The article is a result of an analytical research on development of relations between the city and suburban area. An attempt to define main factors that may be included into a future strategy of balanced development and to avoid a number of problems in the organization of group forms of settlement in the big cities' influence zone. The decentralization processes in the governance system constitute the social and economic potential for creation of a system of common interests in development, and

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... not for destruction of both cities and suburban area. The research materials analyze the current state of affairs of urban planning activities in Ukraine, in particular, peculiarities of regional planning, using three largest cities and their suburbs as case studies. A number of negative trends have been discovered in the relations between the city and suburban area, that need to be resolved during the subsequent stages of designing to take into account the changes in the management system – decentralization and development of territorial communities that will be interacting with the city on systemic positions.