UNPOPULATED AREAS: STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONAL ZONING, A CASE OF THE NORTHERN URALS

Abstract

The article studies unpopulated areas as testing grounds for the development of nature-oriented tourism. The purpose of the research is to investigate the structure and carry out functional zoning of the unpopulated area in the Northern Urals. The tasks are: 1). to define and concretize the term ‘unpopulated area’; 2). to analyze the structure and features of boundary delimitation for such areas; 3). to study the structure and features of the socio-economic functioning of the unpopulated area in the Northern Urals. The paper defines unpopulated areas as territories surrounding the poles of inaccessibility and limited on all sides by boundary objects, which include settlements, year-round roads or railways, the shoreline of navigable water bodies, as well as territories with ongoing economic activity with a change in the landscape type (agricultural land, industrial areas, etc.). The structure of unpopulated areas, expressed in the presence of a center and a periphery, has been studied. Approaches to the delimitation of the boundaries between the periphery and the center in such areas are proposed. There should be qualitative and quantitative differences between them. To reveal those, the impact of economic activity on the natural environment was graded into four levels. Accordingly, the center and the periphery are supposed to belong to different levels. In terms of quantitative differences, it is most logical to use the predominance of a specific level of economic activity in a separate section of the uninhabited area: if more than 50 % of the territory of a particular site belongs to the same level as the center, then this site belongs to the center; if less than 50 %, then  ̶  to the periphery. The structure of the unpopulated area in the Northern Urals, which is heterogeneous and has two centers and a periphery, has been studied. The functional zoning of this area showed that there are five types of attendance zones on its territory, and the socio-economic functions of the area include: recreational and tourist, environmental, research, buffer, and economic.