ИСТИНА

During the post-soviet time the suburban zone of Russian cities came throw significant transformations. The major cities of Russian regions concentrated a large migration gain, generated in non-capital cities and towns. This process, strengthened by the lack of housing, induced a sweeping growth at the city edges. Most of the new constructed urban areas are build up by high-rise residential building, which produce the soviet-style dense space in the suburban zones. Due to the economic, positional and institutional reasons, suburbia in Belgorod is much different. In this study we overlook the evolution of the suburban zone of Belgorod from the collapse of the Soviet Union up to the present time analyzing time-series of satellite imageries. The dynamics of urban fringe is detected, as well as the internal dynamics of the suburban morphology. As a result of satellite imagery interpretation four major suburban morphological types may be distinguished: the traditional rural areas, soviet high-rise buildings, dachas (seasonally inhabited soviet and post-soviet suburban housing) and urban sprawl areas (newbuilt low-dense cottage housing). The major patterns of localization were revealed for all morphological types. The increasing prevalence of the sprawl areas is shown, what is likely to be a unique case in the modern Russian suburbanization.