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Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The concept of "city agglomeration"
• Chapter 2. Delimitation of city agglomerations
• Chapter 3. Urban agglomeration as a form of inter-municipal cooperation
• Chapter 4. Position of the small cities in the Russian agglomerations on the example of the Rostov-on-Don agglomeration
• Conclusion
• References


In this work, the term "city agglomeration" means - a compact arrangement, grouping of settlements united not only in the territorial sense, but also have a developed industrial, cultural, recreational links.

The purpose of the master thesis is to analyse the position of the small cities consisting in city agglomerations, what advantages and what disadvantages such small cities have. city agglomeration municipal cooperation

According to a goal the following tasks were designated:

1. to explore the prospects and shortcomings of agglomeration areas;

2. to study criteria of formation and delimitation of city agglomerations in Russia and abroad;

3. to study the relation of municipal authorities to the city aglomeration;

4. to consider what advantages and disadvantages a small city has, while it is a part of the city agglomeration (on the example of the Rostov-on-Don agglomeration);

The object of the study is a small city located in the city agglomeration.

The subject of the research is a set of managerial, organizational and legal relations in the sphere of management of small cities that are part of city agglomerations.

The hypothesis of this master's thesis is the following: the small city, included into the city agglomeration, has possibility of intensive social and economic development and improvement of living standard of the population, thanks to close industrial, cultural and recreational interaction with the core-city of agglomeration.

The theoretical and methodological basis of research was made by works of Russian and foreign scientists in the field of management of city agglomerations, regional and territorial development, strategic forecasting of territories development.

Many theorists and practitioners of national urban development were engaged into research of city agglomerations. Considerable scientific work on studying of group forms of settlements was carried out by Listengurt F.M. He allocated basic elements of hierarchical structure of group forms of settlements: local intraeconomic, regional and inter-regional, city agglomerations. Davidovich V.D. in the work "Resettlement in suburban areas" presented conclusions about the basic principles and quantitative regularities influencing formation of city agglomerations. The author allocated the following types of inter-settlement communications: economic, labor, cultural and community, administrative and political and organizational and economic. Davidovich V.D. and Horev B. S. in work "The cities - satellites" tried to reveal the basic principles of interaction between the cities and satellite towns.

Regulatory issues of territorial growth of cities and their suburbs were actively studied by Gukhman E.V., Lappo G.M., Bocharov Y.P. and others. The great contribution to the study of urban agglomerations and the search for methods of urban management has made Maloyan G.A.

During writing the master thesis, the works of famous scientists devoted to research of regional economy, development of the cities and management of social and economic processes were studied. Among them works of: V. V. Bitunova, P. I. Buraka, A.L. Gaponenko, M. Ya. Gokhberg, A.G. Granberg, V. I. Danilov-Danilyan, V. V. Ivanter, I.A. Ilyin, A.I. Kirillova, G.M. Lappo, V. N. Leksin, K.S. Losev, V. Ya. Lyubovny, M. B. Mazanova, P. A. Minaker, H.H. Nekrasova, B.C. Nemchinova, V.P. Oreshin, O. S. Pchelintsev, A.D. Ursula, B. S. Horeva, E.G. Chistyakova, B. M. Shtulberg, V.A. Shulga, etc., and also foreign scientists: A. Weber, R. Katilyon, V. Kristaller, V. Launkhard, A. Lyosha, R. Murphy, G. Tyunen, J. Forrester.

To studying of the problems of territorial development the works of D. Bray, S. Bru, R. Jones, R. Dornbusch, K. McConnell, P. Samuelson, S. Fischer, R. Schmalensee, R. Ehrenberg are devoted.

U. Ayzard's, S. Badmayev's, L. Badmakhalgayev's, Yu. Gladky's, M. Guzev's, V. Dzhukh's, V. Ignatov's, O. Inshakov's, A. Kalinina's, O. Lomovtseva's, G. Merzlikinoy's, A. Plyakin's, I. Mitrofanova's, M. Trubin's, S. Tyaglov's, A. Chistobayev's, I. Shabunina's works are devoted to questions of the territorial organization of regional economic development, strategic planning of complex social and economic development, management of regional economy.

