ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general summary of the Soviet urban growth experience. It examines the sources of urban growth, beginning with an examination of the natural growth of population residing in Soviet urban areas, with special emphasis on the rate of natural population increase and the factors that have influenced this rate. The chapter also examines rural-urban migration as a factor contributing to Soviet urban growth. It talks about the Soviet urban growth experience, its past, present, and future. The process of urbanization as a concomitant to the more general process of economic development has always been of great interest to the social analyst. Housing has clearly served as a constraint on the rate of growth of Soviet cities. The net impact of these trends has been a substantial slowing of the rate of growth of the Soviet population from roughly 17 per thousand in the 1950s to roughly 8 per thousand in the 1970s.
