The cost modeling of urbanized areas

Abstract

In the context of rapid urbanization and urban population growth, cities enjoy particular attention in the spatial development agenda. The complexity of searching for promising city-forming factors, as well as insufficient investments into the development process do not allow to found new cities in Russia. At the same time, the experience of a number of foreign countries shows that solving this problem is not only feasible, but also cost-effective. Researchers, specializing in urban planning, architects and urbanists offer various development models for urban areas, agglomerations, and urbanized territories. However, in most of their works, the issue of the amount of financing required for the basic infrastructure in such territories remains unexplored. The co-authors formulate the principles of economic and urban planning modeling of cities in an effort to clarify the concept of “urbanized territories”. The proposed criteria for scenario transitions, that accompany the development of urbanized territories, will allow to use the available resources more efficiently. As recommended by the co-authors, the distribution of costs among the main subjects of formation of an urbanized territory on the basis of principal infrastructure blocks will prevent any excessive pressure on the country’s budget system. As a result of the cost modeling focused on the development of an urbanized territory with the population of 500 thousand people, it has turned out that the per-resident investment amount, needed to found a new settlement, reaches about 7.16 million.