The City as an Object of Legal Science: Problems and Prospects of Legal Regulation

One of the modern trends in the development of society and the State is total urbanization, which is embodied in the withering away of the rural way of life and the concentration of population and capital in megacities and surrounding agglomerations. The paper examines the historical patterns of urbanization, investigates the place of the city in the system of humanitarian knowledge, and explains the emergence of a new interdisciplinary field of urban research, namely, legal urbanology, the subject of which is the legal space of a modern city. Historically, cities have been centers of politics, trade, and education, and the spread of urban life has become one of the integral features of the capitalist mode of production that is the dominant economic system of production and distribution at the present stage. Nevertheless, the legal regulation of urban relations is associated with a number of problems that require resolution both at the theoretical level and at the legislative level. In this regard, the paper analyzes current Russian legislation, as well as subordinate and departmental rulemaking for compliance with the requirements of the time and evaluation of the effectiveness of regulating the foundations of the legal space of the city. To resolve the identified problems, it is proposed to adopt a systematic program act, the preparation of which can take into account the experience of foreign regulation of the sphere of urban relations.