Chapter 1. The concept of "city agglomeration"

Urban agglomerations began to appear long time ago. They form and grow till the present day. It is necessary to define what the term "agglomeration" is. The simplest definition of "agglomeration - is a compact set of space settlements united by intensive industrial and cultural relations."

The question of urban agglomerations creation has recently become one of the most important and frequently discussed. Scientific and practical conferences are conducted on this subject, special issues of magazines are published , the meetings of the regional governments take place. The issue turned out to be at all on hearing after the appearances of Ministry of Regional Development representatives in 2007 when they said that large urban agglomerations should be part of long-term Russia's development strategy.

If the large cities were called the "monsters" sentenced to continuous growth (according to the French geographers Zh. Bozhyo-Gortye and Zh. Shabo), so agglomerations - close congestions of the cities - were called real "titans". Such growth of large cities frightens, as result - the furious criticism of such formations appeares. Agglomerations are considered as the result of unsystematic urban growth. The researcher of agglomerations Michel Ruzh called agglomerations "a cancer form of town-planning formations".

Also the opposite points of view are known. Agglomerations are described as optimum forms of modern moving, with the deep future, believing that they will solve a problem of non-system resettlements and improve the living conditions.

Range of opinions, strong dispersion of estimates aren't casual at all. It is explained by the fact that, as well as the city, agglomeration -- is a very contradictory in the essence and connects, both obvious negative, and undoubtedly positive lines.

The main advantages of agglomeration - the possibility of all its inhabitants to use the services available to residents of main large city, and wider than in a separate settlement choice of the workplace.

Interest in agglomerations is an interest in search of additional opportunities of development outside formal administrative-territorial borders. In modern conditions the agglomeration provides opportunities to improve the efficiency of use of labor potential, build human capital, improving the quality of life, and these are powerful factors of competitiveness and attractiveness of the territorial systems.

The agglomerative effect, existing in all city agglomerations, from the economic point of view, arises owing to territorial concentration of functions and reduces expenses of business and consumers. This property of the city center becomes key therefore the city starts to "attract" more strongly to itself both various business, and the population. Formation of large and various labor market turns out to be consequence. Concentration of various workplaces leads to growth of the income of the population and concentration of solvent demand (also one of manifestations of agglomerative effect) that influences development of retail and wholesale trade in agglomeration. Therefore as the indicators characterizing agglomerative effect from the economic point of view it is possible to use such indicators as an agglomeration share in a gross regional product, differentiation of structure of economy, structure of employment, unemployment rate, the income of the population, volume of wholesale and retail trade, etc. This makes sense not only to conduct static but also dynamic analyses of municipalities within and outside of the metropolitan area.

Intensity of agglomerative processes finds reflection also in the demographic indicators characterizing structure and size of population. So, in age structure of the agglomeration population, owing to development of labor market, the share of able-bodied age can grow (or more slowly to decrease). One of key indicators of city agglomeration formation is intensity of pendulum (especially labor) trips of the population. The given indicators can characterize existence and intensity of agglomerative processes in the territory.

A look at the urban agglomeration as a social space leads to an understanding that in addition to purely economic, agglomeration processes inevitably lead to the formation of social impact, as it appears that the effects of the formation of urban agglomerations is much more diverse than just agglomeration effect, evaluated from a purely economic perspective. Under agglomerative effects all the consequences arising in the territory as a result of aglomeration processes, both economic and social, are understood. Thus, we can say that agglomerative effects - are economic and social consequences of the geographical concentration of production and socio-economic facilities in the aglomeration area. Thus the effects may not only be positive (as is generally understood in the economic approach), but also negative.

The most important negative social consequences that should be considered when developing programs of territorial development, are: increasing the load on the highways, the complication of traffic situations (which once again confirms the importance of the development of transport communications in the functioning of agglomerations), improving the environmental load etc. The second group of negative consequences includes tightening of the population to the large cities therefore there is an absence of the population on parts of the territory and, as a result, development differentiation increase "the center - the periphery", aggravation of problems of small municipalities becomes possible.

