WE HAD NOT YET EMBARKED ON OUR RESEARCH,2 but a kind of terminological drama was already unfolding. In fact, the conflict is barely hidden in the title of this article, for which we took pains to avoid the use of the word 'suburb'. That this word has, nevertheless, surfaced as early as the epigraph, which is a translation from Russian, only underscores our quandary. The attempt to avoid the term 'suburb' derived, quite simply, from our personal acquaintance with rural-urban fringes both in Russia and in the USA, arguably the most suburban nation of the world. Although we had not done significant research on suburbia in the West, it was clear to us from the outset of this analysis that the American suburb and the Russian prigorod evoke different mental associations. This is so despite being locational and direct lexical counterparts of each other, according to any Russian-English or English-Russian dictionary. While 'suburb' implies the outgrowth or extension of an urban realm, its intrusion into the countryside and the ensuing re-implantation of typically urban amenities in a more rarefied residential setting, prigorod suggests the countryside itself, but a countryside impacted by its close proximity to a city, with 'impacted' often meaning gentrified. Also, whereas suburbia typically develops from a central city outward, large groups of people 'ejecting' themselves from the corporate limits of a city, a Russian prigorod largely develops inward: on the one hand, a rural settlement network contracts;3 on the other, the rural people move closer to a city to take advantage of its broader range and higher level of opportunities and quality of services. A restrictive policy governing residence permits (the infamous propiska) in large cities and the lasting absence of a real estate market have created a peculiar barrier effect at the city line. Prigorod has thus become a stepping stone to a city, not out of it as in the West. Paradoxically, the fact that Russian cities used to expand outward, as do all cities of the world, does not seem to change the nature of the situation: typically Russians simply extend a city line, and Western-style suburbia does not take shape. Only most recently, around the largest cities of Russia, has the situation begun to change somewhat. Reflecting on the above distinctions-which by no means exhaust the subject-