Urban-type settlement

In Bulgaria and five of the post-Soviet republics (Armenia, Moldova, and the three Baltic states), they were changed in the early 1990s, while Ukraine followed suit in 2023.

[1][2] Today, this term is still used in the other nine post-Soviet republics – Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

Eight of them are located on the territory of the partially recognized states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and are de facto not under the control of the Georgian government.

[7] In accordance with the 2008 Law on Administrative and Territorial Subdivision of Kyrgyzstan,[8] urban-type settlements are those that comprise economically significant facilities such as industrial plants, railway stations, construction sites, etc., as well as settlements with a recreational potential with population of at least 2,000.

In modern Russia, the task of deciding whether an inhabited locality meets the criteria of urban-type settlements is delegated to the federal subjects.

In most cases, the federal subject's legislative body is responsible for all administrative and territorial changes, including granting and revoking of the urban-type settlement and town status.

[9] Apart from being used to refer to a type of inhabited locality, the term "urban-type settlement" and its variations is also used to refer to a division of an administrative district, and sometimes to a division administratively subordinated to a city district of a city of federal subject significance.

In Bulgaria, the first urban-type settlements (Bulgarian: селище от градски тип) were formed in 1964.

[18] The law was meant to facilitate "de-Sovietization of the procedure for solving certain issues of the administrative and territorial system of Ukraine".