Factors of Uneven Development of Russian Cities with a Population of over 100 000 in the First Decades of the 21st Century

The study is devoted to assessing the scale, dynamics, and factors of uneven development of Russian cities with a population of over 100 000 people based on key socioeconomic indicators for 2000–2021. The assessment was carried out using the Theil index and its decomposability based on the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) data. The obtained results clearly reveal a stage of reduction of socioeconomic differences between cities during the period of economic growth in the country before the 2009–2010 crisis and a stage of growing differences during this crisis, while in the 2010s the differentiation of cities by indicators became multidirectional and unstable. It is shown that macroeconomic crises have a short-term but diverse impact on the differentiation between large cities according to key assessment parameters. The significant gap between Moscow and St. Petersburg and other cities in terms of indicators comparable in calculation methods with municipal statistics indicators has been confirmed; the colossal scale of the contribution of these cities to the overall scale of differences between major centers has been demonstrated. It has been shown that the most significant influence on the differentiation of large cities according to most socioeconomic characteristics is exerted by the factor of their geographical (primarily macroregional) location. It is impossible to speak about a stable influence on the differentiation of cities by their specialization as this factor makes a significant contribution to differences between cities in wages only; for other economic indicators, its influence is manifested only in certain years and is associated with industry cycles. It has been proven that the differentiating role of the status of a regional capital has decreased over the past decades, simultaneously with the growth of the population factor, which indicates an increase in the influence of agglomeration effects. The influence of the analyzed factors on the differences between cities in a number of indicators turns out to be insignificant, which means that the competitive struggle between large centers is much more complex than is commonly believed.