Russia's Small Towns: Settlement Framework or Risk Zone?
Small towns have been recognized as pillars of spatial development, but their resilience remains fragile and uneven. Without systemic support, they risk being trapped between stagnation and isolated pockets of growth.
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Small Cities as an Element of the Settlement System
In recent years, small cities and anchor settlements have become a prominent part of the federal agenda on spatial development. The new spatial development strategy positions anchor settlements as territories that should ensure access to basic services, transport and social connectivity, and settlement sustainability outside the largest agglomerations. The very concept of anchor settlements reinforces an idea important to the state: the country's development cannot be built solely around major centers.
We're talking about a significant number of settlements here—the Unified Register of Anchor Settlements includes 2,160 entries, with small cities, urban-type settlements, and villages making up a substantial share. This shows that small cities are viewed not as a peripheral addition to agglomerations, but as an important part of the overall territorial framework.
Associate Professor at the HSE University Higher School of Urban StudiesDenis Mokrenskyemphasizes that anchor settlements today effectively form the backbone of the country's settlement system. According to him, they concentrate more than 70% of Russia's population. He also notes that small cities with populations up to 50,000 are home to about 15.8 million people, or roughly 11% of the country's population.
"In the country's spatial development, small cities are not only important centers of local settlement systems, but also connecting links between rural areas and larger cities."
A similar point is made by urbanist and publisher of the urban development media outlet "kto tvoy gorod"Elena Vereshchagina. In her assessment, small cities and anchor settlements form the foundation of the settlement framework, meaning that without systematic work with them, it's impossible to speak of a coherent spatial development policy.
Fragile Stability
Despite the significance of small cities, their economic situation remains uneven. Unlike large agglomerations with diversified economies, small cities typically rely on a narrow range of activities and a limited number of employers. This makes them sensitive to sectoral fluctuations and changes in federal policy.
According toDenis Mokrensky, the viability of a small town is determined primarily by the degree of diversification in its economy, the stability of the local budget, and the presence of quality educational infrastructure. In practice, many such towns have modest revenues of their own, while a significant portion of their expenditures are mandatory. As a result, local authorities can often only ensure basic infrastructure operations but lack the resources for a full-fledged development policy.
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A separate risk factor is mono-industry dependence. The expert points out that among Russia's 313 single-industry towns, about 80% are small cities whose economies are largely tied to a single city-forming enterprise. This model gives towns certain advantages: it allows them to concentrate resources and personnel, while a major employer provides jobs and supports social infrastructure—schools, hospitals, and cultural institutions. However, this same dependence makes the town structurally vulnerable: production cuts, falling demand, or plant closures quickly lead to crisis, simultaneously affecting the labor market, budget, and social services.
Sociologist and AlmaU university professorAlexander Vileikis, in conversation with Argument Media, emphasizes that many single-industry towns are characterized not only by economic but also by budgetary dependence. According to him, virtually every such town "depends very heavily on the budget": either directly, being subsidized, or indirectly—when it would objectively be easier for the enterprise to switch to a rotational work model, but the town must be maintained due to general notions about spatial development. He notes that successful cases where a single-industry town relies on a stable sectoral base and doesn't require significant budget support do exist, but these are the exception rather than the rule.
Even where small towns have their own revenue base, the expenditure structure severely limits maneuverability.Elena Vereshchaginanotes that nearly the entire municipal budget in such towns is spent on fulfilling mandatory functions and social obligations. In this configuration, the town has virtually no funds for its own initiatives not provided for by federal or regional programs. In her assessment, if a town aspires to development, it must have a separate resource—a notional "development budget" amounting to 10–15% of the total.
The absence of such resources creates yet another circuit of dependence—on competitions. With insufficient stable development funding, small towns are forced to regularly participate in competitions and selection procedures to obtain funds for individual projects—public space improvements, cultural initiatives, business support. This creates a "lottery" effect: one town wins and implements a project, while a neighboring town with similar starting conditions is left without support. As a result, the development trajectories of individual small towns begin to be determined not so much by objective needs as by a combination of management competencies, luck in competitions, and access to external resources.
Support exists, but it's fragmented
Another problem lies not in the complete absence of support measures, but in the fact that they don't form a unified and stable model. In a conversation with Argument Media,Denis Mokrenskyrecalls that the first development program for small and medium-sized cities was adopted back in 1996, but wasn't implemented due to a difficult socio-economic situation. In 2013-2014, the Ministry of Regional Development was working on a new program concept for 2015-2020, but the final document was never adopted either. In 2014, the state program "Regional Policy and Federal Relations" was approved, with the stated goal of "ensuring balanced development of Russian Federation subjects," but as the expert notes, specific issues directly related to small city development weren't included in that document.
As a result, there's still no separate, established comprehensive program at the federal level dedicated specifically to small city development. Support is distributed across different documents, competitions, and sectoral mechanisms. This means individual tasks can be addressed—for example, in landscaping, infrastructure, or entrepreneurship—but the overall strategy toward small cities remains incompletely formulated.
The Ministry of Construction, however, notes that support for anchor settlements is already being integrated into a more systematic framework. The ministry's press service told Argument Media that this work is being conducted within the national project "Infrastructure for Life" and the federal project "Infrastructure Development in Settlements," which are meant to link housing construction, roads, utilities and social infrastructure, transport, and digitalization into a unified agenda. The policy's target is to improve the quality of environment in anchor settlements by 30% by 2030 and by 60% by 2036.
