Functionality of medium-sized cities

Abstract

The relevance of the article is due to the new demographic, socio-medical and external conditions of the country's development. The purpose of the article is to substantiate a new driver for the development of the resettlement policy. The article analyzes such functions of a medium-sized city as self-preservation and self-sufficiency, shows the presence in it not only life-support systems (as in small settlements), but also its social-development systems, which provides perspectives for medium-sized cities and solid life chances for their residents.

The authors identify the negative aspects of the concept of turning Russia into a conglomerate of megacities with neighborhoods and substantiate the possibilities of medium-sized cities as an alternative to this. The fundamental social differences of medium-sized city from small towns and from megacities are revealed, allowing the first of them to become drivers of economic and social growth of the country, centers of concentration of social objects that attract the surrounding population to use them.

Sociodemographic, socio-medical and military-strategic factors of population` dispersal into medium-sized cities, especially important in modern conditions, are shown. The article is intended for students and university-teachers, studying the demographic and social problems of urbanism.