Resilience of Russian Arctic cities: methodological approaches and quantitative assessments

Research question of the paper is how to utilize ecosystem studies to refresh our research of the contemporary Russian Arctic cities, to deepen our understanding of the difference between re-silient and sustainable city, and to create meth-odological approach to measure resilience capaci-ty of the Arctic cities. The paper describes three main directions of the latest study of the Arctic cities of the world and Russia: 1) Arctic urbanization as a global phenomenon; 2) empha-sis on the internal and economic structure of the Arctic city; 3) analysis and assessment of the resilience and sustainability of Arctic cities. The most important lesson of Soviet research of the Arctic is the need for a holistic view of the eco-systems of the polar regions, overcoming the temptation to reduce to a single, even a power-ful factor, for example, climate change. Follow-ing this methodology, the authors propose a comprehensive approach to assessing the resili-ence of a sample of the 29 largest Arctic cities in Russia, including three blocks of nine indica-tors covering the external location of the city, the internal spatial structure, and the structural flexibility of the urban system. Based on the aggregation of three blocks of indicators, an in-tegral index of the resilience of the Arctic city to external natural and social crises has been formed. The highest values are in large cities that are part of the main agglomerations of the European North – Arkhangelsk, Severodvinsk, Onega, Murmansk, Novodvinsk and Apatity. The single-industry cities of Norilsk and Nadym have the minimum values. The distribution of arctic cities according to the value of the inte-gral index of resilience confirms their enormous differences in the favorability of the external position, the degree of diversity of the internal spatial and economic structure, the degree of plasticity and flexibility of the urban system. The paradox of our approach in assessing the resilience of the Russian Arctic cities is that the further the Arctic city is from the classical can-ons of the Soviet industrial city, the more po-tentially resilient it is.