The Environmental Assessment of Urban Agglomerations on the Basis of Sustainable Development Indicators

The article discusses the indicators of sustainable development given from the standpoint of the classical concept of sustainable development. The methods used are analyzed to identify criteria for sustainable development. The indicators of sustainable development have been known and developed for a long time. However, their development did not take into account the regional fix, which would allow creating a permanent set of the most representative indicators for a certain territory. Volgograd and Rostov agglomerations are chosen as objects. A complex analysis of the regional indicators of sustainable development is carried out taking into account physiographic, climatic, sectoral features, the economic potential and ecological well-being of Volgograd and Rostov agglomerations. The work assesses the ecological and economic sustainability of the agglomerations under study, which allows to give the comparative analysis of the territory development predictive models. Today, it is still too early to talk about the effectiveness of achieving criteria for sustainable development in urban agglomerations. The accepted methods cannot be considered effective due to the fact that the efforts of all areas of management are needed. In the forecast, we can talk about a slight increase in the stability of Rostov agglomeration due to capital inflows. Taking into account current trends, Volgograd agglomeration can face a gradual decrease in sustainability requiring an immediate intervention.