Spatial Development Strategy of Russia: Expectations and Realities

The paper presents the position of the Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, on the elaboration the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation. It is shown that in the formation of conceptual approaches to developing the strategy, there was a fundamental change in its priorities, focus, and implementation mechanisms. Whereas the first version of the strategy concept contained a truly progressive vision of the problems, challenges, priorities, possible scenarios of the country’s spatial development, and mechanisms for implementing the strategy, with each subsequent workflow step, these progressive approaches were lost. It is shown that, although the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025 adopted in early 2019 partly took into account comments and suggestions, it nevertheless remained very vulnerable to criticism. The article considers conceptual defects in the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation, such as ignorance of new trends, challenges, and threats arising in the Russian economic space; the dominance of the idea of allocation of funds to implement the strategy only through the development of urban agglomerations, neglecting the tasks of ensuring social justice and supporting the human potential of Russian society, ensuring the environmental safety of business operations, and life of the population in particular territories, etc. © 2019, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.