Dynamic Urbanism: A Comparative Analysis of Cities with Rapid Population Changes in Russia and China

Project with a research team from Tianjin University (China) under the HSE International Academic Cooperation programme

Project Leaders: Nadezhda Zamyatina and Yang Wei

Project Period: 2025–2027

Overview

The project explores the emerging field of dynamic urbanism—a new interdisciplinary approach to understanding cities undergoing rapid demographic and structural change. It addresses the challenges of urban transformation driven by global technological shifts and the transition toward post-industrial and innovation-based economies.

Many industrial cities worldwide are currently facing systemic crises in their core enterprises, resulting in depopulation, urban decline, and weakened social resilience. Simultaneously, new cities—‘technopolises’—are emerging around innovation clusters and high-tech industries. The project interprets these opposite processes not as isolated cases but as interconnected manifestations of profound global transitions shaping the hierarchy of modern economies.

Research Focus

Dynamic urbanism views cities as evolving systems that respond to global technological and economic restructuring.

The research aims to identify both universal patterns of urban evolution and specific features of the ongoing transition to the sixth technological paradigm, characterised by knowledge-intensive production and innovation-driven development.

By comparing Russian and Chinese cities with rapidly changing populations, the project builds a theoretical and empirical foundation for understanding how cities adapt—or fail to adapt—to structural change, population shifts, and new modes of governance.

Aims and Objectives

Scientific

• Define the theoretical and methodological framework of dynamic urbanism as an independent research field.
• Develop a comparative database of Russian and Chinese cities experiencing rapid population change.
• Identify typologies of urban development—from newly founded to shrinking cities—and analyse the key drivers of transition from growth to depopulation.
• Examine, through case studies, the developmental phases of fast-growing and depopulating cities in relation to governance, infrastructure, urban identity, and quality of life.

Educational Component

• Conduct joint intensive workshops for Russian and Chinese students on urban development under global technological transformation.
• Engage students in fieldwork, project-based research, and publication activities.
• Facilitate exchange of teaching and research practices between the partner universities.

Applied Results

• Develop methodological guidelines to reduce the negative impacts of rapid population change in cities—including labour market regulation, demographic balance, housing and utilities management, civic engagement, and cooperation between municipal authorities and key enterprises.
• Register the developed guidelines as intellectual property (for both growing and shrinking cities).

Institutional Outcomes

• Organise international academic events and conferences.
• Increase the academic visibility of HSE University and the partner institution through publications in leading journals.
• Strengthen the public and professional reputation of both universities by presenting project outcomes across media and academic platforms.