Pre-revolutionary Sochi: The evolution of the spatial-planning structure
Authors:   Southern Branch, Russian Research Institute of the Cultural and Natural Heritage, Bondar Vitaly V. 
Published: November 2024

The article reflects the results of a retrospective reconstruction of the process of spatial planning development of Sochi in the pre-revolutionary period. The theoretical basis of the research was the works that comprehend the forms and patterns of the development of urban planning systems, the source base is statistical, reference, cartographic material, travel notes, guidebooks, memories; a special source is the modern cultural landscape of the city. Along with the diachronic and comparative methods of research, the methods of urban planning analysis are applied. The settlement that arose in 1864 at the mouth of the Sochi River initially served as a reference point for the development of the Black Sea coast by the Russian Empire. The status of a posad, which Sochi acquired in 1874, for a long time, before the establishment of the resort and recreational function of the place at the beginning of the XX century, was nominal. The surveying of the territory of the Sochi posad reflected the nature of the terrain – the mouth of the river and the sea shore, forming a combination of two types of landscape: opening into the valley and frontally deployed, limited by a chain of mountains in the distance. The first plan of the posad, drawn up in 1893, recorded the initial stage of the formation of the street-quarter network and reflected a characteristic feature of the cultural landscape of Sochi that still persists: the division of its territory into its lower part extending from the left bank of the river and its upper part, extending to the east and southeast parallel to the sea shore. At the beginning of the XX century, the network of streets covered the entire territory of the posad and reflected the desire of the authorities to maximize the adaptation of the principle of regularity to heterogeneous forms of relief. The formation of the integral character of the spatial planning structure of Sochi was completed by the time the рosad turned into a city in 1917, the boundaries of which included the surrounding area. The layout of these territories was similar in nature to the layout of the former posad. The spatial-planning structure of the Sochi posad reflected the nature of its urban development and was formed as a combined one, including sections of a regular, orthogonal, street-block network and zones of relatively free, adapted to the relief, street layout. The composition was based on two sections of a regular layout, departing from the historical core: the “upper city” and the “lower city”. The main compositional axis was the emerging highway passing from the northwest to the southeast-the line of the future Kurortny Prospekt. The spatial planning structure of Sochi, which developed in pre-revolutionary times, determined the development of the urban planning system throughout the XX century and with minor changes, it has been preserved to the present time. Along with the historical buildings, it forms the basis of the value characteristics of the historical settlement.