Date and time
Conference report
Read a report about the 2018 RSA Russia Conference in the third issue of our e-Zine Regions (March 2019) here.
Presentations and Impressions of the RSA Russia Conference 2018
Presentations of the 2018 Russia Conference have been uploaded to and can be viewed on the All Russia Strategic Forum webpage.
Photographs taken during the Conference have been uploaded to the Flickr account of the RSA and can be viewed here.
The 2018 RSA Russian conference will be held 22-23 October and takes place within the Russian All Russia Strategic Forum in St Petersburg. The All Russia Strategic Forum is the premier event in regional policy and development to be held annually within Russia.
Attended by Ministers of State, it brings together the key players within Russia supplemented by key speakers from other territories and representing organisations such as the World Bank, OECD and other meta-level players.
The Forum is held annually since 2002 and has already firmly and justifiably gained the right to be regarded as the main platform for discussion of methods and tools of strategic planning, as well as constructive analysis on the most important and sensitive problems of strategic plans and complex projects implementation in urban development of the Russian Federation. More information on the Forum website https://forumstrategov.ru/?lang=eng.
The RSA Russia Conference is delighted to have been invited to host an academic conference within this prestigious event which offers a unique opportunity for meaningful knowledge exchange between the worlds of academia, policy and practice and which offers unparalleled access to key figures in our fields. Participants may register to either event and will have free access to the sessions of both events. All refreshment breaks will be taken together to maximise the chance of interactions.
This conference will bring together researchers and practitioners from different countries interested in urban and regional development, new development path creation, and urban and regional resilience.
The future development of regional studies and human geography have been informed by a number of critical questions:
- How can we address persistent disparities between prosperous metropolitan regions and less-favored ‘peripheries’, including small cities and rural settlements?
- How does centralization of political and economic power influence local and regional development, spatial inequalities, and cohesion?
- How can we reconcile the imperatives of economic development, sustainability, and human well-being?
- How do place specific institutional frameworks, cultures, and norms facilitate or hinder development?
- How do economic development strategies in post-industrial cities influence income and class disparities?
The notion of urban resilience cuts across these debates in theory and practice. At the theoretical level, it has allowed linking of debates in regional geography, urban planning, and policy studies. At the practical level, policy-makers are concerned with issues of implementation and the gap between policy design and delivery. Current debates are dominated by structural factors and explanations, but the role of agency and leadership is rising up the research agenda in regional studies, political science and management.
This raises the following questions in relation to the long-term resilience of places:
- What is the role of local, regional, and national level policies and leadership?
- What role is played by inter-budgetary relations, local self-governance, and inter-municipal cooperation?
- How effective and efficient are the following regional policy instruments: national/regional targeted programs, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Development Corporations (DCs), Local/Regional Development Agencies, Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects, etc.?
Current debates emphasize the role of universities in innovation, knowledge exchange, and creating human capital. These are crucial factors for regions and localities seeking to develop new areas of specialization but how is this managed in peripheral regions and small cities which have need but are often excluded from university-centered knowledge exchange networks? How can this mismatch be addressed? Papers are also sought on social and civil capital and its influence on the quality of institutions and mechanisms for creating new industrial specializations as well as city and regional resilience in the face of external shocks.
Conference key themes:
- Urban and regional resilience
- Small cities after decline
- Small cities in non-core areas: local, regional and national policies on their shrinking and/or revival
- Local self-government and inter-budgetary relations
- Strategies and instruments of re-growth and reindustrialization for cities and regions
- Strategies and patterns of urban/regional post-industrial development
- Inter-municipal cooperation
- Planning for metropolitan areas and regional design
- Human capital, industrial specialization and innovation in urban development
- Social/civil capitals and institutions in urban development
- PPPs in urban development
- International, national and regional cohesion policies and inequalities
Program Committee
- Leonid Limonov – Leontief Centre, HSE-St Petersburg, Russia
- Oleg Golubchikov – Cardiff University, UK
- Sally Hardy – Regional Studies Association, UK
- Sergey Kadochnikov – HSE-St Petersburg, Russia
- Nadir Kinossian – Leibniz-Insitut für Länderkunde (IfL), Germany
- Eugenia Kolomak – Novosibirsk State University, Russia
- Dieter Kogler – University College Dublin, Ireland
- Alexandr Pelyasov – SOPS, Russia
- Jessie Poon – University at Buffalo, USA
- Alexandr Puzanov – Institute of Urban Economics, Russia
- Thomas Skuzinski- Virginia Tech, USA
- Mark Tewdwr-Jones – University of Newcastle, UK
- Dmitry Tolmachev – Ural Federal University (UrFU), Russia
- Irina Turgel – Ural Federal University (UrFU), Russia
- Hans Wiesmeth – Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany, and Ural Federal University (UrFU), Russia
- Jacek Zaukha – University of Gdansk, Poland
- Boris Zhikharevich – Leontief Centre, Russia
- Natalya Zubarevich – Moscow State University, Russia