It is necessary to understand the nature of the urban agglomeration, for this, it is necessary to consider the criteria by which clusters of settlements become attributed to agglomeration. These criteria are generally the population of the central city, the volume of pendular migrations, population density of the territory.

Borders of city agglomeration are mobile in time thanks to change of the major parameter of agglomeration - range of daily movement from a residence to work places.

Characteristics of city agglomerations are:

* building of the huge city congestions including growing and creeping away central large cities, involving to their areas new territories, and concentration in them the big mass of the population;

* fast development of suburbs and gradual (though not everywhere obviously traced) redistribution of the population between the cities centers and residential suburbs;

* Involvement of the rural population to the non-farm labor, especially in urban areas;

* Commuting and systematic movement of people within the agglomeration for work, to the place of study, cultural and community services and recreation.

E.N. Pertsik offers various criteria of city agglomerations:

1. the density of urban population and continuity of building;

2. the existence of the big city center (as a rule, with the population not less than 100 thousand people);

3. the intensity and range of labor and cultural and community trips;

4. the specific weight of nonagricultural workers;

5. the proportion of working outside the place of residence;

6. the number of satellite towns, and the intensity of their links with the city center;

7. the number of telephone conversations with the center;

8. industrial communications;

9. communications on social and technical infrastructure (uniform engineering systems of water supply, power supply, the sewerage, transport and so forth)

In some cases a combination of signs are accepted as criterion, in others - is guided by one of them (for example, allocate agglomeration borders on 1,5 or to 2-hour isochrones of labor movement from the city center).

Sometimes the spatial aspect of agglomeration is defined through unity of signs of nearness and remoteness in relation to the main city. So, E.N. Koroleva notes that "in Russian science agglomeration is understood as territorial group of cities and rural settlements which are pulled together, but divided by spatial gaps". Nevertheless development of transport and information communications leads to that the factor of proximity of distance ceases to play a key role in definition of a profile of the territory: rather remote settlements can enter agglomeration also. Remoteness - also not a characteristic sign as intensive construction as in the city, and in the suburbs leads to reduction of gaps between settlements.

Qualitative sign of agglomeration is association of the settlements entering it into dynamic system of diverse communications. The nature of these relationships determines whether the agglomeration territory will be a social problem or a source of economic growth.

The most typical communication for the Russian agglomerations - the pendular migration of most of the population directed towards the main city.

It should be noted that actually pendular migration shouldn't be considered as "a qualitative sign" of agglomeration owing to negative effects: excess expenses of people time, load on the environment. Moreover, it is necessary to avoid pendular migration even within the boundaries of the city itself, developing workplaces and social infrastructure on suburbs.

For the Russian realities the sign of transport availability is defining in agglomeration formation: really, without the developed public transport pendular migration will disappear and if the settlement isn't able to be self-sufficient, it will disappear because of migration in strict sense of this word.

Now the increasing relevance is gained by the economic, institutional analysis of agglomerative processes, the analysis and forecasting of outer effects. Processes of agglomeration in institutional value are characterized as follows. Agglomeration assumes creation of essentially new control system of territorial development and planning. Agglomeration assumes forming of the contractual relations of independent municipalities concerning subjects of the general interest, for example the general economic or infrastructure processes. World experience testifies that the agglomerations created on an administrative initiative, as a rule, are unstable and break up at completion of administrative intervention and financing.

The main ways to accelerate agglomeration processes are called:

* accelerated development of transport and communication infrastructures, creation of common logistics centers;

* coordination of territorial development and land use, consistent environmental policies;

* implementation of projects aimed at increasing the "bottlenecks" in the resource providing agglomeration (provision of building materials, electricity, water, etc.);

* Development of social and cultural space.

Formation of large modern agglomerations provides the following effects.

Firstly, agglomeration increases for the population, especially of small cities which are a part of agglomeration, possibility of access to scientific, production and cultural information, the ability to choose the type of work, access to educational, medical and cultural institutions.

