South of Russia – Geodynamics of Housing Construction Centers (The First Half of the 2020s)

The article examines the geography of housing construction in the South of Russia in the first half of the 2020s and analyzes the dynamics of the cost of residential real estate in large and medium-sized cities of the macroregion. It was found that the epicenters of construction activity were the agglomerations of regional capitals (they accounted for 65– 100 % of the volume of new housing being built in the regions), as well as the Black Sea centers of Kuban and Crimea. But the main volumes of construction were concentrated in Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don (the cores of the two largest agglomerations of the macroregion). In early 2020 they accounted for more than 61.6% of the housing built in the South of Russia. By the mid- 2020s, this figure dropped to 53 %, and the number of new housing development centers grew from 42 to 69. The expansion of geographic sites for construction occurred almost exclusively due to the emergence of housing construction centers in Krasnodar Krai and the Crimean Peninsula. Favorable natural and climatic conditions, well-developed social infrastructure, and good transport accessibility made local real estate attractive to the local population and migrants from other regions of Russia. Nevertheless, in the mid-2020s, most of the new hotbeds of construction activity continued to be localized in the vicinity of Krasnodar and Simferopol or on the Black Sea coast, as Black Sea centers were characterized by the maximum value of real estate. In the spring of 2025, eight of them were among the twenty most expensive urban centers in Russia in terms of value of real estate. The possible further growth in the number of medium-sized and small housing construction centers in the South of Russia, as at the present time, is likely to be limited to the Crimea, Krasnodar Krai with the districts of Adygea adjacent to the Kuban capital, and the urbanized southwest of the Rostov region. Because in other territories of the macroregion, a combination of climatic, socio-economic, and demographic factors and conditions determines the lack of external interest in local real estate and the small scale of domestic demand for new housing.