ИСТИНА

An important problem in the development of shrinking cities is the lack of awareness of this process by local and regional government. But even with the assistance program for «managing down», many steps are difficult to implement. First of all, due to the fact that the residents of shrinking cities refuse to move either to other cities or even within their city even in case of the shrinkage of the economic base and growth of unemployment. Implementation of urban shrinkage strategies is observed mainly in the cities of the Far North, where goes strong depopulation, and the costs of infrastructure maintenance of housing stock are extremely high. In the case of less extreme natural conditions, urban shrinkage programs are mild and rarely successful. In addition, urban shrinkage outside the extreme north zone has little effect on the urban environment, as there is a decline in the population of households, but households themselves are most often preserved. A study about the migratory moods of shrinking cities residents was made by the example of monoindustrial cities of the North of the Urals, based on the materials of in-depth interviews. Citizens were asked about the opportunity to move to a new place with the assistance of their employer or self-organized relocation. Respondents prefer circular migration. They are considering the possibility of labor travel, but are not ready to change their place of residence. Among the reasons is the lack of confidence in the infrastructure of the settlements offered for relocation. Sometimes residents of studied cities are ready to move to larger cities with a convenient geographical location (as an option - suburbs of the largest cities of Russia), but are not ready to move to populated areas less people with a peripheral situation. Migration is also hampered by the inability to leave older relatives who are even less likely to change their place of residence either by habit and age, or by remembering the hard experience of forced displacement of the Soviet period.