Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of the New Residential Areas around Tallinn

New housing construction is the most visible manifestation of the rapid suburbanization process taking place in the former centrally planned countries of Central Eastern Europe. This paper analyses residential housing construction around Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, in the period 1991--2005. Our data comes from the New Residential Area Survey that was carried out in 2006. The main results of the study reveal that housing construction was modest in the 1990s, but grew rapidly in the 2000s. In comparison with the Soviet period, private interest led new housing construction to take place in areas closer to Tallinn that were earlier reserved for other functions; that is former agricultural and coastal (often military) areas. Instead of the sprawl of detached housing further away from the capital city seen over time, we find increasing in-fills and multifamily housing construction in the 2000s around Tallinn. This leads to changes both in the internal structure (small but merging settlements close to Tallinn are different from the Soviet time compact settlements located all over the rural areas) and functioning (increase in daily commuting) of the metropolitan area. We argue that the transition period ends in the housing market when a new and better balance between public and private interests emerges in Estonia like in Western Europe.