Planning Capital Cities

the transformation process. The analysis of the population redistribution

within the territory of the Sofia Municipality is based on the population data

from 1992 and 2001. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the nature

and causes of suburbanisation in Sofia and attempts are made to hypothesise

about the future.

The Socialist city’s spatial structure

A general model of a socialist city’s spatial structure was suggested by French and

Hamilton, identifying several concentric zones from the centre to the periphery

of a typical socialist city: the historic core; the inner commercial, housing and

industrial areas from the capitalist period, the socialist zone of transition, the

early socialist housing and the integrated socialist residential districts, and

finally the countryside with the satellite towns and villages.^5 Although French

and Hamilton’s concentric model may resemble Burgess’s concentric one,

the socialist cities has some important features, quite distinctive from their

Western ones.

Fig. 1
Sofia within its wider
geographical region.
(Atlas of Sofia)