Cities of the Moscow Capital Region: official and real

Abstract

The article considers methodological approaches and criteria for the delimitation of urban settlements within larger metropolitan areas by the case of Moscow region. It is shown that the techniques using mobile operator data provide good results for the identification of “true” cities. It allows to identify a city in its “physical” borders by 500x500 m cells as a lowest territorial unit and more correctly reflect the number of the population. The most applicable method turned out to be based on the indicators of the population of continuous built-up areas of over 15 thousand people and population density of over 1000 people/km2. As an additional criterion the existing and former borders of settlements are taken into account that despite their subjective nature, perform a barrier function. According to the proposed methodology, 92 “true” cities were allocated in Moscow region against 76 existing cities (outside former borders of Moscow). These, along with some of the official cities, included large urban-type settlements and villages, abolished cities and towns, as well as conglomerates of several small settlements, including those in New Moscow. The belt-sector structure of “real” cities distribution duplicates the pattern of the urban settlement network with higher concentration in nearest suburbs and in eastern sector of the region. As well as for the official cities of the region, Rosstat underestimates population for centers located up to 40 km from the MKAD, and overestimates it in more remote cities.