ENVIRONMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A REGIONAL SYSTEM OF CITIES (AS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN).

At present, the impact of production factors on natural conditions and the environment of human life assumes a pronounced global scale. The level of exposure to technological factors and the degree of environmental degradation is the main problem of modern society. The sharply aggravated environmental problems set the task for science to comprehend the prevailing trends in environmental and economic development and to develop fundamentally new concepts for the influence of production factors on the development of urbanized regions of the regions. An important issue in the implementation of the concept of sustainable development of the city system was the identification of its practical and measurable indicators. In this paper, indicators of the city’s rank and size are considered as indicators of sustainable development of the city system within the framework of the Zipf model “rank-size”. A significant correlation with the linear model “rank-size” indicates, according to the authors, shows us a balanced growth of the city system in the region. At the same time, the development of urbanized territories is considered in the context of environmental problems that accompany this process. Many cities of the region are located in the zone of influence of industrial pollution of petrochemical complex enterprises. These enterprises concentrate and use a huge amount of substance and energy, which has a significant transformative effect on the environment surrounding the city. The greatest negative impact of industrial waste on the quality of the human environment is manifested in air pollution. The article presents an analysis of the dynamics of environmental pollution and the measures taken to clean up industrial emissions into the atmosphere over the past five years as part of the environmental program of the Republic of Tatarstan. The authors concluded that consecutive steps in the framework of the environmental program will contribute to the formation and sustainable development of the system of cities in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]