the Union of Urbanist Architects; existed in Moscow from 1928 to 1931.

In its declarations of 1928 and 1931 and in its theoretical works, ARU called upon architects to shift from planning individual buildings to creating a unified spatial system for a city, regarding the individual building as a part of the city. In the structural plan of a city, ARU called for special attention to be devoted to the functional zoning of urban territory with a view to future development. In contrast to the adherents of de-urbanism and urbanism, the members of ARU did not limit the processes of population distribution to a single type of settlement, but set the task of “. . . discovering general rules of organizing human settlements in their varying forms and development” (Sovietskaia arkhitektura, 1931, nos. 1–2, p. 19); they saw that the future rational planning and rebuilding of existing cities would be guaranteed by the elimination of social inequality among the population and by the gradual dying away of the class structure of society.

The theoretical positions of ARU have found a reflection in contemporary city planning. In 1931, ARU merged into the All-Union Architectural Scientific Society.