Russian Arctic Cities in the Context of Climate Change

For centuries, humans lived in the Arctic in relatively small, self-sustained communities in harmony with the harsh local climate and environment. In contrast to that earlier period, the modern Russian Arctic is characterized by intensive urban development, including cities whose populations exceed more than 100,000 people. “Urbanization” peaked in the period between the late 1950s and 1980s. During that time, millions of mostly young people, inspired by the nation-wide enthusiasm for ambitious development projects, moved permanently to the North, and many of the small northern villages and compact settlements developed into cities with new types of urban infrastructure and life styles. Most of the northern cities demonstrated high resilience and survived the economic and political collapse of the country in the early 1990s, largely because the well-being of post-Soviet Russia was based on the extraction and exploitation of natural resources from the North (Fig. 1).