? chapter five Assessing Social Sustainability Immigration to Russia’s Arctic Cities Marlene Laruelle Urban sustainability in Arctic regions has many components, includ- ing the sustainability of infrastructure in harsh climates, the long-term viability of exploiting resources, and preserving the environment. One of the most understudied sides of sustainability goes beyond these common topics and is related to social changes. This aspect of sus- tainability is especially important as the global trend toward urban- ization is fundamentally changing the environment in which human beings live, including Arctic regions, which also face growing urban- ization (Larsen and Fondahl 2014). Russia represents a unique case study in terms of urban social sus- tainability. It hosts about 60 percent of the Arctic population (2.9 mil- lion people in 2002, 2.3 million in 2015, to which should be added about 10 million inhabitants living in sub-Arctic conditions in Sibe- ria), settled the Arctic region early in historical terms (beginning in the seventeenth century, with the first settlement in Yakutsk as early as 1632), and has built a unique urban fabric there, with half a dozen cities with a population between 100,000 and 300,000 people. More- over, Russia’s economy depends heavily on the Arctic: around 20 per- cent of the country’s GDP and exports are generated north of the Arctic Circle (Medvedev 2008). Because of this combination of his- toric, demographic, and economic features, Russian Artic cities ofer a distinctive place to observe and understand issues related to urban social sustainability.