City as the Model and form of Social Development (on the Textbook 'Urbanistics. Urban Economy, Development and Management')

The paper provides a review of the case study textbook for university students called 'Urbanistics. Urban economy, development and management' of URAIT Publishers (Moscow). The reviewed book is valuably pro-active in urban policies and assists professional training of students who clearly understand the nature of urbanization processes, the respective findings in the spatial development of the country, its regions and urban planning as such. The textbook is written by a large team of 23 authors representing universities, research and project design institutions. Besides its formal key parameters this state-of-the art teaching guide offers attractive references to YouTube lectures of Russian and world scientists. It appears that students would have been grateful if considerable massifs of training material had been supplemented with 'summaries' of all the textbook chapters helping the authors systematically present their views and helping the students see the logics and key reference points of the course; also if an expanded glossary of main notions had been added. The ambitious task set by the authors in a systemic description of contemporary realia of a city as an object, including contemporary economic theories, problems of population, economy and finance has been basically met. By way of summarizing we can note that the engaged lecturer and a smart student will find the textbook both interesting and useful