Anchor Settlements: From Status to Real Territorial Development

Anchor Settlements in the Settlement System

Anchor settlements have become one of the promising elements of spatial policy enshrined in the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2030 with a forecast until 2036. For Russia, with its territorial scale and pronounced differences in settlement patterns, this has practical significance. In small towns and rural areas, quality of life is largely determined by the accessibility of medical care, education, cultural institutions, transport, utilities infrastructure, and state and municipal services. Therefore, the importance of anchor settlements is primarily connected to their place in the settlement system and the role they play for adjacent territories.

A unified status brings together settlements with different functional profiles. Some anchor settlements perform predominantly social functions for neighboring municipalities, others concentrate jobs and economic activity, while still others are linked to critical infrastructure or security tasks. The actual role of a specific anchor settlement is determined by the combination of these functions, transport accessibility, commuting patterns, and economic ties with surrounding territories. Therefore, the administrative boundaries of a municipality do not always coincide with the territory for which a given settlement actually serves as a center of gravity.

As of March 16, 2026, the Unified Register includes 2,160 anchor settlements. The largest group—1,537 anchor settlements, or 71.2% of the total—is designated as primary centers for providing social services to one or more municipalities. The remainder consists of cores and elements of urban agglomerations, settlements associated with major investment projects, science cities, settlements within closed administrative-territorial formations, as well as anchor settlements whose primary function is related to critical infrastructure and security. This distribution determines differences in development priorities. For most anchor settlements, results should be expressed primarily in improved accessibility of social services and infrastructure. Employment, investment, and economic activity indicators take on special significance in those settlements where economic specialization has formed and their influence extends beyond their own administrative boundaries.

Anchor settlements are distributed unevenly across the country. The Volga Federal District has 471 such settlements, the Central District has 450, Siberian—293, Far Eastern—214, and Ural—112. The sheer number of anchor settlements does not allow us to judge the adequacy of the established network: federal districts differ in area, population, and settlement patterns. When selecting support measures, these figures must be correlated with settlement density, transport accessibility, and the functions of specific settlements.

The State of Urban and Rural Anchor Settlements

Experts from the Institute of Regional Economics and Intergovernmental Relations at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, as part of a research project, compared indicators for eight large cities with anchor settlement status—one from each federal district. In most of the selected cities, population was declining. Deterioration of heating, water supply, and sewerage networks ranged from 40–60% and required substantial modernization costs. Per capita investment in fixed capital remained significantly below the national average, although growth rates in most of the examined anchor settlements exceeded the national indicator. At the same time, certain characteristics of road infrastructure gradually improved and the share of improved housing increased. The dynamics of these indicators are influenced by national projects, state programs, and sectoral support measures, so available data allow us to assess the state of territories but do not yet make it possible to isolate an independent effect of granting anchor settlement status.

The Unified Register also includes 683 rural anchor settlements with a population of about 7 million people. In half of the rural anchor settlements examined by Institute experts, population was declining. Many rural anchor settlements with centralized utility systems are characterized by high network deterioration; in some cases it exceeds 80%. Comparison of urban and rural territories within the same region showed wage differences of 1.2–2 times. For rural territories, therefore, anchor settlement development is primarily associated with infrastructure reliability, transport accessibility, and maintaining access to key social services—that is, with conditions on which the sustainability of the local settlement system depends.

How the Anchor Settlement Mechanism Should Work

Inclusion of a settlement in the Unified Register does not change the budgetary, tax, land, or administrative powers of the municipality and does not in itself create a separate financing channel. Measures for developing anchor settlements are implemented through national and federal projects, state programs, intergovernmental transfers, and infrastructure and investment mechanisms. Practical results depend on how well the needs of a specific anchor settlement align with existing programs, funding sources, and responsible implementers. 

Different functions of anchor settlements require different development criteria. For settlements that provide residents of adjacent territories with basic services, the actual accessibility of education, healthcare, culture, transport, state and municipal services is essential, as well as travel time and regularity of transport connections. For anchor settlements where jobs and economic activity are concentrated, employment dynamics, investment, specialization, and sustainability of economic ties with neighboring territories are additionally important. The final assessment should capture actual changes in the territory and not be limited to the number of completed activities.

The potential of the anchor settlement system lies in the ability to build spatial policy around real connections between cities, towns, villages, and surrounding territories. If planning support takes into account the role of each anchor settlement in the settlement system, its infrastructure constraints, available mechanisms and funding sources, state resources can be more precisely aligned with the actual needs of the territory. For some settlements, the priority will be improving access to medical care, education, and transport; for others—developing employment, investment projects, and economic ties. On a national scale, such a model can enhance the sustainability of local settlement systems, strengthen territorial connectivity, and mitigate spatial disparities. This is the potential of anchor settlements as a practical instrument of spatial policy.