Director of the Russian Regional Development Ministry Department for Special Federal Programs Vladimir Dedyukhin
Photo: Sergey Mikheev
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Russia to Create 8 Mega Cities
Russia’s Regional Development Ministry is going to submit to the government a plan to create eight agglomerate centers with multimillion population and the same labor intensity as in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The Russian regional development strategy will cut the number of subsidized regions and areas not attractive in terms of living and investments, the ministry hopes. The Big Rostov, one of the most detailed project, will unite the cities of Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk and Taganrog with towns of Aksai, Bataisk and Azov, the RBC Daily newspaper reported on Monday.
Yury Perelygin from the Regional Development Ministry says Russian south should have a city that “will outdo both Kharkiv and Odessa” in Ukraine and will attract the whole North Caucasus. Another project sees the merger of Irkutsk, Angarsk and Shelekhov in Eastern Siberia and Nakhodka, Ussuriysk and Vladivostok in the Far East. The Big Sochi is to become a separate tourist center. The development program is scheduled for 20 years.
The ministry does not give any estimates of the cost of the project, RBC Daily reports. But regional officials say that hundreds of billion rubles may be sufficient for building infrastructure alone.
Experts, however, doubt that these projects will come true, saying that an economic hub cannot be created by a decree.
The Regional Development Ministry has been drawing up the strategy since summer 2005. The latest draft provides for involvement of local officials, a point that was missing in the initial plan.
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