and factories - to eliminate time losses for travel. According to their functions, settlements
were divided into three categories:
1) Perspective settlements, where all new construction activities were concentrated;
2) Non-perspective, but temporarily saved settlements, where only repairing and very
limited new construction may take place;
3) Liquidated settlements, where no construction and only very limited repairing may take
place (Pragi 1974, 93).
The basic idea of socialist planning was to guarantee equal access of (public)
services to the whole population. This ideal based on normative: number of seats, beds,
personnel, and floor space per 1000 inhabitants in different kinds of CI facilities (Smith
1996) defined by the planning, architecture and design authorities.
Territorial planning dealing with the location issues of the service sector was
intended to respond to the consumers needs in the best way and minimize construction and
operation costs simultaneously (Volkov 1969). The hierarchy of the settlement system was
taken as a basic framework for the service sector development (Nômmik 1979). Here, the
Soviet territorial planning regime used extensively modified ideas of Walter Christaller’s
(1933) central place theory as well as works of Edgar Kant (1935).
3.2. Critics of the Soviet planning system
However, until the 1970s, there were no particular policies and programmes defined (!) at
which time the Central Urban Planning Institute in Moscow somehow formulated
principles of comprehensive planning of the settlement system (Kotchetkov and Listengurt
1977). This action plan was not only late, but even worse: the detailed analysis of the
settlement system was incorrect (Bater 1980).
In Estonia, the first attempts of comprehensive planning were made in 1967, when
an extensive comprehensive territorial planning programme was started. The aim of the
programme was to give a complex overview of the natural and human resources in order to
optimise the utilisation of resources, as well as to conduct a comprehensive plan of industry
and settlement structure (Eesti NSV... 1970, 15-19).
It was a good try. But somehow, the process of planning appeared to be much more
difficult than it was assumed at the beginning. After the first volumes were published, the