THE TRANSFORMATION AND REGULATION OF URBAN SETTLEMENT IN RUSSIA AND THE REGIONS

One of the most important issues of public administration is the spatial development of territories not only in terms of socio-economic development, but also demographic. So, currently Russia is characterized by uneven system of settlement, creating the preconditions for the emergence of new imbalances and threats to the balanced spatial development of the country. Within the framework of this research we analyze the processes of settlement using Zipf rule in the context of the leading countries of the world. It is shown that the deviation of Zipf curves for China, USA and Germany is typical for developed countries. At the same time, Russia is characterized by the peculiarities of the location of the curves, typical for both developed and developing countries. This circumstance is due to the vast territory of the country and the high level of socio-economic differentiation, in connection with which disproportions in the distribution of the population by city are also observed. As part of assessing the degree of evenness of the settlement it was proposed to use the coefficient of localization Lorenz. It has been revealed that in Russia the Lorentz coefficient has risen from 0.56 to 0.59 during the last 10 years, which characterizes the increase of differentiation level of urban distribution in Russia. It is proved that such tendency is caused by the growth of a share of the population living in the largest and large cities at simultaneous its decrease in small and medium-sized cities which is also characteristic when it is considered at regional level. In this connection it is necessary to develop and implement measures of state regulation within the framework of the measures aimed at improving the sustainability of the system of spatial development of territories, including on the basis of foreign experience.