Supporting agencies: Within the framework of this paper, sections 2 and 5 were written by T.G. Nefedova under the project of the Russian Science Foundation of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences no. 19-17-00174 “Early Developed Regions under Socio-Economic Polarization and Shrinkage of the Active Areas in European Russia”. Sections 4 was written by A.G. Makhrova under the project supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, no. 17-06-00396 “Social and Natural–Ecological Factors of the Urbanization/Deurbanization Process in Modern Russia (Interdisciplinary Macro- and Microanalysis).”