Determinants of city growth in Russia

Today in Russia there are 1120 cities that are located in the territories with varying degrees of concentration. In the federal districts and regions of the Russian Federation, there is a wide disparity not onlyin the size of cities, but also in their growth rates. At a decrease in the population in small cities, there is an increase in big towns and cities with more than one million inhabitants. This trend shows the “attraction” of the population from regions into capital cities. The aim of the article is to assess the effects of factors that can influence the growth of a city in the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty of the research consistsin theanalysis of the influenceofexternal (infrastructure, security) and internal (economic, social, infrastructure, human capital, environmental situation) factors on the growth of cities. The paper presents a system of factor indicators of urban growth. Cities of different sizes have different levels of life standard, and therefore author’s methodologywas tested in terms of urban sizes: towns, medium-sized cities, large cities, million-plus cities. The significant factors in the growth ofmillion-plus cities in the Russian Federation are the initial population size and average monthly wages. The growth in the population of large cities is negatively affected by the spatial concentration of industrial enterprises. A high level of average monthly wages contributes to an increase in the population of this type of cities. A significant positive impact on the growth of large cities depends on the concentration of mining industry, volume of investments in fixed assets, number of doctors. The concentration of mining industrial production has a positive effect on the basic growth rate of medium-sized cities. The concentration of manufacturing and the volume of investment in fixed assets have a significant positive effect on the growth of small towns. The practical significance of the obtained results consists in the possibility of creation of a methodological toolkit for the assessment of urban systems of the region, which can become the basis for the development of an algorithm for the strategic planning of the spatial development of cities in the Russian Federation.