Soviet Sputnik towns: The past of a sustainable urban future? Remaking periphery through distributing centrality

Golubchikov, Oleg ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7355-0447 and Ilina, Irina 2025. Soviet Sputnik towns: The past of a sustainable urban future? Remaking periphery through distributing centrality. Phelps, Nicholas A., Keil, Roger and Maginn, Paul J., eds. Peripheral Centralities: The Lost and Past Urbanity of the Suburbs, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 34-54. (10.4324/9781003367246-3)

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Abstract

This chapter explores the concepts and practices behind the Soviet sputnik (satellite) towns. Sputnik towns were a means of de-densifying large cities and organizing their metropolitan space into a more ecologically sensitive and polycentric system. Foundational ideas emerged with the establishment of the Soviet planning system in the 1920s, inspired by the garden city concept, although Soviet sputnik towns became more accomplished as a planning concept in the 1960s. At the heart of this lay the Soviet principle of ‘polycentric concentration’, simultaneously driving spatial development at the national, interregional, regional, and urban scale. Polycentrism continues to play a key role in sustainable urbanism and thus deliberative planning for satellite towns in large metropolitan agglomeration holds much promise for a more sustainable urban future.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781003367246
Last Modified:	13 Oct 2025 13:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176863

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