- As key locations for finance and specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sectors.

- As sites of production, including the production of innovation, in these leading industries.

- As markets for the products and innovations.

Although not all cities can become global cities, the diversity of Eurasian cities suggests that some may become lively nodes of a more integrated region in a globalized world.

This paper examines three key periods: the Soviet past, the transitional present, and the market future. During the Soviet era the location and size of cities were centrally planned in Moscow to fulfill the objectives of successive five-year plans. During the transition market forces within former Soviet republics reinforced the role of cities as drivers of productivity and diversification within the newly established independent countries. While continuing to promote this internal dynamic, policymakers now need to connect these cities through regional and global integration policies to strengthen market forces and complete the transformation of Eurasian cities sustained by a new biaxial Silk Road (north-south and east-west).

# **The effect of the breakup of an empire on the region’s cities**

Cities have always been the driving forces of world civilizations. Niniveh was at the heart of the Assyrian civilization, and Babylon was the symbol of the Babylonian civilization. When Peter the Great, third in the Romanov Dynasty, became Russia’s ruler in 1696, the influence of Moscow began to expand. Peter strengthened the rule of the tsar and westernized Russia while at the same time making it a power in Europe and greatly expanding its borders. By 1918, the year that saw the end of the Romanov Dynasty, the Russian empire covered a vast territory from Western Europe to China.

As Peter the Great and his successors strove to consolidate their reign over this empire, major social, economic, cultural, and political changes were in the making in the urban centers. Moscow led these changes, followed by St. Petersburg, which was built as a gateway to filter and channel western civilization through the empire. By fostering diversification through connectivity, specialization, and scale economies, these cities started the structural transformation of the Russian empire away from depending on commodities and limited markets in a way that more effectively served local demand (World Bank 2009a). Some of its city-based activities, such as literature and art, became prominent, with the production of such masterpieces as _Crime and Punishment_ , _War and Peace_ , and the painting “Ivan the Terrible and the Death of his Son” by Ilya Repin. The Soviet era altered this dynamic.

# **_Framework of spatial location during the Soviet era_**

Although market forces were inherently present during the Soviet era, the state apparatus altered them through each five-year plan (known as Gosplan), with the ownership structure biased toward an almighty state. Three forms of ownership operated (table 1.1):

- Public ownership was vested in the government.

- Cooperative ownership was vested in cooperative associations, whose members were either workers engaged in or consumers patronizing the organization.

- Private ownership was also present.

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