Demographers: The lands beyond the Urals are depopulated. New cities needed
The idea of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu about new cities in Siberia is justified from the point of view of the country’s national security.
Olga Vorobyova, chief researcher at the Institute of Demographic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta about this, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“From the point of view of national security, the emergence of new cities in Siberia is justified. The gigantic lands beyond the Urals are depopulated. Moscow sees this problem, identified by the tsars and Stalin. Yes, the federal government and the regions have been working on the project of building new cities for two years. Yes, back in 2019, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, President Putin instructed the government and the Russian Academy of Sciences to work on the issue of using the Minusinsk Valley. There is a plan, so far similar to the idea. And an idea without careful elaboration is a utopia,” says the demographer.
She also noticed that a lot is being built in Russia, but often the so-called elite high-rise buildings are empty, and people call them by the name of the empty city of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant “Pripyat.”
“You can’t argue with this: the declared 20 square meters per person is not for Russia, which has huge spaces. There will be no large families with children in the “human villages”. These are not houses for living, these are capsules for spending the night. If new cities are built this way, the project will definitely become a utopia. Moreover, the cities of Siberia are not overpopulated. Maybe, at the same time, conditions should be created in them and the villages nearby so that people would be drawn there,” notes Vorobyova.
In turn, a writer from Novosibirsk, Mikhail Shchukin, believes that there will be people for the new cities.
“Thousands of our compatriots remain abroad. If we call, “Guys, let’s go to a new place - build a new life!”, people will respond. By the way, those who live in overcrowded housing will also respond. But in order to be heard, we need some kind of propaganda campaign... I can already hear the whistling of the bath gangs that the progressive public will throw at me, but I am convinced that this is exactly what is worth doing,” said Shchukin.
At the same time, he is convinced that those who live in Siberia should do this.
“Nothing will work if people for whom Russian biography ends outside the Moscow Ring Road are involved in this,” says the writer.
English version :: Read in English Demographers: Lands beyond the Urals are depopulated. New cities are needed.