ИСТИНА

Any city in the process of its growth absorbs the surrounding countryside. Part of it disappears forever, but many of its elements are preserved, fitting into the urban environment. Main evolutionary tendencies are visible in urban plans of Moscow throughout the last four centuries. During all centuries Moscow step by step assimilated rural neighborhood, but last hundred years these steps became real big. Despite the multiple increase in the size of the city, the transformation of all urban structures and the position of Moscow among the global cities of the world, some rural features still remain in the urban environment of Moscow. This applies both to the planning structure and the presence of rural architectural forms in different functional structures of Moscow. Closely spaced pereulki (lanes), the distance between them, even in the most central part of the city, within a radius of 500 m to the north-west of the Kremlin, is the result of the implementation in the 16th–17th centuries rural planning forms, more precisely, their symbiosis with urban forms. In various in their functions planning structures there are rural architectural and planning elements – in public spaces, industrial areas, and residential areas. Inclusion of specific rural architectural and planning forms in the urban structure of Moscow is constantly going on for centuries, despite population growth and increasing complexity of economic specialization. Once included into the structure of the city, rural planning and architectural forms do not disappear, but after the termination of the implementation of their parent species and ways of life, really related to agriculture and other "non-urban" activities, they are transformed for integration into urban life and the environment, contributing to an increase in their diversity. This pattern can be traced consistently, at least, from the 18th century. Keywords: rural planning forms, urban planning structure, urban development, urban environment, Moscow