The main strength of Russia is situated in megapolises

MOSCOW, Russian Federation - April 5, 2015 - PRLog -- Head of Department of Political Science and Sociology Russian University of Economics them. Plekhanov, PhD Andrey Koshkin with colleagues revealed and described the features of the process and prospects of economic development of big cities in Russia.

He supposes that one of the main reasons of this occurrence is exploding rate of scientific and techological growth in megapolicies and accent on innovations. Earlier cities emerged as a transport hub near mineral deposit, now the situation has changed. All needed resources are attracted to places that show ability to innovate. Consequently bigger cities compete for resources better and have higher cultural level the population than small cities. Now Moscow is national financial and economical center, it holds more than a half of registered banks in the whole country.

More over each big city has formed its own social and political practices and competitive attitude to other big cities. Such cities as Moscow and Saint Petersburg even organized their own original local government design. It is possible that growth of republican and regional centerscan lead to similar result (eg. Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Voronezh, Saratov, etc.). The need to effectively coordinate interests of different social groups and strata has emerged in big cities in real politics long ago. Different political forces have an increasing interest to new forms of management - political management, outsourcing and crowdsourcing, open government in such social and political situation. This flurry concentration of resources actively contributes to formation of new political parties and social and political movements, which consequently are forced to develop infrastructure in Russian regions.

The amount of people in big cities increases together with development of more mobile communicative environment, in which people communicate different from residents of towns and villages. Scientists convinced that big cities nowadays are the source of “orange”, “flower” and other revolutions , however, common revolutions also were always originated from big cities.

What affects the increse of prospectives and formation of political urbanisation limits?

First of all, city growth leads to the change of citizen role in political life of society.

Optimal political management formation had to enlist the citizens masses.  Along with that comes a new understanding of the importance of the city and its residents as a special subject of political influence, enabling to move from direct pressure to more covert methods of impact on political processes (through the media, urban mass communication).Nowadays one of the main problems of city residents is the degree of tolerance to the city affairs of the broad democratic strata. City resident is a part of puvlic changes in the city now, formally being in the center of all the political reforms of the city. But in reality Russian city population is not interested in direct contact with the urban and the political power. The reasons are common: city residents have a lot of their own problems and constant lack of spare time, indifference to the urban power and absensce of faith to be heard, elementary disinterest in politics. A serious contradiction has been formed: city residents have a lot of abilities but little desire to participate in politics in the city.

Secondly, mass media actively penetrate and take place in political life of the city, forming a national role model out of it. Political and communicative subjectivity of cities are determined by some technological innovations. Gradual increase in the rate of exchange of political information and its focus on the regions of the country can be clearly seen in the evolution of the mass media through the prism of the development of the political system and human culture. City residents tend to approve liberal ideology values and democracy that spread to regions of the county faster. Naturally, in the cities, the closer people got to the ideals of individual freedom, civil and political rights, equality before the law, political pluralism and democracy, the more they resisted any form of urban violence against the personality. At the same time, the management of a more free person requires special skills and, perhaps, even, sophistication. Urban power should be able to encourage citizens to take actions that interest the authorities, while maintaining a sense the citizens' free choice.

Finally, scientists pointed out that  political urbanization is taking place in the life of many Russian societies in recent years. It is going against the background of democratization, limitation of senior officials by law, change of the value orientations of citizens, numerous social and political organizations entering the political arena.

Today, political contradictions between the objective need for the development of the whole country and the real resource constraints for this development have exacerbated  in big cities first of all. This dilemma is obvious for supreme authorities. In this situation big cities are considered to be the source of  “orange”, “flower” and other revolutions.