Against this backdrop, experts rate the Competition for Best Projects for Creating Comfortable Urban Environments in Small Cities and Historic Settlements relatively highly. According toElena Vereshchagina, over 9 years it has become an excellent mechanism and led to a whole series of systemic changes locally: from the emergence of economies in small territories to the transition to full-fledged development strategies and support for local community initiatives.
Co-founder of the School of Urban Studies and Urban Research "Goroda" and author of the Telegram channel "Urbanism as the Meaning of Life"Petr Ivanovalso counts the competition among genuinely working support mechanisms, emphasizing that the problem often lies not in the absence of tools, but in knowing how to use them. In this sense, the competition is important not only as a funding source, but as a way to engage small cities in more active project-based and managerial thinking. It encourages cities to analyze their own potential, prepare concepts, work with residents, and articulate goals. For small cities, where strategic management culture is often poorly developed, this in itself becomes a significant outcome.
As a successful example, Ivanov cites Severobaykalsk: the chief architect of this small city in the Republic of Buryatia, Evgeny Zolotukhin, is a graduate of the "Arkhitektory.RF" program. Over several years, with the administration's support, he managed to "transform the city's mindset" and become a development driver, including through the use of tools such as concessions.
Why Master Plans Are Still Up in the Air
Certain expectations today are tied to master plans for anchor settlements. The idea is that these should become a new strategic planning tool and enable a shift from fragmented measures to more holistic development.
However, according to experts, in practice this tool remains insufficiently formalized.Petr Ivanovnotes that today one can count around 150–160 documents across the country that are essentially master plans, though they may go by different names. At the same time, he emphasizes that such documents still lack clear legal status, are weakly linked to budgets and management decisions, and sometimes don't even become public—all of which diminishes their practical value.
Aleksandr Vileikisfor his part draws attention to the risk of "overreach" when implementing new tools. He cites as an example the wave of interest in creative industries, when attempts to "revitalize" small towns led to inflated expectations from a single approach. In his view, what matters more is not searching for a universal "panacea," but building balanced policy that accounts for each city's specific characteristics.
In this situation, the master plan remains a potentially promising but institutionally unanchored tool. For it to become operational, experts essentially converge on two requirements:
the document needs clear legislative status and linkage to budget planning;
it requires orientation toward realistic scenarios that account for economic constraints, demographics, and the position of the local community.
Is There a Universal Recipe?
One of the most important observations voiced by all experts is the impossibility of speaking about small towns as a homogeneous group. Their differences are too great: in geography, in economic function, in degree of dependence on external centers, in demographic dynamics, in quality of environment.
Denis Mokrenskysuggests examining different types of small towns separately:
Rural center towns — realistic development directions for them may include: preventing urban sprawl and bringing underutilized land into productive use.
Satellite towns of rural agglomerations — preventing the development of negative economic and socio-demographic trends and developing new management practices.
Single-industry towns — modernization and qualitative development of the city's key economic sector while simultaneously diversifying the local economy, developing industrial tourism (where feasible), as well as construction, including quality new residential development.
Research centers — strengthening their own scientific and industrial potential, developing educational infrastructure, improving the quality of the urban environment.
Recreation centers — ensuring balanced development of the tourism industry, modernizing tourist infrastructure, developing the city's brand.
Historic towns — preserving the historic environment and valuable historic sites, integrating cultural heritage sites into the city's daily life, improving the quality of the urban environment.
Pyotr Ivanovuses small towns in Krasnoyarsk Krai as examples to distinguish between types of small towns. While Minusinsk has its own economy, a developed labor market and production, Igarka or Dikson serve more as support functions for a broader external economy. In one case we can speak of local sustainability, in the other — merely of maintaining a presence and fulfilling a specific function built into it.
Between Stagnation and Growth
In assessing the future of small towns and anchor settlements, experts agree that a single scenario for all territories is impossible: trajectories will differ.
According toDenis Mokrensky, relatively favorable prospects exist for those small towns where the population is not declining and the economy remains competitive. This primarily applies to science cities, industrial centers with a stable production base, as well as towns with recreational and tourism functions. For most others, a scenario of moderate stagnation with continuing depopulation is more likely.
Elena Vereshchaginaexpects that over time there will be more instruments of real support, but not everyone will be able to take advantage of them—primarily those towns that possess sufficient resources and managerial competencies. At the same time, she considers the key condition for balanced development of small towns to be not so much the development of individual sectors, but rather the cultivation of urban culture.
Alexander Vileikisemphasizes that without culture and without grassroots communities, small towns remain institutionally weak. He is also skeptical about the prospects that most such towns will be able to once again become a full-fledged economic pillar of the country: in the expert's opinion, this model corresponded to the logic of a planned economy and works significantly worse under current conditions.
At the same time,Pyotr Ivanovdraws attention to the opposite process: for some people, a small town is already beginning to be perceived not as a losing option, but as a more convenient living environment. He attributes this to the spread of remote work, the development of domestic tourism, the growing availability of goods and services through digital channels, and changing everyday expectations of the urban environment.
In the coming years, differences between anchor settlements will likely only intensify: territories with a more stable economy, qualified management team, and stable demographics will be able to use available support measures to gradually strengthen the local economy and urban environment, whereas another group of towns—with a weak tax base, aging population, absence of local business, and high dependence on a single employer—are unlikely to achieve systemic change even with successful targeted projects, and their main task will remain maintaining minimal stability. Therefore, although small towns are important for Russia's spatial development and maintaining the country's connectivity, merely recognizing their role is insufficient: without a sustainable economic base, budgetary independence, and systemic support, it is premature to speak of them as pillars of growth.
