Spatial Development of the Warehouse Real Estate Market of the Moscow Urban Agglomeration in the Post-Soviet Period

The article is devoted to determining the territorial projection of the development of the warehouse real estate market in the post-Soviet period using the example of the Moscow urban agglomeration and adjacent regions of Russia. The Moscow region has the largest and most geographically dispersed warehouse network, and against the backdrop of record take-up for warehouse real estate and the growth of regional warehouse networks, it is necessary to systematize the logic of market development in order to assess future prospects. The analysis was conducted using statistical and cartographic methods on data on key indicators of market development and warehouse facilities from consulting companies IBC Real Estate and NF Group. The method of expert interviews was also used to reconstruct the data series. Four stages of spatial development of the market are identified: emergence, formation, stabilization, and saturation. At the first stage, market activity is concentrated mainly in the core of the urban agglomeration and on the subperiphery between the Moscow Ring Road and the Central Ring Road (near export–import terminals); at the second stage, it shifts to the subperiphery along key highways, and the core becomes a secondary market. At the third stage, activity remains in the subperiphery, expands into sectors between highways, and also shifts further to the periphery beyond the Central Ring Road (the most attractive areas are the intersections of the Central Ring Road and highways); at the final stage, activity will shift to the periphery, and redevelopment of obsolete assets will occur in the core of the urban agglomeration. At each stage, take-up and new construction also shift to adjacent regions that are at different stages of development: regions that use external agglomeration effects (proximity to the Moscow urban agglomeration—Tver and Kaluga oblasts) or internal agglomeration effects (internal consumer take-up—Yaroslavl oblast) develop faster. The onset of the saturation stage in the Moscow urban agglomeration slowed down the growth of online retail due to the transformation of consumption patterns after the COVID-19 pandemic, which returned take-up for warehouse real estate not only to the subperiphery, but also to the core of the urban agglomeration.