Аннотация:large urban centers and a significant number of cities experiencing population loss, economic downturn, and cityscape deterioration. In international urban research and planning practice cities facing depopulation and structural crises are referred to as “shrinking” (see Haase et al. 2014).Since the 2000s, cities with persistent and severe population loss became the focus of urban research. The expanding and dynamic academic debate on urban shrinkage includes the following focuses (Haase et al. 2014, 2016; Pallagst et al., 2017):• Complexity and the interrelationship of factors that lead to population loss, as well as the consequences of depopulation at the urban level;• Transformation of the built environment and infrastructure under conditions of urban shrinkage and the growing mismatch between supply and demand;• Urban planning and policymaking in the context of shrinkage: strategies (accepting or countering), planning approaches and instruments aimed at adapting to shrinkage. At the same time, to date the concept of urban shrinkage remains “fuzzy” having theoretical and methodological limits such as the problem of threshold definition, empirical contradictions, and insufficient understanding of urban development as a historically contingent process (Bernt 2016).In Russian urban studies, the topic of urban shrinkage with its conceptualization and policy responses can be described as barely delineateddespite the growing number of shrinking cities in the country (Batunova & Gunko 2018; Cottineau 2016). There is clearly a need for comprehensiveand multi-dimensional research of urban shrinkage at different scales, as well as conceptualization of phenomenon within the specific cultural andgeographic context. This chapter provides a brief overview of research on, and identification of, shrinking cities in Russia. A shrinking city is defined as one with a population loss over 1% annually within periods of population censuses. We discuss urban shrinkage in Russia in terms of different time periods, citysize and geographical location. This overview also includes a typology of shrinking Russian cities based on different indicators.
