Landscape and Urban Planning 165 (2017) 244–255 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning j o ur na l ho me pag e: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Rural–urban peripheries under socioeconomic transitions: Changing planning contexts, lasting legacies, and growing pressure Anton Shkaruba a , Viktar Kireyeu b,∗ , Olga Likhacheva c a Central European University, Budapest, Hungary b Erda RTE, Rijswijk, The Netherlands c Pskov State University, Pskov, Russia h i g h l i g h t s • Socialist planning institutions play a role in peripheral land-use dynamics in Belarus and Russia. • In Belarus (Mahilio ˘ u) the role of socialist legacies is stronger and urban sprawl is less prominent. • In Pskov the most important limits to urban sprawl are set by budget/investment limitations. • Due to centralised budget allocation, strategic development decisions are taken at national level. • Regulations are often misused to cover rent-seeking disguised as “progressive intentions”. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 25 August 2015 Received in revised form 5 May 2016 Accepted 6 May 2016 Available online 28 May 2016 Keywords: Rural–urban periphery Physical planning Spatial planning dilemma Socialist legacy Mahilio ˘ u Pskov a b s t r a c t The status of urban forests and other green open spaces has always been ambiguous within the context of rural-urban peripheries. On one hand, most European countries have introduced protected green zones around cities to contain their sprawl and to provide urban dwellers recreational space and sanitation ser- vices since the early days of city planning policies. On the other hand, the ecosystems of green open areas remain under high pressure due to high demand for suburban land, causing issues ranging from illegal dumping to ecosystem fragmentation and forest loss. In Eastern Europe, in particular in the former USSR, rural-urban peripheries went through series of socio-economic transitions that resulted in complex inter- plays of socialist and post-socialist institutions. In this paper we explore these interplays in the context of land-use dynamics of rural-urban peripheries of two middle-sized cities in Belarus (Mahilio ˘ u) and Russia (Pskov), with particular attention to open green spaces and environmental status of their ecosystems. We describe the properties of the rural-urban peripheries of Mahilio ˘ u and Pskov, offer an overview of legal frameworks and actor networks involved in the planning policies, and describe land-use pressure on ecosystems. Then, we discuss dilemmas of spatial planning in rural–urban, including spatial investment, regulation, and spatial intervention dilemmas. Planning process in the two cities demonstrates a search for compromise between a compact city cherished by the socialist planning tradition (and supported by planners’ backgrounds and existing regulatory frameworks), and the increasingly noticeable tendency toward urban sprawl. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The rural-urban periphery has always been a very special area where rural communities suffered or benefited from cities they sur- rounded while the urban areas reciprocally suffered or benefited from the nearby countryside. Even within the continent of Europe, ∗ Correspondence author at: Sir Winston Churchilllaan 283 F29, The Netherlands. E-mail addresses: shkarubaa@ceu.edu (A. Shkaruba), kirejeu@yahoo.com (V. Kireyeu), olga.lich@mail.ru (O. Likhacheva). there remains a great deal of diversity in rural-urban interactions, creating a large number of land-use situations (Gallent, Andersson, & Bianconi, 2006; Teaford, 2011). No single definition convincingly encompasses all of this diversity. It is generally recognised that the city advances upon the country, either by direct expansion or by moving some of its functions there in a process known as urban sprawl. The European Environment Agency defines urban sprawl as the physical pattern of large urban areas’ low-density expansion, mainly into surrounding agricultural areas, under certain market conditions (European Environment Agency, 2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.05.006 0169-2046/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.