Key theoretical approaches for explaining the socio-economic inequality of cities in foreign studies

Abstract

The article presents a structured review of foreign theoretical approaches to explaining the inequality of cities in terms of socio-economic development. The purpose of the article is to fill the lack of knowledge about these approaches in the Russian-language scientific literature, as well as to popularize their use in Russian urban studies. The article shows that the bulk of theories explaining the emergence and dynamics of inter-urban inequality have been developed only since the 1970s–90s. The evolution of theories of inter-urban inequality poorly corresponds with the general course of paradigm shift in geographical research: although there is an increase in attention to the consideration of human factors in later theoretical approaches (as in the humanistic paradigm in geography), they do not prevail over approaches based on economic theories and continue to develop along with the last ones. Several economic theoretical approaches of the XX century get a new reading in the studies of the 2000s and 2010s (the theory of allometric scaling of cities, the theory of agglomeration advantages, etc.). The newest theoretical approaches of the 2010s–20s, in comparison with ones of the 1990s–2000s, are characterized by a concentration of attention on a smaller number of more specific factors (for example, regulation of the housing market, the implementation of «smart city» elements), the assessment of which requires the expansion of the use of qualitative methods. There is no dominance of any of the invented theories – both old and new theories are used by foreign authors in modern studies of intercity inequality. The emergence of new approaches in the 2020s underlines that the theoretical framework of research in the field of inter-urban inequality still continues to develop.