2017 Vol. 9 №2

Earliest studies into the influence of the sea on the economy and settlement structure date back to the mid-19th century. They became common in the 20th century. Researchers have come to a general understanding that a coastal position has a beneficial effect on the development of regions. Such areas have a denser population and develop more rapidly than inland regions. At the same time, the effect of environmental, socioeconomic, demographic, and political factors is often stronger than the influence of the sea. Thus, an inland position can be more beneficial than a coastal one. Both trends are observed in the Baltic Sea macroregion. However, the ‘gravitational force’ of the sea varies from place to place. This article focuses on the most significant differences between territories and countries. These differences reflect the uneven influence of the proximity of the Baltic Sea on the development of population and national economies. Qualitative differences between mesoregions are measured using a combination of theoretical and empirical typologies. An economic, statistical, and cartographic analysis helps to identify a special type of mesoregions — coastal development corridors, which make an important contribution to the economic development and consolidation of the Baltic macroregion. In transnational macroregions, such typological differences must be taken into account in strategic and spatial planning at the intergovernmental level.

The coastalisation of population is considered as a prolonged, universal, although not a ubiquitous — socio-geographical process. This process is a result of the evolving spatial architecture of countries and regions, a lack of balance between the potential of leading cities, economic and settlement projections of global geoecological, geo-economic, and geopolitical processes, the scale and effect of transnational and transboundary contracts, and the changing images of coastal areas. This article analyses the trend towards the ‘drift’ of the demographic potential from the inland territories to the coastal periphery, which has been observed in Russia for centuries. A vast body of empirical data and statistics is used to demonstrate that, during the post-Soviet period, coastalisation has become city-centred and regionally/locally selective with a focus on the agglomerations of the Baltic, Caspian, and partly Azov- Black Sea coasts. The multi-scale phenomena of ‘inverse coastalisation’ and ‘quasicoastalisation’ are analysed and relevant cases are considered. The author identifies numerous factors and explores prospects of the further coastalisation of population in the Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions and Saint Petersburg. The author argues that against the background of increasing socioeconomic risks — particularly due to the change in Russia’s geostrategic priorities — the coastal zones remain crucial to the new configuration of the country’s settlement system.