Abstract:

The paper deals with current issues of the regional spatial organization based on the identification and analysis of key factors and prerequisites for the formation of urban agglomerations as the most important growth centers, integrated with global and regional markets in the conditions of a qualitatively new stage in the history of the Great Silk Road. We assess promising directions and negative effects of development of agglomerated formations and zones of their influence in the Republic of Kazakhstan as a region having an advantageous geostrategic position in the Eurasian space. In Kazakhstan, the current process of urbanization has a multiplevector nature, and the course of formation of urban agglomerations provides convincing evidence of an increase in their share in settlement and in the total population. It is agglomerated forms of urban development that are a kind of indicator of the onset of maturity in settlement, specifying key points of the socio-economic space, namely: cores of regions, nodes of foreign economic relations and contacts, main areas of new territories development, the most important links in the internal infrastructure, etc. It is urban agglomerations that should act as a kind of special platform of integration processes, on the basis of which the Republic of Kazakhstan should revive its historical role in the development of the global project "New Silk Road" and become a major trade and logistics, finance and business, innovation and technology, and tourism hub of the Central Asia region, a bridge between Europe and Asia.

Key words: Great Silk Road, urban agglomeration, integration processes, demographic potential, economic belt