Location of Productive Forces in Russia in an Innovation Economy

The relevance of the topic is determined by a pioneering attempt to generalize, based on world experience and Russian realities of the last three decades, new patterns in the location of Russia’s productive forces arising in connection with innovative modernization of the national economy. This research objective has identified the solution to three main problems: (1) identification and characterization of urban agglomerations, economic clusters, and new industrial areas as new forms of the location of Russia’s productive forces; (2) analysis of the phenomenon of center–periphery dichotomy of the Russian space using the tools of the gravity model; (3) study of differences in the factors involved in placing new industrial facilities in Russia, depending on the degree of their production efficiency. The main methods for solving these problems were multiscale analysis, the Clark–Medvedkov potential model, and comparative analysis. Analysis showed that the new location patterns of Russia’s productive forces are associated with the rise in importance of urban agglomerations, and economic clusters, grassroots (small) economic districts in the form of localized areas of increased economic concentration: innovation valleys, technology parks, industrial parks, special economic zones, etc., as modern forms of the spatial organization of productive forces. These forms of compact placement yield better conditions for the learning processes between employees and firms, the flow of knowledge, and generation of innovations than former, larger, and more spatially dispersed ones. The Russia’s placements specifics include low population density of the country’s space, extreme cold, significant underurbanization, and landlocked territory. These features of the Russian space are manifested in the particular nature of Russia’s center–periphery: about half the country’s territory does not have “distinct” nearby center, the role of which in innovative modernization and spatial reorganization is therefore under force carried out by Moscow. The main modern watershed in placement processes is not along the industrial-nonindustrial axis; rather, it involves routine–creative types of economic activity. Industrial facilities themselves can fall into the categories of routine and creative. The tendency for innovative (new) industries to cluster in space is related to the role of knowledge flows: closer to the places of development of new knowledge, technical, and technological innovations. The high-tech branches of the electronic and biotechnological industries, which rely on the intangible assets of new knowledge and new technical solutions, are maximally concentrated in terms of location. The traditional industrial sectors of the light and food industries are much more dispersed. The location of high-tech types of economic activity is particularly sensitive to the factors of the institutional environment, the agglomeration effect, and the presence of innovation infrastructure facilities. Modernization of the spatial organization of Russia’s productive forces, in the presence of general innovation trends, proceeds with significant specifics in large metropolitan agglomerations, million-plus cities, old industrial districts, single-industry cities, and industrial–agrarian and agrarian territories.