Evolution specifics of the Ural old industrial region’s economic development

In the mid-2010s, industrial centers in South Korea and China entered a phase of crisis and followed the path the European and American old industrial regions had taken earlier. From this viewpoint, old industrial regions are not exclusively a phenomenon of industrial revolutions and represent part of global economic trends. This circumstance widens the potential of researching them and takes the problem out of the territorial or historical meters and bounds. The paper strives to reveal the specifics of the Ural old industrial region’s development by identifying its type. The authors analyse the evolution of the Ural region’s development and contrast its traits with the characteristics of a classic and a catch-up types of old industrial regions. Methodologically, the paper is based on regional economics, theoretical approaches to determining the stages in the development of old industrial regions and authors’ research into the formation of catch-up old industrial regions. The author develops and applies her own method for typifying old industrial regions into classic and catch-up ones. The findings show that the specifics of the Ural old industrial region is that it is now shifting from a classic type to a catch-up type while retaining some individual features, in particular, extensive nature of growth, re-industrialisation, and a relatively early period of industrial recession provoked by the exhaustion of natural resources and wear of fixed assets. As a result, the traits of the catch-up region profoundly influence the modern economy of the Ural region. The fact of its re-industrialisation proves the possibility of re-industrialising old industrial regions and acquiring new specialisations by them given there is the state’s support. The research findings affect the prospects of creating and enacting the scenarios of revitalising the Ural economy at the present stage.