russia Is Redrawing Its Map of Resettlement Amid Depopulation and Regional Decline

A new General Plan for Population Resettlement is being developed in russia. Despite its grandiose wording, the document tends to highlight the country’s deep demographic and spatial problems rather than offer realistic solutions.

The key emphasis is on the priority of individual housing construction and the “revival” of liquidated and abandoned rural settlements. It is assumed that the demand for individual housing construction will allegedly be able to bring back to life  areas with a sparse population and a lack of basic infrastructure. However, the idea seems dubious: life in villages with 10-15 inhabitants without access to medicine, education, and services is unlikely to become an attractive alternative to cities.

For the Northwestern Federal District and central russia, “population dispersal” and the development of transport connectivity are declared. In fact, this is an attempt to reduce the consequences of the hyperconcentration of resources in moscow and st. petersburg – a problem created by the rf itself. At this, the question of jobs remains unanswered: in order to compete with agglomerations, they must be numerous and highly paid, which the russian economy cannot provide.

Individual regional “axes of development” – from Novosibirsk to Irkutsk or “Greater Vladivostok” – are again accompanied by abstract references to “modern, including space, technologies” without any explanation of their practical meaning. At the same time, cities such as Khabarovsk are effectively left out of the picture, which only emphasizes the selectivity and political opportunism of the planning.

As a result, the new resettlement scheme looks less like a development strategy and more like an attempt to administratively mask depopulation, the decline of the periphery, and the growing inequality between several “strong” centers and the rest of the country.