Sustainable development of mining regions: helical growth, life helix, assessment method

The research suggests an approach to apply the principles of sustainable development in the analysis of single industry towns (SITs). Unsatisfactory rating scores of SITs emphasize the role of environmental factors, which have not been taken into account so far in categorizing the mono-industrial territories. The new algorithm of assessing sustainability of SITs suggested by the authors sees sustainability as a helical process, which connects to the theory of helical growth of human societies. Such an approach allows considering all positive and negative effects on sustainable growth of a mono-industrial economy. This approach can also be applied to analyze the quality of life in a mining SIT. The paper introduces a model to assess the sustainability of a mono-industrial economy. The model is based on calculating an overall sustainability indicator based on intermediate indices on a number of blocks: social and economic growth, operations of the town-forming enterprise (TFE), unemployment, market/industry conditions, and environmental factors.