Robert Rudolph’s research while affiliated with Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and other places

During the 20th century, Moscow changed from being a one million person city in Russia to the largest European urban agglomeration. The growth and urbanization processes were particularly strong during the Soviet period. At the beginning of the 1990s, new forms of political and economic regulation were established, which were accompanied by new spatial structures. Moscow and its periphery were subjected to new tendencies of spatial differentiation and polarization. The paper analyzes the new post-Soviet developments in the periphery of the Moscow metropolitan area.

During the 1990s, the city of Moscow was subject to an extraordinary transformation in its political, economic and social structures, which had consequences for the position of Moscow within the national and international hierarchy of cities. This article is concerned with the trends that can be discerned regarding the position of Moscow on the national and European scales. Without a doubt, the development of Moscow is characterized by an increasing separation from the national urban system and a growing international orientation. The Russian capital has no competitors on the national level: measured against the relevant economic indicators it is a long way ahead of the remaining Russian cities, which are primarily integrated into national and regional economic flows, and participate in the global economy only to a limited degree. Moscow, in contrast, is increasingly striving to integrate itself into transnational and international economic structures. Although the concept of Moscow as a global city is often instrumentalized in municipal politics, the ability of the Russian capital to act as a global centre is in fact limited. At present Moscow's most important function, from a Central European perspective, is to act as a bridging link between Central and Western Europe and Russia. There is a danger that the spatial disparities between Moscow on the one hand, and the remaining Russian cities and regions on the other, will continue to grow.

During the 1990s, the city of Moscow and the Moscow region experienced a marked process of spatial differentiation and polarization. In the city centre and the neighbouring districts, there came into existence an internationally oriented business infrastructure, new office space, and commercial streets, together with areas devoted to the sale of expensive consumer goods. Outside this privileged space was an urban periphery characterized by various forms of decline. At some points, however, small businesses also established themselves here. Only since gradual economic consolidation began at the end of the 1990s has it been possible to observe the development of large-scale retail outlets and leisure facilities, such that Moscow's outskirts are coming to resemble the peripheries of large cities elsewhere in the world.