Studying urban settlement systems based on methodological provisions of spatial demography

The actualization of the tasks of Russia’s spatial development determines the need to study settlement processes as one of the ways of territorial organization of society. The development of the spatial demography methodology, the increase in the depth of demographic data and the improvement of mathematical tools make it possible to apply new approaches to the study of settlement. In the article, to analyze regional settlement systems, we propose to use such an indicator of spatial development as the gradient of population density, the theoretical change of which is an exponential function and is described by Clarke’s law. This allowed testing the hypothesis that in regions characterized by the presence of pronounced agglomeration processes, the population density gradient will follow Clarke’s law, while in regions with a different type of settlement, Clarke’s law will not be fulfi lled. The novelty of the study is related to the fact that based on regression modeling we show the presence of two types of regional settlement systems: in the regions of industrial development there are pronounced agglomeration processes, which is confi rmed by the fulfi llment of Clarke’s law for the gradient of population density, and in the regions of non-industrial development (extractive, agroindustrial) the settlement system has a different structure and Clarke’s law is not fulfi lled. A promising direction of the research is to test the hypothesis in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The results obtained can be used in the analysis of urbanization and agglomeration processes, as well as in the implementation of spatial development policy in Russian regions.