About the single document on agglomeration territory planning

The All-Russian Forum “Strategic Planning in Russian Regions and Cities: Simplifying Strategies, Strengthening Cooperation” held in St. Petersburg (October 30-31, 2023), followed by the 7th All-Russian Strategic Development Forum “Cities of Russia: New Frontiers” (November 16-17, 2023) in Yekaterinburg, confirmed that the development of urban agglomerations is currently considered one of the strategic directions of the country’s spatial development and that the agglomeration phenomenon is a reality of modern global and domestic development. The general line of both forums, in fact, was the topic of agglomerations’ development based on long-term plans for social and economic development (hereinafter referred to as long-term plans) for large and the largest urban agglomerations on the basis of Methodological Guidelines approved by the Economic Development Ministry of the Russian Federation on September 26, 2023. They contain a detailed description of the document’s development stages, but the financing sources for the activities of the urban agglomerations’ plans are not clearly identified. At the same time, there are some examples of funds’ allocation from the federal budget in terms of co-financing from regional budgets for the measures of at least five spatial and socio-economic development master plans until 2030: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Ulan-Ude, Severobaikalsk, Chita and Tynda urban agglomerations, but the legal status of these territory planning documents as well as the rules for their development are missing. It should be noted that in 2020-2021, the Government of the Russian Federation approved the list of rural agglomerations, and since 2023, the implementation of an initiative for the development of support settlements and adjacent territories, which form together rural agglomerations, began; in total, plans will be developed to maintain 1.8 thousand agglomerations until 2030, which will help to solve the population life quality improvement issues comprehensively and have a positive impact on reducing the rate of migration to large cities. The authors believe that a single document on agglomeration territory planning is necessary, and in this article, they justify their point of view.