Yekaterinburg administration has ordered the Institute of Economics of Ural branch of Russian Academy of Sciences to work out a long-term forecast of social and economic development of the city that will be a basis for the municipality ’s development strategy, as it is suggested. The researchers have analyzed the development tendencies of Yekaterinburg and other megalopolises during last 15 years and offered three types of scenarios: inertial, innovative and basic. To tell more about this work we have asked one of the co-authors of this forecast Victoria Akberdina, Doctor of Economics and Professor. The guest of the journal “Discussion” believes that the main contradiction to be solved by Yekaterinburg in near 10-20 years is a choice between industrial and trade-service development. The tendency for deindustrialization is already set. In 2006 the share of industry was higher than trade-service sector (39.1% and 31.6%), so in 2015 the trade-service sector prevails (40.5 and 37.4%).