Spatial Governance Under Polycrisis: Reconfiguring Agglomeration Policy

Abstract

Agglomeration policy has long been a widely accepted approach in spatial development, premised on the assumption that large, integrated city-regions drive national economic growth through higher productivity, innovation, and global integration. This paper examines how this paradigm is reworked under conditions of polycrisis, understood as a durable state of overlapping and mutually reinforcing economic, geopolitical, and institutional crises. Focusing on Russia as an empirical case, the study analyses how national spatial priorities shift from growth and competitiveness toward territorial control and population retention, and how this shift reshapes agglomeration policy under polycrisis. The paper compares Russia’s 2019 and 2024 Spatial Development Strategies, drawing on a systematic analysis of policy documents, implementation guidelines, expert reports, and records of official discussions. Using a process-tracing approach, it reconstructs how polycrisis dynamics recalibrate spatial priorities, policy objectives, and governance arrangements across two consecutive planning cycles. The paper argues that under polycrisis, agglomeration policy becomes inherently unstable, as its growth-oriented preconditions give way to territorial stabilisation and the management of systemic vulnerability.

Keywords: Polycrisis, Russia, Spatial governance, Territorial resilience, urban agglomeration