Spatial development in the post-COVID period: New challenges or old problems?

The article shows that the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not lead to the emergence of fundamentally new patterns of spatial development, but has escalated its old problems. Thus, the importance of the largest cities in the country's economy has not decreased at all. On the contrary, their traditional advantages have revealed, including those connected with an increased level of education of residents. But at the same time, the most important problem of the largest cities has also aggravated, and cannot be ignored - that is strong social stratification of citizens. The development of remote employment, the scale of which will obviously be greater than pre-crisis, may lead to changes in the settlement system within urban agglomerations, but not beyond them. This is due to the potential dominance of not completely remote, but combined employment, which is necessary to ensure the transfer of implicit knowledge. But even within urban agglomerations, the possible scale of changing permanent residence due to a number of factors (climate, features of the housing stock, availability of infrastructure facilities) is very limited, the most important will be an increase in the duration of stay in dachas. This will further aggravate the existing complex of problems associated with the extremely weak consideration of the actual life of people on two houses in the activities of the authorities.