Dovilė Lazauskaitė, Aušrinė Griškevičiūtė-Gečienė, Edita Šarkienė, Virginija Zinkevičienė

Quality Analysis of Vilnius City Suburban Spatial Development

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Abstract

Qualifying European regional policy and treating structural functional remote urban parts as a functional urban region, attention is drawn to the increasing regional integration and the necessity to reduce the barriers for even development between cities and its surrounding rural areas is emphasized. Tendency of city and district municipalities to take positions of independent actors and a big benevolence for a private initiative has created opportunities over 20 years of independent Lithuania for everyone to shape their own living space. Urban development occurs in newly emerging suburban areas and continues to spread to rural areas. Result of this process – the emptying central parts of the cities. Application of sustainable urban planning theory in Lithuanian spatial planning practice has gained official status, but that status often ends where the planned city limits end. Meanwhile, the needs of the population show increase of the city limits borders permeability. The objective of the quality analysis of Vilnius city suburban areas development is associated with most intensively growing Vilnius district settlements, falling in to dominant influence of Vilnius city area. The authors examine the lack of integrity in urban and rural systems. The analysis includes identification of the real problems in urbanized areas and quality assessment of objective / subjective systematic connections, considering not usual political, historical, functional and morphological criteria, but in accordance to the fundamental principles of sustainability identification. Trying to assess urban and rural areas integration in practice, four fastest growing rural settlements in the district of Vilnius has been selected, located at the main roads leading into the city (Avižieniai, Skaidiškės, Pagiriai, Didžioji Riešė). Considering selected parameters characterising consistency, there has been connections between rural and urban areas identified, its numerical values calculated, and using multipurpose decisions support system, assessment findings are presented. The conclusions present evaluation of the impact of the identified connections to the urban system.

Keywords: Suburban areas; living environment quality; assessment indicators.