Secondly, emergence of agglomeration creates two possibilities: the arrival of new large business to the region, and opportunity for the local companies to grow to the level of leaders of the market.

Thirdly, the creation of deep and diverse labor market. People have the opportunity to quickly find a job that matches their qualifications and personal life strategies. Especially important is the opportunity for residents of small towns in which there is much more opportunity to find decent work and professional development.

Fourthly, "infrastructure effect" which is essential. Construction projects of new power capacities, powerful transport complexes - ports, the airports, the multimodal logistic centers and information hubs - are justified and have big economic return for agglomerations. The same concerns educational and especially innovative infrastructure.

Advantages of agglomerative settlement:

* strengthening and raising of the small and medium-sized cities, rural settlements;

* providing to residents of different areas of agglomeration full-scale access to employment, health, education, trade, cultural and other opportunities; a wider choice of jobs;

* the possibility of implementing a large-scale infrastructure projects - power facilities, transport systems and related services, information communications, infrastructure, education and innovation infrastructure;

* increase the capacity of education and professional fulfillment while maintaining the advantages of living in small and medium urban space;

* the possibility of closer and more effective coordination of development strategies;

* possibility of creation of "the critical weight" for transition to more innovative scenarios of development;

* big validity of financing requests;

* more ample opportunities for marketing of the territories.

Chapter 2. Delimitation of city agglomerations

Despite that in present time questions of formation and functioning of city agglomerations become more and more actual, nevertheless in the conditions of the Russian reality still there is no official technique of delimitation of city agglomerations, whereas in foreign countries legislatively approved mechanisms of delimitation, and research of agglomerative processes of various territories are used.

For the Russian government studying of methods of various countries concerning definition and management of city agglomerations and systematization of the options used in various countries, for development of own uniform legislatively fixed document on the Russian agglomerations would be useful.

The data obtained as a result of the studying of foreign literature and documents regulating activity of city agglomerations are given in the table below.

Table 1. The set of data on methods of city agglomerations delimitation in Russia and abroad.

Summarizing the analysis, it is clear that in Russia the number of methods for determining the urban agglomeration and its delimitation - a huge set, and therefore difficulties arise in determining the exact number of existing city agglomerations in the country, the number of potential city agglomerations and systematization of statistics data on urban agglomerations.

Chapter 3. Urban agglomeration as a form of inter-municipal cooperation

One of the key issues of building an economically and socially sustainable and perspective urban agglomeration - is the issue of cooperation of municipalities that make up the agglomerations. Many economic and social problems of the municipalities can be solved more effectively by combining their resources, that means carrying out inter-municipal cooperation.

Inter-municipal cooperation is understood as:

1. "The cooperation of municipalities in order to express and protect their common interests as well as the pooling of financial resources, material and other resources to solve issues of local importance";

2. "Form of unification and harmonization of interests and coordination between municipalities and (or) their bodies in order to ensure representation of the interests of municipalities on all levels of government of the Russian Federation, to international bodies and organizations, as well as to improve the solution efficiency of local value questions";

The right for intermunicipal cooperation is recorded in the European Charter of local government (item 1 of article 10) which says that "local self-government institutions have the right at implementation of the powers to cooperate and, in the limits set by the law, to unite with other local self-government institutions for performance of the tasks representing the general interest".

Federal Law No 131"On general principles of local self-government in the Russian Federation" (Part 4 of Article 8) provides that in order to combine financial resources, material and other resources to solve issues of local importance can be formed intermunicipal association, established household intermunicipal companies and other organizations in accordance with federal laws and regulatory legal acts of the representative bodies of the municipalities.

Inter-municipal cooperation of cities within the agglomeration should be based on the following principles:

1. Preservation of the independence of local governments;

2. Voluntary associations;

3. Availability of economic and social feasibility of the association.

It is important to note that for effective cooperation, inter-municipal cooperation needs to be positioned precisely as a way to address issues of local importance, which is based on economic and social feasibility. It is essential that municipalities - participants of inter-municipal cooperation had from the respective economic and social effect.

