Review article

It is noted that recently, there has been revived some interest in the unique potential of the city historical core, which for almost a century and a half has been conserved and lying away from the general direction of the city’s development, while peripheral zones were actively developing. It is shown that the emerging concepts of using the resources of the central city zone are conditional in nature, since these concepts are not provided with necessary information for design developments there has not been carried out a systematic study of urban living environment in regard of the city center.Therefore, the archives of the Monument Protection Inspectorate and numerous publications about the architecture of St. Petersburg focus on its artistic-figurative features. As for specific information about mass development in the city center, it is available in too small and fragmentary volume. The article presents the results of a preliminary analysis of specific indicators of the living environment in the historical core of St. Petersburg, emphasizing the distinction between the quarters in terms of their connectivity with the urban framework and outlining the directions for their possible classification.