2023 Issue №3

The article considers the forest-park protective belt (FPPB) of Moscow and briefly out­lines the stages of the development of the concept of the forest-park belt and the FPPB of Mos­cow in accordance with the city's master development plans. To assess its current state, a system of indicators is proposed, based on which an integrated index is calculated. A detailed analysis of the indicators and the integrated index has been conducted, allowing for the identi­fication of three most probable scenarios for the further development of different parts of the forest-park protective belt of Moscow.

Contemporary scientific literature lacks clear formulations of the concepts «Arctic city», «city of the Far North», and «Northern city». This is largely due to the vague boundaries between the territories of the North and the Arctic. Within the framework of this study, the main approaches to defining the boundaries of the North were considered, and a comparative analysis of northern cities located in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, Far North regions, and areas equated to them was conducted to determine the possibility of establishing clear boundaries between the specified concepts and defining their specificity in the conditions of modern zoning of the North. All northern settlements with city status were analyzed, and they were grouped based on territorial features, natural-climatic conditions, and economic specialization. The issue of additional zoning or clustering of northern territories, taking into account the modern economic situation, was also addressed.

The experience of determining the ethnic contrast of the borders of the republics in the Ural-Volga region is presented based on a methodology that relies on assessing interethnic marriage rates between the titular nations of the republics and the Russian population. To achieve this, the study introduces an indicator called the Ethnic Contrast Coefficient, or the Soroko coefficient. The calculation of the coefficient is based on the assessment of «interethnic distances» defined by E. L. Soroko for pairs of major ethnic groups represented in the Ural-Volga region. The research revealed that the most ethnically contrasting borders in the region are those of Bashkortostan (excluding the section with Tatarstan), while the least contrasting are the borders of Udmurtia, Chuvashia, and Mordovia with neighboring Russian regions. The primary factor influencing the ethnic contrast of the borders between the republics of the Ural-Volga region is the religious factor, with the highest Soroko coefficient observed at the border between Chuvashia and Tatarstan.

In the current conditions of increasing geopolitical tension and volatility in the global economy, the development of interregional interaction is increasingly seen as a source of eco­nomic growth for Russian regions. However, the study of such interaction should not only include an analysis of trade flows but also an analysis of network interaction, an attempt to carry out which is presented in this work. The article presents the results of a study analyzing the presence of Saint Petersburg companies with their own brands in the Kaliningrad region. The research covered 33 companies from Saint Petersburg. It was found that in the Kalinin­grad region, only eight Saint Petersburg companies, including federal-level organizations, have regional representations, offices, branches, own stores, or dealer centers. Excluding fed­eral-level organizations, this number is five. The financial services sector turned out to be the most represented, while the least represented were the IT industry, pharmaceuticals, food industry, and agriculture. All of this is happening against the backdrop of the expansion of the presence of Saint Petersburg businesses in the regions of the Russian Federation beyond the Northwestern Federal District.