Thanks to the expert survey of heads of municipalities of Russia conducted by sociological laboratory of Association of the Siberian and Far East cities under the leadership of Goryachenko E.E. together with Association of the cities of the Volga region, Cities of the Urals Association and the Union of the cities of the Center and the Northwest within monitoring of a social and economic situation in municipalities of Russia in April/May, 2014, becomes possible to estimate modern realities about prospects and obstacles for development of intermunicipal cooperation between the cities which are a part of agglomerations. 94 heads of different types of municipalities of Russia from 39 subjects of Federation, including 36 centers of subjects of Federation were interrogated.

In this report, inter-municipal cooperation is called one of the ways to improve the socio-economic situation in the municipality and increase the efficiency of local government - that means association of efforts and resources of municipalities for the joint solution of questions of local value that is the integral criterion of existence of city agglomeration.

The positive moments in the development of inter-municipal cooperation are marked much more than the negative. Among the main positive results of inter-municipal cooperation enhancing the effectiveness of local government, provided by union of efforts and resources of several municipalities, is isolated; also the cost savings in the implementation of major projects, dissemination of positive experience that can be a factor in increasing the competitiveness of the territory. However, there is a negative part of the process of cooperation - it is related to possible conflicts of interest, lack of legal framework of inter-municipal cooperation and the imperfection of the current legislation.

Answering a question of existence of barriers to creation of agglomerations, answers of respondents were distributed as follows:

Table 2. Distribution of answers to a question: «What, in your opinion, are the main barriers to existence of intermunicipal cooperation? What interferes with development of horizontal interrelations?» ("Monitoring of a social and economic situation in municipalities of Russia" (results of poll of heads of municipalities, April-May, 2014). Electronic resource. http://www.asdg.ru/about/struct/sobr/XXXI/Monitoring_2014.pdf)

By the results received answering the matter, only 3% of respondents don't see obstacles for development of intermunicipal communications now and the main barrier is called “the imperfection of the legal framework of inter-municipal interactions” that also couses «fear of independence loss»

If to analyse the answers of respondents of rather possible barriers received in 2012, 2013 and 2014 years, the negative dynamics is traced.

Table 3. Dynamics of participants answers conducted in surveys in 2012, 2013 and 2014. ("Monitoring of a social and economic situation in municipalities of Russia" (results of poll of heads of municipalities, April-May, 2014). Electronic resource. http://www.asdg.ru/about/struct/sobr/XXXI/Monitoring_2014.pdf)

As it is possible to notice, according to the results of poll in 2012, the respondents who noted lack of any obstacles for intermunicipal communications was much more (17,4%), than in 2014 (3,4%). It should be mentioned the important fact of increasing the role of the obstacles for development of agglomeration interaction as "imperfect legal framework", which also entails a fear of losing the independence of municipalities. Reflecting the ambiguous relation of heads of municipalities to the draft of the program for accelerated creation in Russia of a small number of urban centers around major Russian cities to form a highly urbanized areas due to inter-urban spaces, opinions about such a project devided as follows: nearly two thirds (65,3%) positively perceive this project, considering that aglomerations - the objective development of regions providing formation of economic points of growth and new quality of life. At the same time, 14,7% estimate these offers negatively, reasoning it that concentration of budgetary funds for development of priority agglomerations won't allow to develop to other municipalities and can lead to deterioration of a social economic situation. Every fifth speaks about inexpediency of standardization of decisions and need of the differentiated relation taking into account local conditions and specifics of municipalities.

Investigating expert opinion concerning aglomeration of territories, it is necessary to pay attention to the statement of widely famous Vyacheslav Leonidovich Glazychev, director of the Institute for Innovation Promotion of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, head of the department of management of territorial development of the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation, and the way he speaks about the possibility of creating sustainable city agglomerations in Russia:

— «Process of merge of the small cities with big in agglomeration - reality of today. Lisbon, for example, administratively doesn't increase, all suburbs attached to it remain legally and administratively outside the city, join first of all physically -- due to building of spaces between them, due to transport. How far such association is physical, and is such association optimum for our country?”

