1 - 8 of 8 result(s)

Bringing together the city of Krasnoyarsk and six adjacent smaller cities and rural districts, the Krasnoyarsk Agglomeration is increasingly emerging as the main economic hub of Eastern Siberia. Its relative weight in both population and economic activity continues to grow. This review examines the Agglomeration’s performance and potential, particularly with reference to such critical challenges as internal and external connectivity, human capital formation and innovation. These issues are analysed in the context of Krasnoyarsk’s unusual economic geography, which involves tremendous natural wealth, but also remote location, severe climatic conditions and relatively low density of settlement. Its experience is thus relevant to many remote, resource-rich regions across the globe.

This chapter focuses on the spatial dimension of governing the Agglomeration. First, it situates the Agglomeration in the larger context of multi-level governance in the Russian Federation. It then explores the potential for deeper integration at the level of the Agglomeration to improve performance in a number of major areas linked in one way or another to spatial form: land use, housing and transport. Finally, it shifts the focus from local transport (internal connectivity) to the Agglomeration’s links to the rest of the world (external connectivity) and explores its potential to develop as a transport and logistics hub.

This chapter situates the Krasnoyarsk Agglomeration in the context of Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Russian Federation and assesses the major economic, urban and social challenges facing the Agglomeration. It examines demographic and economic trends, highlighting the Agglomeration’s strengths in terms of resource wealth, human capital and science assets. It also defines the development challenges created by its geography, including a severe climate, long distances to major markets and a relatively sparse settlement pattern. Finally, it looks at the need and potential for further diversification of economic activity in the Agglomeration.

This chapter focuses on the policies needed to help make the most of the Agglomeration’s human potential, particularly by promoting entrepreneurship, human capital formation and innovation. It examines the business climate in the Agglomeration, which is fairly strong overall by Russian standards, before looking at its performance with respect to innovation and entrepreneurship, which have been disappointing. It presents a number of recommendations for creating a more integrated, Agglomeration-wide approach to skills and labour market policy, and at the potential for local action to stimulate more innovation.

Place matters for policy. Public policies aimed at generating growth, jobs, equity and environmental sustainability have a greater impact when they are adapted to the economic and social realities of the places in which they are implemented. National governments are thus challenged to rethink how to harness the potential of different types of cities and regions to prepare for the future, a task that requires not only identifying the right policies but also putting in place the governance arrangements needed to support such an integrated, place-based approach. Regional and municipal governments are similarly challenged to find ways of mobilising their own specific strengths and assets, as well as to devise governance solutions adapted to their circumstances, in order to foster sustainable growth, investment and innovation.

With a population of 1.175 million in 2011, the urban agglomeration constituted by the city of Krasnoyarsk and six adjacent municipalities is the economic and administrative centre of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Russian Federation’s second-largest region by territory but also one of its most sparsely populated. The Krasnoyarsk Agglomeration is also the most important concentration of population and economic activity in Eastern Siberia. Its importance to the larger region is growing, moreover, as it is one of the few places in Siberia to experience population growth in recent years, against the backdrop of demographic decline at the level of both the Siberian Federal District and the Russian Federation as a whole.