The North of Sverdlovsk Oblast: A System of Cities on the Edge of the Old-Developed Urals

— This article discusses the territorial development of the system of cities in the north of Sverdlovsk oblast, which is interesting in that it occupies a border position between the mining Urals and the resource-rich North. This territory is distinguished by an abundance of single-industry towns with a difficult socioeconomic situation. They have been undergoing a massive economic restructuring over the past 10 years, accompanied by changes in labor markets and spatial redistribution of the population within urban okrugs. The study is based on a retrospective analysis of the factors of formation of the urban system and the diagnosis of the current state of all its elements. Statistical indicators of the dynamics of the population and industrial production, on which the local economy relies, were considered, and institutional changes were studied, which entailed, among other things, the restructuring of the economic base. The upper levels of the manufacturing industry in most cities are being liquidated due to market conditions, changes in the strategies of the new owners, and obsolescence of technologies and equipment. Old enterprises of the extractive industry close due to the exhaustion or unprofitability of resource extraction, but new enterprises and industries appear that are less labor-intensive and are often localized outside urban areas. Conceived as a new center for the industrial development of the territory Bogoslovsky Industrial Park faced serious restrictions in its implementation and could not become an alternative to retiring enterprises, either in the labor market or in the formation of the local budget. Cities are rapidly losing population, while in the economy, small enterprises dispersed throughout the studied urban okrugs come to the fore for extraction and primary processing, similar to what happened more than 200 years ago during the resource development of the north of Sverdlovsk oblast.