Russia welcomes eight new urban agglomerations

Russia-InfoCentre ^ | March 27, 2007 | Olga Pletneva

[eastern]

The Russian Ministry of Regional Development is going to introduce a twenty-year program covering expansion development of Russian constituent territories to the government. In case the program is ratified, eight urban agglomerations with multimillion populations will be created. Analysts suppose these new mega-cities will yield to neither Moscow, nor St. Petersburg in size and population. However, there are opinions of incredulous origin, as implementation of the project requires immense funds to be invested in.

The idea of long-term development of Russian regions has been worked out since the summer of 2005; then the first draft of the project was represented by the Ministry, but the government wanted the document to be reconsidered and improved. Particularly, regional authorities didn’t participate in formulating the conception, thus, they were engaged in the process of forming a new version of the document.

[Alter Kaker]

Don't know anything about this plan, but Russia does need to do something about the poverty and shrinking size of just about every city in Russia other than Moscow (and, to some extent, Pieter).

If you're Russian, you still need a permit to live in Moscow, and something like half of Moscow's population (nobody knows) is living their illegally, because there are no prospects anywhere else.

Russia is right now a dynamic capital city and a petrochemical industry and not much else. If Putin's smart, he'll do something to reinvest the petrodollars to push a somewhat broader economic base.

[Centurion2000]

well this should be interesting.