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A microdistrict or microraion is a residential complex—a primary structural element of the residential area construction in the Soviet Union and in some post-Soviet and former . Residential districts in most of the cities and towns in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union were built in accordance with this concept.
According to the Construction Rules and Regulations of the Soviet Union, a typical microdistrict covered the area of 10–60 (30–160 acres), up to but not exceeding 80 hectares (200 acres) in some cases, and comprised residential dwellings (usually multi-story apartment buildings) and public service buildings. As a general rule, major motor roads, green belt, and natural obstacles served as boundaries between microdistricts, allowing an overall reduction in city road construction and maintenance costs and emphasizing public transportation. Major motor roads or through streets were not to cross microdistricts' territories. The entrances to a microdistrict's territory were to be located no further than 300 meters (1000 ft) apart.
Standards also regulated the accessibility of the public service buildings (excluding schools and pre-school facilities) by imposing a 500-meter (1,500–foot) limit as the farthest distance from any residential dwelling. Unlike Western countries, the Soviet Union did not urban renewal existing residential or commercial areas; microdistricts were always built further and further out from old parts of cities, so planning of local services, and transportation to employment in old parts of the city were critical. One of the city-planners' tasks was to ensure that the public buildings were built to cover the microdistrict's territory in accordance with the norms. Typical public service structures include high school, pre-school establishments (usually combined kindergarten and Nursery school), grocery stores, personal service shops, , clubs, playgrounds, and building maintenance offices, as well as a number of specialized shops. The exact number of buildings of each type depended on the distance requirement and the microdistrict's population density and was determined by means of certain per capita standards.
In the 1930s, residential complexes grew in size, covering territories of up to five to six hectares. A system of building residential complexes was gradually replaced with a concept of a city block. Such blocks generally comprised residential buildings along the perimeter, and residential buildings intermingled with public service buildings on the interior. However, it proved unfeasible to provide all public services within every city block, due to the latter's relatively compact size; it was not unusual to have a school, a kindergarten, or a store serving the population of several blocks, which were often separated by major motor roads. The system of the city block also required a developed network of roads, thus increasing the maintenance and construction costs and complicating the organization of public transportation.
The 1940s and 1950s saw further enlargement and grouping of the city blocks. However, new construction was based on the same principles as in the previous decades, and could not keep up with the increasing housing demand. Labor-intensive industrialization of the country demanded ever more workers, which was hard to achieve with housing accommodation lacking.
Humorous insights into the potential consequences of living in such a bland and repetitive atmosphere appear in the hugely popular Mosfilm production The Irony of Fate (1976).
After the economy was opened up more for commercial real estate developers, xiaoqu continued to be built in recent decades, but evolved in several ways such as differentiation in luxury, safety and available services. The apartments are owned by the inhabitants, and the Xiaoqu is often enclosed by a wall, with the Gated community being guarded. The xiaoqu often also have their own government representatives and property managers. The number of residents can vary greatly depending on the kind of xiaoqu, with Beijing's Tiantongyuan suburb having more than 700,000 residents as of 2019, whereas other xiaoqu only consist of one building housing a few hundred residents.
2016 State Council guidelines called for opening up private roads in xiaoqu, and building smaller scale xiaoqu, to allow a finer road network in cities.
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