THE SOVIET LEGACY IN THE URBAN MORPHOLOGY OF MAJOR RUSSIAN CITIES

Abstract

All post-Soviet cities look similar. They also demonstrate similar development trends, have similar issues and like no other illustrate the concept of ‘path-dependency’. As a consequence of very specific political and economic conditions for their development, these cities have acquired distinctive features and elements of urban structure, and today’s planners have to deal with the imprint left by the Soviet era. Due to the longest history of ‘socialist experiment’ Russia became the main ground for the implementation of the Soviet urban-planning model and today its cities present a rich empirical base for studying the consequences of the systemic impact of the administrative-command system as a substitute to the market one. The study draws attention to the Russian cities with a population of over 1 million people since the typical problems and the need for the effective urban form are more pronounced there. The author consistently discusses a range of the urban form characteristics of the major Russian cities looking for the similar traits in their morphology. The aspects considered include settlement size and general density along with the spatial distribution of population evaluated by means of three indicators: density profile, density gradient and dispersion index, and also the structural form and the network configuration.