Suburbanization, but centralization? Migration patterns in the post-Soviet functional urban region – evidence from Kyiv

Anotace: Despite being one of the most influential paradigms of urban studies, the stages of urban development model have been criticised for inability to describe and explain the urban evolution in specific economic, social and political conditions. In particular this refers to the post-socialist world. This paper presents the study of migration patterns in Kyiv functional urban region (KFUR) using the stages urban development model and the alternative approach by Sýkora and Posová (2011) derived from the original model. In this way, the paper intends to evaluate the existing methodology and to make the comparative assessment of the results. The results show that both approaches may be used for classifying urban regions in terms of growth/decline and centralization/decentralization. At the same time, they have limited potential to predict the future development of the post-Soviet urban regions. Despite the presence of common trends, revealed migration patterns in the KFUR substantially differ from the patterns of urban evolution in the post-socialist countries of the Central Europe due to specific social, economic and political conditions in the post-Soviet space.