Historical-Genetic Features in Rural Settlement System: A Case Study from Mogilev District (Mogilev Oblast, Belarus)

Elena Gorbenkova,Elena Shcherbina

doi:10.3390/land9050165

Elena Gorbenkova, Elena Shcherbina

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/land9050165

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Abstract

Settlement system development is currently one of the basic objectives in land use planning, which is significant for Belarus, as it is the most urbanized country in the European region. Historical-genetic analysis is the most effective approach for studying the transformational changes in settlement systems. The research was aimed at analyzing the transformation peculiarities in the rural settlement system of Belarus. The core of the methodological basis lies in general scientific methods (systematic approach, historicism approach, historical-genetic method) and special interdisciplinary methods (cartographic analysis using GIS software). Historical-genetic analysis made it possible to identify the most significant historical periods in the formation of the rural settlement system in Belarus: pre-revolutionary, Soviet and recent. For each period, the pattern and spatial configuration of the rural settlement system were analyzed. Spatial changes in settlement pattern were highlighted: polarization, increasing the share and the population number of the “largest” settlements, the decreasing of “large” and “medium-sized” settlements and the degradation of “small” settlements. As a result, two types of rural settlement transformation were identified: “development” and “degradation”. Three ways of spatial configuration of the rural settlement system were identified: “relocation to city”, “relocation to the center of the settlement system” and “relocation to settlement”. Directions for future research are linked with conceptualizing the model of the spatial–territorial organizing of the rural settlement system.

Highlights

Settlement development problems are extremely important in solving territorial planning goals for countries [1,2] and regions/subregions [3,4,5]
The rural settlement system is a socio-natural–anthropogenic system [36] developing under the influence of exogenous/external factors, that determine settlement types and forms, and endogenous/internal factors, Land 2020, 9, 165; doi:10.3390/land9050165
The historicism principle involves the analysis of the conditions of the settlement system formation in terms of the cooperative effect of objective and subjective factors that determine the direction and intensity of changes in the settlement pattern

Summary

Introduction

Settlement development problems are extremely important in solving territorial planning goals for countries [1,2] and regions/subregions [3,4,5]. Socio-demographic drivers [12,13,14], planning [15,16,17], historic-cultural components [18,19,20,21] and natural environments [22,23,24], rural settlement transformation [25,26,27] and modeling rural–urban areas [28,29,30]. The rural settlement system is a socio-natural–anthropogenic system [36] developing under the influence of exogenous/external factors (natural, climatic, industrial, infrastructural, etc.), that determine settlement types and forms, and endogenous/internal factors (socioeconomic, managerial, etc.), Land 2020, 9, 165; doi:10.3390/land9050165 www.mdpi.com/journal/land. It should be noted that the transformation of the pattern and spatial–functional structure of the rural settlement in Belarus is associated with numerous processes such as industrialization (late XIX century–early XX century); collectivization (1920s); World War II (1939–1945); the Chernobyl disaster (1986) and the USSR collapse (1991) [41,42]

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