Urbanization processes in the area of the One Belt One Road project

The implementation of the international One Belt – One Road project, initiated by the Chinese leadership in 2013, will certainly have a global geoeconomic effect. The purpose of this article is to analyse urbanisation processes in the participating countries located on the routes of the great Silk Road and Tea Road. In the study, based on literary sources and by generalizing the results of satellite imagery, rates of development of urbanisation processes were considered using as examples the capital cities of the participating countries: Beijing (Peoples Republic of ChinaRC), Astana (Kazakhstan), Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and Ulan-Ude (Russia). The choice of cities is an attempt to conduct a time slice of the dynamics of urban spatial development of cities with differing populations and levels of development. The results obtained indicate that urbanisation processes have common features that meet modern trends and the main historical stages of economic development. At the same time, there are significant differences in the dynamics of development due to socio-economic, political, and historical-geographical factors. In the development of urbanisation processes, taking into account global challenges, it is necessary to take into account the individual regional geographic features, as well as national and international geopolitical interests.