Review article

The article considers the issues of urban developmentof regions important for the country, using the example ofthe Ob-Altai settlement basin located in the southern partof Siberia. An analysis of the structural composition of thesettlement system in this territory was carried out, therewere revealed patterns of its development, topologicalfeatures of the studied settlement basin, consisting ofvalleys and nodes connected to a network by rivers andtransport links. There were determined phase patterns inthe spatial development of the system due to changes in the transport network, which directly affect the configuration of the support frame of the settlement. There have been developed graphic models of the structural composition of the territories allowing formalizing the promising directions of possible spatial development of the Ob- Altai basin: in one case it is a centripetal urbanization, in the other it is a centrifugal urbanization. Also, the study enables to assess the possible consequences of both directions of development.