SUBURBS OF ST. PETERSBURG AS AN OBJECT OF SOCIO-GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH

Abstract

The suburban area of St. Petersburg is the second largest in the country after Moscow and the most complex in terms of its structure. Its study has both theoretical and practical significance. The theoretical significance is due to the fact that the experience of active suburbanization in Russia has not received theoretical generalization so far, nor has it found an explanation with the use of a particular model of the society’s spatial development. The practical significance is determined by the need to regulate the development of suburbs, occurring on both sides of the border between St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (region). The concept of ‘ring structures’, proposed more than twenty years ago, seems to be most suitable for explaining the processes of spatial transformation of St. Petersburg’s suburban area. According to this concept, the spatial structure of society is a combination of active zones (central, radial, marginal) and passive ones (internal and external). The central core does not change its location; development mainly occurs due to the marginal and radial active zones. With this model employed, the transformation of the suburban area of St. Petersburg finds a logically consistent explanation. The key factors determining the formation of radial active zones are communication routes. The main conditions limiting the development of ring structures are natural factors. All this is clearly manifested in the development of the suburban area of St. Petersburg. The main methods used in the course of the study were field and cartographic ones, which enabled us to obtain new scientific and factual data, partly confirming and partly refuting previous findings of other researchers. The statistical method was also applied. The conclusions drawn during the study can also be divided into theoretical and practical ones. The theoretical conclusions are related to the application of the ring structures concept, which made it possible not only to describe the development processes of St. Petersburg’s suburban area from the point of view of social geography, but also to predict its future changes. According to practical conclusions, within the suburban area of St. Petersburg, the status of ‘territories of the Leningrad Oblast subordinate to the administration of St. Petersburg’ should be restored, at least in terms of planning.