Seven ways Russian historic centres are being rebuilt, mapped block by block

The historical cores of six major Russian cities have been reshaped over three decades of post-Soviet development in ways that a new study describes as largely unsustainable, with the most damaging changes concentrated in the fine-grained structure of land parcels, building density and street frontages. The research, published in the journal Built Heritage, applies a geographic information system (GIS) based morphological analysis to the centres of Kazan, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and Krasnodar, covering the period from 1991 to 2024.

The authors, Irina Karaselnikova, Maria Karaselnikova and Vitaly Stadnikov, identify seven distinct transformation scenarios that recur across all six metropolises. These range from the complete redevelopment of an entire block into a single high-rise residential complex, through mixed and infill development of varying heights, to incremental low-rise construction that leaves the historical fabric largely intact. The classification was built by dividing each historical centre into block grids based on cadastral boundaries, excluding monofunctional blocks such as parks, hospitals, industrial complexes and university campuses, and then assessing how each block changed against a set of morphological criteria drawn from urban morphology theory.

The study’s central finding is regulatory rather than architectural. The Russian planning system, the authors argue, has failed to treat morphological parameters as objects of regulation in their own right. Land use and development rules, known locally as PZZ, frequently leave fundamental features such as building heights and plot sizes unregulated, and a stream of amendments introduced under pressure from private actors has undermined regulatory stability. The result, documented across the six cities, has been large-scale development in historical cores and significant changes in the most vulnerable morphological characteristics: lot size and configuration, granularity, density, building orientation relative to the street front, and building height.

The framework behind the assessment draws on the concept of spatial capital, which links the value of urban form to economic, social and ecological performance. Research on major European cities has shown that smaller blocks, more regular shapes and shorter street frontages correlate with higher economic activity and structural efficiency. Plot structure matters for a different reason: fine-grained parcel patterns allow a greater differentiation of space, which in turn supports more diverse land use and ownership options and gives neighbourhoods the capacity to adapt incrementally over time. Street networks are the most stable element of urban form, so interventions that abruptly reconfigure block structure and land ownership disrupt a longevity that buildings alone do not carry.

Adaptability theory sharpens the contrast between the two ends of the study’s spectrum. Neighbourhoods shaped by many small-scale interventions from multiple actors develop complex ownership patterns and evolve organically, whereas areas managed by a single large agent under uniform rules tend toward homogeneity. Building height enters the analysis directly: extremely tall buildings consolidate large areas under single ownership and design control, producing what the literature calls anti-adaptive environments. The study’s least sustainable scenario, the complete block-scale construction of high-rise or very high-rise residential complexes on consolidated plots of five to eight hectares, exemplifies this pattern, producing local density spikes with floor area ratios of 2 to 3.5, severe infrastructure pressure, disrupted street frontages and extensive surface parking.

Environmental evidence reinforces the ranking. The study cites research showing that increasing urban density without corresponding height increases can reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions while achieving maximum population capacity, because building height significantly raises environmental impacts whereas density alone does not. Low- and mid-rise intensification pathways also permit a wider range of construction materials than the energy-intensive palette of high-rise building. The authors note that new construction in Russia often lacks these sustainability characteristics, and that infill towers of 16 to 35 storeys inserted into historically fine-grained blocks are typically built without consideration for energy efficiency or carbon footprint.

The city-level results reveal how differently the same national pressures play out on the ground. Kazan’s historic centre underwent large-scale state-led renovation in the 1990s, in which roughly 5,000 houses housing 33,000 households were resettled and whole blocks demolished, with only designated heritage buildings spared; much of the wooden urban fabric was removed under slum clearance. Since 2015 the city has applied strict height controls, which have reduced isolated high-rise infill but not large-scale redevelopment, and a significant share of new construction has replicated the scale and footprint of demolished historical buildings, sometimes imitating traditional styles, while surface parking and residual voids fragment the fabric.

Nizhny Novgorod presents a heterogeneous picture in which large-scale mixed redevelopment is dominated by mid-rise buildings of five to eight storeys and moderate high-rise construction of nine to twelve storeys rather than towers above sixteen storeys, alongside widespread incremental and infill transformations that sustain a degree of morphological continuity. Samara shows sharp contrasts, with one- and two-storey buildings standing directly beside towers of sixteen or more storeys; despite being designated a historical settlement in 2018, the city has not adopted definitive development limits for its historic centre. Perm’s remaining fragments of pre-Soviet fabric are few and increasingly encircled by large-scale redevelopment, while Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar stand out as exceptions where bottom-up, incremental development integrated into the street frontage continues to shape the fabric, with new construction largely remaining within existing cadastral parcels.

The study also documents the mechanisms that drive the less sustainable scenarios. In many cities, infill transformations accelerated in the 2010s, often coinciding with the adoption of heritage protection regulations; developers who had previously secured land or permits lobbied for exemptions and exploited weaknesses in cadastral delineations to carve out plots within inner courtyards, pressuring owners of neighbouring historical houses to sell. A legitimising discourse frames historic housing as dilapidated stock needing replacement, while more complex models such as gradual mid-rise densification of whole blocks struggle to compete because they require more sophisticated management and financing. Underlying this is an incomplete cadastral record: a significant share of plots with historic buildings remain unregistered, and many registered plots are inaccurately delineated, which facilitates the erosion of historical household boundaries.

The authors conclude that incremental, low- to mid-rise infill scenarios are the most sustainable transformation pathways, preserving fine-grained parcel structures, functional diversity and adaptive potential, while large-scale and high-rise interventions represent the least sustainable approach. They frame their methodological toolkit as an operationalisation of UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape approach, making the discursive concept of heritage value measurable and policy-actionable in environments where not every building carries a formal designation. Their policy prescription is that morphological parameters must become explicit regulatory objects, and that incentives should promote parcel-sensitive densification and adaptive reuse rather than massive consolidation. The study also flags its own limits: the analysis is comparative and interpretive rather than metric-based, data on construction periods were incomplete for some low-rise buildings, and the architectural and aesthetic qualities of post-Soviet construction were deliberately excluded from the framework, leaving a more detailed quantitative investigation of causal mechanisms to future research.

Subject of Research: Urban morphological change and sustainability in the historical centres of six major Russian cities since 1991

Article Title: Morphological metamorphoses: assessing the sustainability of new developments in the historical centres of major Russian cities

Article References: Karaselnikova, I., Karaselnikova, M., & Stadnikov, V. (2026). Morphological metamorphoses: assessing the sustainability of new developments in the historical centres of major Russian cities. Built Heritage, 10(1), Article 69. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43238-026-00313-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s43238-026-00313-4

Keywords: urban morphology, historic urban landscape, postsocialist cities, Russia, GIS analysis, heritage, densification, urban sustainability, planning regulation, adaptability, building height, land parcelisation