The article studies possible strategies and principles of development of single-industry towns. Given the presence of a significant number of scientific papers and government attention to this topic, no concerted decisions have yet been found that have shown a marked number of sustainable results in the form of progressively developing cities that have transitioned from mono- to diversified economy. The empirical analysis recorded the gradual spread of new strategies and principles of development and diversification of the single-industry city economy, which we called “not-so-obvious” because they are not in the official documents and scientists have only begun to pay attention to them. They include the need to take into account the features of the social contract in the design of development strategies, the transition of city-forming functions from the enterprise to the holding; the diversification of the economy of a single-industry city through the diversification of the city-forming enterprise and the city-forming holding; the possibility of diversifying the economy of single-industry cities through the development of science and education, the need for large-scale, purposeful government participation in such process; the danger of transition of city management functions from local authorities. As a case study, we chose the town of Sarov, which has the status of a closed administrative-territorial entity. The status complicates the processes of economic diversification, but methodologically does not change the monostructure of the town’s economy, participation in the processes of development of the town’s holding – State Corporation “Rosatom”, the essence of the municipal part of the social contract. In order to obtain objective results, we analyzed the socio-economic development of Sarov, compared it with other closed towns, other single-industry towns, the situation in foreign countries
Keywords
social contract, city-forming enterprise, diversification of monotown economy, city-forming holding, closed administrative-territorial entity, State Corporation “Rosatom”, territorial placement of science