— “Such way - is absolutely natural. But so far all goes very difficult... Because agglomerations is a certain type of the union of municipalities which conclude arrangements in subjects of the general interest. We do not have this skill - to negotiate. I try to realize this task since the beginning of the 90th. And so far we have no successful contractual scheme. Somewhere the town with the area may negotiate, but too few such cases, more often they war. Here now with colleagues in Bashkiria we try to resolve a similar issue: there is a live, real physical agglomeration: nearby with each other three industrial cities. Also they should develop together policy of construction of new housing, the general ecological strategy. But suspiciousness to each other and egoism of separate municipal authorities is so great, what even with assistance of the regional power a hard serious work is got".

Development of city agglomerations can give a positive effect only in the presence of the corresponding prerequisites for their development. Prerequisites of formation of city agglomerations are the conditions and opportunity promoting development of agglomerative processes in the territory. Treat them as the main social and economic capacity of the settlements entering agglomeration, and extent of differentiation of capacities of settlements. Distinctions in potentials generate the intensive interactions between settlements which are actually representing an exchange of various resources for achievement of agglomerative effect. Diagnostics of agglomerative interactions which already naturally developed in the territory, their contents, intensity, the main directions, will allow to estimate degree of an inclusiveness of settlements at an agglomerative area, to outline its borders, to reveal structure of space of city agglomeration.

At the same time there can be circumstances interfering development of agglomerative processes in the territory - barriers to their development. For diagnostics of these barriers it is necessary to estimate the main problems of the territory, which are the factors, that slowing down agglomerative processes. Besides, it is important to consider the unrealized potential of interactions between settlements and the possible directions of further development of communications.

Table 4. Prerequisites of formation of city agglomerations: ("Monitoring of a social and economic situation in municipalities of Russia" (results of poll of heads of municipalities, April-May, 2014). Electronic resource. http://www.asdg.ru/about/struct/sobr/XXXI/Monitoring_2014.pdf)

It must be kept in mind that the space of city agglomeration is non-uniform: in its structure, besides the city center, it is possible to allocate a residential suburb, the subcenters, the near and far periphery, which differently react to processes of aglomeration. Heads of municipalities were asked about who to a greater extent wins and loses from the agglomeration processes.

Table 5. Who wins and who loses from the process of agglomeration, % of those surveyed. ("Monitoring of a social and economic situation in municipalities of Russia" (results of poll of heads of municipalities, April-May, 2014). Electronic resource. http://www.asdg.ru/about/struct/sobr/XXXI/Monitoring_2014.pdf)

According to respondents, most the city center (48,1%), a residential suburb (36,7%) and the near periphery of agglomeration (30,4%) benefits from an aglomeration. Also prevalent view is that all settlements entering agglomeration (35,4%) benefit.

As for negative consequences, 30,4% of respondents consider that from an aglomeration nobody loses, and 31,9% say that the distant periphery of agglomeration first of all can be the loser.

Among the positive effects of agglomeration of territory can be called an extension of the existing boundaries for residential development, removal of enterprises outside the city and others. Among the negative effects, which primarily affect the far periphery it can be isolated contraction of the population in major cities and leaving the part of the territory. One more important question that excites heads of municipalities is the control system of agglomeration providing its successful functioning.

Today some models of management of city agglomerations are used in world practice and each one has the pluses and minuses. As a matter of foreign countries experience, 4 possible models of management can be formulated. During poll of heads of municipalities, these models were offered for consideration of possible merits and demerits.

The first model - unitary, providing merge of several municipalities and considering agglomeration as uniform municipality.

The second model - the municipal two-level model providing its creation at the top level of the municipality, covering all territory of agglomeration at preservation in its territory all other municipalities and differentiation of powers and resources between central and other municipalities.

The third model - regional, as the kind of state and municipal two-level model, assigning powers on formation of agglomeration to the territorial subject of the Russian Federation and providing regulation of agglomeration development in general from regional level.

The fourth model - contractual: agglomeration consists of independent and equal municipalities, coordination of strategy and infrastructure projects and the organization of joint rendering of services is carried out on the basis of contracts between separate independent municipalities in the territory of agglomeration.