Urban planning in Russia

[5] In the case of Veliky Novgorod, one of the important cities of ancient Russia, streets were built from north to south and sometimes several buildings were connected to each other forming voids between them.

[3] In Ryazan, after 1350, there was a change in the trend of urban planning with clearer divisions based on social status and professional affiliation, which implied on a politically strong prince.

[3] Following the formation of the centralized Russian state and its military as well as its expansion towards the east, new military-defensive towns and cities which were constructed in the newly aquuired lands.

[7] Yet, urban planning concepts and regulations such as location of the buildings relatively to the terrian, sufficient distance between them and accurate parcellation were not integral part of the system.

Following the rise to power of Peter I the Great and his Far-fledging reforms, urban planning system in the Russian Empire went through major overhaul with the introduction of new concepts and regulations.

Those reforms occurred altogether with the enhancing of the regional and local administration system[8] On 16 January 1721, Articles of Chief Magistrate were published, which laid down the basics principles of city types categorization, ranking them by parameters of geographic location and population.

Another major change occurred in the first half of the 18th century with the rising of the "regularity" concept, which called for creation of grid plan cities with emphasized ensembles and geometry trend.

[9] The city plans which came into force from now on were geometrically lined, creating perpendicular streets, which was influenced, among others by the philosophy of Descartes by the French military engineer Sebastien Vauban.

[10] The city plans were developed by various architects and planners, among them William Heste, Matvey Kazakov, Ivan Starov, Vasily Bazhenov, Petr Nikitin and others.

The Soviet government distanced itself from the old concepts inherited from the Tsarist period and already in 1918, a decree which abolished private ownership in urban areas came into force,[11] practically municipalizing and nationalizing large parts of the housing stocks.

While the Soviet government called for the upbringing of the workers and farmers at the expense of the old bourgeoisie, even by 1925 there was no centrally imposed, unified concept of urban planning.

[18] As the war management consumed most of Stalin's time and efforts, urban planning decision which previously were handled by him, were not taken care by Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Kalinin.

In 1959, the relevance of this problem at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was emphasized by Khrushchev, who advocated for the massive construction of pre-fabricated apartment buildings of 5 floors and nicknamed Khrushchevka, designed by the architect Vitaly Lagutenko in order to overcome to extreme housing deficit.

[22] The general tendencies from the 1960s until the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw continued expansion of the outer areas of the cities with construction of even higher apartment buildings nicknamed Brezhnevki.

[31] The main settlement zone in European Russia had formed in accordance with the patterns of the development of industry and transport route, in cities between Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

[11] The creation of the urban agglomarations is a process that gathered pace after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and is a result of liberalization of the country's resident registration system which made it easier to move from one place to another, both trends rising from below, mainly people searching access to better paid jobs and higher quality public utilities, and encouruged by the federal government in order to cut costs, increasing effectiveness and optimizing transport and infrastructure development.

[34] In an effort to tackle the economic problem of these types of cities, the Russian Government compelled in 2014 a list of 319 mono towns and divided them into three sub-groups by socio-economic risk: high, medium and low.