URP 3001 Russia

The urbanization of Siberia:

Has degraded natural environment

In Paris, land near the city center is most densely populated. In Moscow, land far from the city center is most density populated. Why?

In Russia, as opposed to France, land use has been determined by central planning.

Which of these statements is not true about Moscow?

Inferior Soviet-era housing has now been all replaced by new privatized housing.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, what happened to Moscow?

It became the capital of the Russian Federation.

Moscow's rise to importance in Russia cannot be attributed to:

The rule of Tsar Peter

In which of the following cities would you be most likely to find a new generation of mosques?

Kazan

What group of people was brought to Sakhalin Island during World War II to work the coal mines and now forms a distinct community in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk?

Koreans

What city was shaped by its relative location near the headwaters of the Volga, Dvina, and Dnieper River systems, all of which flowed in different directions?

Moscow

Kazan is in the Russian Federation, but it is also the capital city of a "republic" of its own. What is the name of the republic where Kazan is located?

Republic of Tartarstan

Which one of the following statements is true of Russian cities today but did not apply during Soviet times?

Russian cities are home to branches of European and Japanese banks

"Closed cities" became a hallmark of Soviet-era urban geography. Such cities:

required permission to visit

Churches, museums, and palaces are landscape features that mark what era of Russian city development?

tsarist era

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is:

an oil boomtown located in Russia's Far East.

Historical trading cities along the rivers of European Russia were each dominated by a fortress. The fortress was called:

A Kremlin

What type of economy shaped the landscape of Russian cities from 1917 through 1991?

Command Economy

Astana, capital of the Soviet successor state of Kazakhstan, has modeled itself on Dubai. What do both cities now have in common?

Special Economic Zones hyper-modernity in architectural design hosting international mega-events

Before the Communist Revolution in 1917, the capital of tsarist Russia was:

St. Petersburg

What city was built by the tsar to be Russia's "window on the west" in the early 1700s?

St. Petersburg

Russians constitute the largest ethnic group in Kazan, but they account for only 50% of the city's population. What ethnic group constitutes 42% of Kazan's population?

Tartars

"Secret cities" were built during the Soviet period but began to lose population in the 1980s as the Soviet economy grew weaker. Which one of the following is true of secret cities?

Their economic base was tied to nuclear research and missile production.

Garbage-strewn landscapes surround many Russian apartment buildings for all of the following reasons except:

There is little space for land fills.

What happened to many large mining cities such as Norilsk after the collapse of the Soviet Union?

They declined in population

With increasing consumption and lagging public services, what has happened to the landscapes around many Russian apartment buildings in the post-Soviet era?

They have become littered with trash.

Which one of the following does not apply to Vladivostok?

a city center on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced all of the following except:

a decrease in socioeconomic inequality and homelessness

Which one of the following has been part of the transition from Soviet to Post-Soviet cities?

a shift from central planning to market-driven processes

The growth of Kiev (or Kyiv) as the core of the first Russian state was linked to trade:

between the Baltic Sea and the eastern Mediterranean Sea

What was absent from Soviet planning principles?

concerns about the impact of urban development on the environment

An aspect of Soviet urban planning that grew out of socialist ideologies yet helps achieve the goals of urban sustainability today is Moscow's:

extraordinarily dense network of metro (subway) lines

The pattern in Russia is similar to the U.S.: existing central city buildings in poor condition but in good locations are converted into upscale apartments, often displacing long-time residents. This process is known as:

gentrification

St. Petersburg

has a city center that is a Word Heritage site but also threatened by new development

In a microrayon, as developed during the Soviet period, in what kind of residential units did people live?

high‑rise apartment buildings

Changes on the urban landscape since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism include all of the following except:

horizontal city expansion with minimal vertical development of multistoried buildings

What economic activities are of growing importance for those who remain behind in Russian cities that are losing population because of outmigration to larger urban centers?

hunting and fishing in the local countryside agriculture on household plots of land increased gathering of communal forest resources

The Muslim population of Moscow:

includes immigrants from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

During the Soviet period, "progress" was narrowly conceptualized as:

industrialization

During the Soviet period, one way in which government tried to keep urban growth within projected levels was by:

requiring city residents to have a government-issued propiska in order to live in a city

What was built on the spot in St. Petersburg where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881?

the Church of Our Savior

Problems confronting the Russian urban system include all of the following except:

the continuing decline of the urban population throughout the nation