Ural Federal University: Scientists to Study the Experience of Industrial Cities in Applying Post-Industrial Technologies
The higher redistribution is associated with production, the more intelligent it is, the higher is the interest of the city-forming industrial enterprise in the creation and development of post-industrial sectors of the municipal economy and in attracting and retaining highly skilled workers. This hypothesis was put forward by scientists of the Ural Federal University and Tomsk Polytechnic University, starting to develop the theory of creative reindustrialization and classification of its basic models.
The composition of the research group, which unites scientists from UrFU and TPU, is explained by the geography of the study: the Urals and Kuzbass, the two oldest industrial regions of Russia with the highest concentration of industrial cities (Berezniki, Nizhny Tagil, Pervouralsk, Kamensk-Uralsky, Zlatoust, Sterlitamak, Magnitogorsk, Kiselevsk, Prokopyevsk, Novokuznetsk and others).
A striking example of urban economic diversification is Verkhnyaya Pyshma, the “capital” of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, where UMMC is developing a corporate university, a museum of military and civilian equipment, and creating a touring theater, says Irina Turgel, Head of a research project and Director of the School of Economics and Management at the Ural Federal University Graduate School of Economics and Management. Another similar example, Turgel points out, are the cities of Rosatom presence, where the state corporation implements educational development programs (the Rosatom School project) and healthcare (the Thrifty Polyclinic Project).
“In general, the presence of elements of post-industrial urban development can be judged by such signs as deep digitalization and sustainable access to the Internet, a distributed economy with remote employment, a significant share in the structure of the urban economy of the services sector for business and population, the sphere of impressions and leisure,” describes Konstantin Bugrov, professor of the Department of Russian History at UrFU and Leading Researcher of the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The concept of creative reindustrialization of industrial cities of the “second echelon” (i.e. performing important economic and production functions at the regional level) will be presented as a monograph.
“The applied result of the project will be a database of the potential for creative reindustrialization of the cities of the “second echelon” of the Ural and Kuzbass. The database will be used to create an electronic map of our identified models of creative reindustrialization. The map will help other industrial cities of the “second echelon” – their city-forming enterprises, authorities, and the public – assess their socio-economic and cultural potential and choose the optimal diversification model,” explains Irina Antonova, Associate Professor at TPU School of Engineering Entrepreneurship.
The team of scholars has a wide range of research competencies in the fields of economics, anthropology, sociology, history, linguistics, and mathematics.
“Therefore, we are talking about creating a coherent theoretical and methodological concept that is applicable on a global scale. We believe that our developments may be especially in demand in the post-Soviet states and leading industrialized countries of Asia, such as China, India, Iran, and Indonesia,” explains Irina Turgel.
Another planned result of the research is a website of the project, which will reflect not only the scientific results and conclusions drawn in the form of articles, books, reports from conferences, but also the impressions of the research team of travel through the cities and communicate with their inhabitants in the form of a popular travel-blog.