Urban shrinkage: an unspoken challenge of spatial planning in Russian small and medium-sized cities

Shrinkage since the collapse of state socialism has been evident in many Russian cities, especially in small and medium-sized (SMS) ones. The Russian state, de jure, has been promoting the idea of self-governance; thereby, urban municipalities ought to develop and adopt own planning decisions to cope with various challenges, including those related to depopulation. The current research focuses on planning responses to urban shrinkage. It aims at understanding how the phenomenon is conceptualized in the planning documents of Russian SMS cities and what solutions are proposed to cope with it in the conditions inherited from the Soviet times housing and infrastructural deficit. The empirical evidence for the analysis is drawn from over 70 SMS cities located in Central and Southern Russia. Results state that despite obvious and persisting urban shrinkage, most of the reviewed documents ignore or underestimate the phenomenon. Instead of suggesting flexible solutions, which would help overcome the shortage of urban infrastructure not aggravating shrinkages’ effects in the cityscape, long-term spatial plans are being developed with hope for future growth proposing measures that contribute to the intensification of urban sprawl and fragmentation.