Hidden Capacity of Small Towns

Abstract

Today's crisis of small towns in Russia could be considered two folds. On one hand, it is induced by the economic and political priorities of the country, adopted in legal acts. The innovative transformation is established among nationwide goals, and their prospectivity in any urban formation is defined through methodologies, grounded on quantitative market criteria. These of small towns are unable to compete with big cities' ones. On the other hand, the crisis situation in itself enables revelation of hidden potentials of the small towns, comprising possibly the most significant one, furthering their development as a national priority - innovative capacity. The article suggests the methodology of statistical analysis, confirming the creative potential of small towns in professional and commercial fields as local manufacturing centers. The small towns in particular combine features of stability and vulnerability, therefore innovation capacity assessment puts stress on capability of urban environment to provide the equitability of effectiveness and sustainability, encouraging urban creative powers. The introduced methodology is based on considering equally intangible values of a historic settlement, relative economic indicies, and criteria of social and spatial cohesion, which are defined as the most significant innovative features. It is intended to rehabilitate small towns as prospective local manufacturing centers and to suggest how to introduce the small town capacity via urban planning tools.