Suburbanisation in Tartu

In the Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics Estonia 1/15 an article titled „Suburbanization in Tartu“ was published by Antti Roose, Rivo Noorkõiv and Martin Gauk. In the article the authors discuss suburbanisation as geographical and functional expansion of the urban region, which should be treated as natural process. The article analyses the development of Tartu urban region and the changes in Tartu town itself in the last decades. It is concluded that the position of Tartu urban region as the second center in Estonia is changing in two directions: it is strengthening on regional level and weakening in national as well as international level. The decline of Tartu as a core city and the increasingly lower synergy that comes from the lower settlement density will hinder the development of the urban region as a whole. The planning task for Tartu urban region is to enhance the coherence of the chaotic and fragmented land use structure, including the breakthrough bicycle roads and „green wave“ traffic flow as well as softening the mitigation of large-scale eclecticism in the bypass zone. The first step towards the coherent urban policy is the Sustainable Development Strategy 2014-2020 of Tartu urban region, which has been approved by all local government councils in the urban region.

Suburbanisation of Tartu: http://www.stat.ee/90726