Since 1917 the district in the city became a link of the administrativeterritorial division of large cities of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (USSR). Powers regarding to create and liquidate of districts in cities, as well as the establishment of their boundaries, gradually passed from the center to the lower levels of government. For a long time, the city district had an unclear status in the administrative-territorial system of the USSR. Most of the districts in the cities were formed during Soviet times, in independent Ukraine district division was carried out only in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and Odesa.

 However, doctrinal studies of the legal status of the district in the city and the peculiarities of establishing its boundaries in historical retrospect and in the conditions of fragmentary regulation of this issue at the level of legislation in our country have hardly been conducted. This work is the first scientific investigation in domestic legal literature.

The purpose of the article is to establish the legal status of the territory of the district in the city and the peculiarities of establishing (changing) its boundaries.

In order to achieve it, іt is analyzed the legislation, which regulated the procedure for the formation and liquidation of urban districts in the USSR. It is studied doctrinal sources, special literature, and normative documents that determine the types of urban planning and land management documentation, based on which the boundaries of the district in the city are established (were established). It was established that the administrative center, asan attribute of the administrative-territorial unit, is not characteristic of urban districts, except of the Balaklava city district of Sevastopol.

As a result, it is distinguished four main stages in the History of district division in large cities and it is formulated the author’s definition of the concept of “district in the city” is. It was established that there is no district of the city, formed during the independence of Ukraine, has a procedure for establishing (changing) its borders, in accordance with the procedure provided for in Art. Art. 173, 174 of the Land Code of Ukraine, and therefore their boundaries are only conditional and not legally defined. It is argued that the definition of the boundaries of the city district is possible only if the city boundary is established.

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