a city or urban-type settlement that has become closely associated with a nearby larger city and that can provide production, economic, cultural, and domestic services and facilities. A satellite city often takes the form of a peripheral element of a conurbation. Contrasted with a suburb (or outskirts), a satellite city does not tend to merge with the central city: the intervening distance depends on transportation facilities that unite the economic lives of the central city and the satellite city. The industrial enterprises, scientific research institutes, higher educational institutions, and so on that are located near the major center or have been moved out as a result of reconstruction serve as a basis for a satellite city. A satellite city precludes an excessive concentration of industry and population in a large city and leads to the orderly development of the conurbation. Satellite cities exist in the USSR, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, and other nations.

The character of a satellite city varies according to its type: industrial, industrial-transport, health resort, or residential (the so-called bedroom communities, most inhabitants of which work in the central city). Bedroom satellite cities are widespread in the capitalist nations; in socialist nations a considerable part of the population of a satellite city works locally. Thus, for example, around some of the large cities of the USSR (Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev. Kharkov) plans have been made and partially implemented to create a new type of well-planned satellite city for the decentralization of the population and the transfer of some industries from the central city. In capitalist nations the growth of satellite cities can be generally described as uncontrolled and accompanied by chaotic conurbation. The developing nations lack satellite cities because of the weak economic ties between cities.