New urban settlements in Belarus: some trends and changes



3

settlement development, their resources' capabilities, scientific, technical and innovative
potentials are measurably identified by type of urban settlement.

Urban planning's typology of urban settlements adopted in Belarus divides urban settlements into
the categories (size, function, administrative status and importance in National Settlement
System (NSS)10.

By the size:

- Largest — more than 1 million inh.: Minsk (1,699,000)

-  Large —from 250,000 to 1 million inh.: Brest (291,000), Vitebsk (349,000), Gomel

(490,000), Grodno (307,000), Mogilev (361,000)

- Big — from 100,000 to 250,000 inh. (9 cities)

- Middle — from 50,000 to 100,000 inh. (9 towns)

- Small — under 20,000 (69 towns and 104 settlements of an urban type)

By function:

- Polifunctional;

- Industrial;

-   Agricultural-industrial;

-   Agricultural;

-   Tourist-recreational;

- Natural protected.

According to the importance in NSS urban settlements are divided into five types such as:

- Cities of European importance (Minsk);

- Cities of National importance (Gomel, Brest, Vitebsk, Grodno, Mogilev);

- Cities of Regional importance (Baranovichi*, Bobruisk, Borisov*, Lida*, Mozyr,
Molodechno, Orsha, Pinsk, Polotsk-Novopolotsk, Soligorsk);

- Other basic, sub-regional Cities and towns (Zhlobin, Zhodino, Kobrin, Retchitsa,
Svetlogorsk, Slonim*, Slutsk);

- Cities, towns and other urban settlements of Local importance.

* Cities in which residential areas for civil representatives of military contingent that brought out
of Central and Eastern European countries have been built.

Urban settlement network of Belarus

The distinguishing characteristic of the urban settlement structure is a quantitative prevalence of
small urban settlements (more than 81% of total urban settlements) where live about 17,4% of
the total urban population. On the one hand comparatively equable network of small towns
promotes arrangement of the central places system, on the other hand small towns have not
possibilities to be the centres of good service making because they have low level of social-
economic development.

In large and big cities, composing nearly 7% of total urban settlements 67% of urban population
live. These cities are located mostly in a peripheral belt of the country, near with country’s
borders with other states.

In 11 largest cities such as Minsk, Mogilev, Gomel, Vitebsk, Brest, Grodno, Orsha, Bobruisk,
Pinsk, Baranovichi, Borisov are about 70% of industrial staff and more than 50% of
manufactures are produced there. These cities being an important centres of urbanisation in
Belarus are characterised by the advanced polifunctional industry, developed social service and



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