Territorial and sectoral development of the regional urban system: assessment methodology

Currently, there are 1,100 cities located on the territory of Russia, 101,650 thousand people live there. There is a high concentration of cities in the central part of the country and their dispersion beyond the Urals. Their maximum concentration is typical for the Central Federal District (Moscow Oblast), on the territory of which 30519.2 thousand people of urban population. Cities with millions of inhabitants and large cities act as concentration centers of labor and fi nancial resources, industrial and investment potential, while small and medium-sized cities of peripheral territories have a resource defi cit. The purpose of the study is to develop and test a methodology for assessing the territorial and sectoral development of the regional urban system. The scientifi c novelty of the research lies in the fact that the methodology is based on determining the level of competitiveness of the city and assessing the development of individual types of economic activity with the construction of conjugation matrix. The spatial interconnectedness of cities is determined by the results of calculating the Moran index. The author’s method has been tested on the city system of the Bryansk Oblast. According to the results of the calculations, the paper reveals that high economic potential is characteristic of Bryansk, as well as Fokino which has the status of a single-industry city. It is logical that a very low level of economic development is observed in Mglin and Pochep, as small food industry enterprises with a low profi tability level are located on their territory. The analysis of the spatial relationship of cities by competitiveness level demonstrated polarization presence: Bryansk is separated from the rest of the group of cities. The practical signifi cance of the study lies in the possibility of providing a systematic approach to assessing and predicting the city’s competitiveness. The methodology can be used as a practical tool for substantiating complex strategies for the spatial development of the regional urban systems.