Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2021 number 4

An attempt is made to empirically enrich the theoretical ideas of the economic-geographical location of cities by means of an individual economic-geographic analysis. It is shown that the most important component of monitoring the economic-geographical location implies analyzing the ecological-geographical location of a city, and for the city of Irkutsk it is of special interest. This analysis was carried out in the context of the economic-geographical location and in a multi-scale manner, because both look different at different scales. The following scales were studied: the Global scale, the All-Russian scale, the scales of the Angara-Yenisei and Baikal regions as well as the south of Irkutsk oblast. The two variants of regionalization of Eastern Siberia are not opposed to each other but are considered as equal, allocated for different purposes and forming the geographical location of Irkutsk in different ways. As for the south of the Oblast, its allocation as a special geographical system and an independent object of research is justified. An integral part of the research done involves examination of the recreational-geographical location in terms of the traditions of the citizens’ recreation: both weekend recreation and multi-day tourism, which gives rise to considering different scales and slightly different ideas of the geographic location. The analysis includes a historical context: it shows how in the relatively recent past Irkutsk became a place of non-standard political activity, which is associated with public awareness of its ecological-geographical location, formed on the basis of the obvious recreational-geographical location. The article presents the results of a sociological survey among young people, showing that the rudiments of such awareness are still present, but it is largely weakened compared to the 1980s.