Following the argument of urban geographers that “superstar” cities are the engines of economic growth in a globalized era, Kremlin advisor Aleksei Kudrin and others have argued that Russia should invest in a handful of major cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg. That advice has now become part of official government planning. In stark contrast to the developed world, however, Russia's population is not concentrated in a few urban centers, but in several hundred medium-sized cities and towns, many distributed across Russia's vast territory, often far from other metropolitan agglomerations. These include more than a hundred officially-designated “monotowns,” whose fate is dependent on a single industry, which the government ranks according to the severity of their “socio-economic conditions.” This paper will explore the dilemmas faced by monotowns in particular, and the challenge to authorities of balancing the need for new economic growth from urban metropolises against preventing social unrest in declining industrial communities.

中文翻译：

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全球城市与锈带现实：俄罗斯城市发展的困境

继城市地理学家认为“超级明星”城市是全球化时代经济增长的引擎之后，克里姆林宫顾问阿列克谢·库德林和其他人认为，俄罗斯应该在莫斯科和圣彼得堡等少数主要城市进行投资。该建议现已成为政府官方计划的一部分。然而，与发达国家形成鲜明对比的是，俄罗斯的人口并不集中在少数几个城市中心，而是数百个中等城市和城镇，其中许多分布在俄罗斯广阔的领土上，往往远离其他大都市群。其中包括一百多个官方指定的“单一城镇”，它们的命运取决于一个行业，政府根据其“社会经济状况”的严重程度对其进行排名。