IT’S TIME FOR SUBURBAN STUDIES

The sector of sociology of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences organized the All-Russian scientific seminar “What do We Know about Contemporary Russian Suburbs?” on June 2-3, 2017. Based on the seminar results, the collection of papers with the same title was published. The idea of the meeting was to allow the experts to discuss the regional diversity of the suburbs of Russian cities, the scale, sources, directions and conse-quences of the Russian suburbanization. Despite considerable prospects for theoretical and empirical analysis, this field of social research is still ignored by Russian scientists, which determines serious problems in con-ducting comparative and generalizing studies to ensure a broader understanding of the nature of the Russian suburbanization. Developing a common research field, setting research aims and hypotheses, summarizing international discussions on suburban studies, search for optimal concepts and approaches to the analysis of the Russian suburbanization, developing new methods for studying suburbs and adaptation of the existing ones, critical analysis of sources, collecting and systematization of regional data, generalization, typologies and comparative analysis of regional cases, discussing the results of today’s studies - these are just some issues set by the experts in the suburban studies.