The paper analyzes socio-structural changes in the context of social mobility in the local area of the region. Radical changes in the economy, economic structure, and everyday life have decisively affected the social structure and nature of social mobility of the population of small Russian cities. The residents of small settlements have been adapting to the new conditions for a long period, during which the range of changing socio-economic, socio-cultural identity, i.e. the modern civilization pattern of the local territories of Russian regions, was formed. Based on the civilizational approach, the concept of civilizational complex of a modern small town, including a single-industry town, is proposed. The change of established models of local territory development occurs in the conditions of overcoming the Soviet model of small towns, diversification of their traditional economic and production patterns, formation and reproduction of multidirectional socio-structural effects and the newest effects of dynamically changing culture.