City district - what is it? How is this administrative structure different from cities or municipalities? What are such districts? What are the features of these territories? Do their chapters have any authority? How are these administrative entities managed?
To understand all the issues that arise, you need to start by determining what the urban district is. What is a municipality, a city - you should also know in order to understand what is the difference between one and the other.
What is an urban district?
The phrase "urban district" suggests that we are talking about the territory around the metropolis. However, this is not entirely true. By definition, urban districts of Russia are territories with settlements that are not municipal administrative entities.
As a rule, these are urban-type settlements with local self-government bodies exercising control and ensuring law and order. The district may include one or two or more settlements. It can be both cities and towns.
What is a municipality?
This concept is often confused with the term "urban district". What is a municipality? By definition, it is a territory, an administrative unit governed by local elected authorities.
What is the difference from the urban district? The fact that the municipality is a large territory, which includes several smaller ones. In our country there are seven types of similar entities and their constituent administrative, territorial units, one of which is the urban district. What is a county in relation to a municipality? Its component, which has a similar structure of self-government bodies, but a smaller territory and includes settlements of a predominantly urban type.
What types of municipalities exist?
Each municipality may be part of another, larger. The structure of this order is similar to a nested doll - small ones are inside larger ones. For example, the street is part of a quarter, it, in turn, is part of the district, and that is already an administrative structural unit of the city.
Types of municipalities are not very many:
- rural and urban settlements;
- counties;
- large territorial areas;
- territories of federal significance inside megacities.
These administrative units also include urban districts with internal division. Municipalities are also internal urban areas in which there are self-government bodies.
Thus, there are only seven types of such formations. Each of them has certain features that distinguish one administrative type from another.
How do urban districts differ from settlements?
An urban settlement, just like a district, can itself be a municipal formation, or it can be part of a larger territorially. Of course, the settlement may be part of the urban district. The city may also be part of the county. But the district cannot be an integral element of the settlement.
In other words, districts differ from settlements in the following:
- more developed infrastructure;
- the presence of large freeways and long roads;
- the ability to determine and collect taxes, taxes, fines and other payments;
- formation of own budget and distribution of funds from it;
- the right to draw up and approve the rules for the use of land, control over their development and its planning.
Also in the powers of the district governing bodies are issues related to cultural development, tourism and many others. I. of course, the okrug has a much larger territory on which several settlements or cities can be located.
Types of urban districts
The municipal urban district may be a separate city, such as Ulan-Ude, or may consist of several settlements. This is determined not so much by the size of the territory as by the size of the population, the development of infrastructure, economic components and budgetary opportunities. An example is the Moscow city district. In addition to a large and developed city or several settlements, there are two more types of districts.
The first is a district with intracity division. In essence, this administrative structural unit is not much different from a large and economically prosperous metropolis. The only difference is that districts with full internal self-government, and often with their own budget or with the possibility of its formation, belong to such a district. This means that within such a district there are small municipalities called areas.
Examples of such counties:
- Chelyabinsk;
- Makhachkala;
- Samara
ZATO - the second type of administrative structural units having the status of "urban district". Closed formations with their own administration and, of course, territory - this is what lies behind the acronym ZATO.
These are not simple counties. They differ from all the others in that enterprises located in their territories related to weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, are located. That is, in such territories there are facilities in which:
- development;
- experimental tests;
- disposal;
- storage;
- processing and other similar actions.
Similar districts include those places for which there are special strategic objects. That is, everything that is a state secret and requires careful protection, limited access, is concentrated in the districts called the acronym ZATO.
Of course, the management of these territories is significantly different from how power is organized in other types of urban districts.
Examples of closed urban districts
ZATOs appeared on the state maps of the country between 1946 and 1953 in the middle of the last century. They were surrounded by the strictest secrecy and were referred to as "cities of homeland." This means that if such a settlement was located near, for example, Tomsk, then its own name sounded as well, but with the addition of a digital code.
For example, Tomsk-7. Even the numbering of houses in such places continued the one that was in the legal city. For example, the street in Tomsk ended with house 97. Accordingly, in the closed settlement there was a street with the same name, but the numbering of houses began with the number 98.
Now such places have their own names, and they can be quite seen on the maps. However, this does not mean at all that they have ceased to have important strategic and priority state significance.
Examples of similar territories:
- Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory;
- Zarechny in the Penza region;
- Novouralsk in the Sverdlovsk region;
- Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region;
- Seversk in the Tomsk region.
There are such districts and close to the capital. Closed urban districts of the Moscow region:
- Star;
- Sunrise;
- Vlasikha;
- Youth;
- Krasnoznamensk.
However, military camps and other army facilities are not urban districts and cannot relate to them.
How are counties managed?
Management of the urban district is carried out by local authorities, represented by those people who are elected by residents of these territories by voting. Of course, the object of administration is exclusively the territory of the okrug, the powers of the local authorities do not extend beyond its borders.
In practice, this means that if in one district a person needs to pay 26 rubles in public transport, then in another district this amount may be equal to 23 or any other number. Of course, the powers of local authorities concern not only the pricing policy in the field of municipal transport, but also much more.
The scope and area of responsibility of local authorities includes the following:
- all social and economic processes occurring in the district;
- determination of the types and sizes of fines, taxes, taxes, fees and other types of payments;
- providing the population with a decent standard of living, jobs, health services, educational opportunities, proper sanitation, and security.
As for the various financial taxation of the population, carried out at the local level, they in no way cancel the general for the state federal fees, taxes and other payments.
What are the powers of local government limited?
As a rule, the municipality directly administers the district. This authority solves daily a huge number of problems related to completely different spheres of life, but nonetheless, having exclusively local relevance.
This means that if something happens in the district, the consequences of which affect national interests or concern neighboring territories, then this event is no longer under the jurisdiction of the municipality.
Of course, all orders and requirements of the local authorities should not go against the general federal laws. In the event that a controversial situation arises, that is, there is a conflict between local decisions or regulations and federal ones, then action should be taken, guided exclusively by general state legislation.
