的开发,其三是在主城区边缘由民间资本自下而上推进的工业化和小城镇发展,并实现与主城区的功能一体化。深入的调查和分析显示,城市的空间扩张以及有关的基础设施建设,是在理性的规划力、市场力、市政府的发展冲动、区政府的发展冲动、民间的创业冲动、环境吸引力等多元动力共同作用下进行的。多数地方性中心城市的发展动力的总和相对并不充足。这一基本背景和城市空间战略密切相关。     

Urban bound migration and rural investment: the case of Mexico

The authors investigate an agriculturally based policy for improving rural incomes and for retarding the rural-urban migration flow. The production of agricultural goods is characterized by a production function in which output increases with increases in agricultural labor inputs, capital, public infrastructure, land, and technology. Differences among regions in agricultural technology will reflect regional differences in education, the institutionalized form of productive organization, and differences in access to technological information channeled through more technically advanced cities. To pick up the effect of out-migration changes in state agricultural labor supply and upon agricultural output, the state's agricultural out-migration rate is included together with the agricultural labor force. The gross migrant flow between 2 locations is hypothesized to depend upon a set of variables influencing the individual's perception of the economic rate of return to be gained by moving, a set of variables reflecting the individual's propensity to relocate, the labor displacement effects of investments, and the at risk population at 1 location available to migrate. It is also taken into account that individuals differ in their response to information about origin and destination wage differentials and that individuals may or may not perceive a new ecnomic gain from migration but may base the decision on other considerations. Results of a statistical analysis using data from the Mexican census of population for 1960 and 1970 are: 1) size of the rural labor force was negatively associated with agricultural wages, contrary to expectations; 2) small farmers have benefited from the expansion of irrigation in Mexico; and 3) higher urban wages attract migration, and higher growth rate of agricultural income retards rural-urban migration. With respect to the 1950-60 decade both agricultural income and rural out-migration impacts could have been substantial but both the impact on local urban growth and on the rate of in-migration to the primate city would have been slight.