The Formation of the Administrative-Territorial System in the Context of the Formation of Modern Ethnogeographical Systems in Bulgaria

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the peculiarities of formation of the modern
administrative-territorial structure of Bulgaria and to analyze their compliance with the ethnogenetic
factor of the territory’s development. Resettlement has its genetic basis, its roots in the natural and
geographical environment, ethno-cultural, socio-economic and political features of the territory. The
genesis of settlement covers the time of initial settlement and economic development of the territory,
as well as all its subsequent changes and transformations. This is one of the main types of sociogeographical
processes that has its own dynamics, development trends, ethno-demographic and socioeconomic
“trajectory”. The genetic taxonomy should comprehensively take into account the entire set
of historical and geographical preconditions and factors of settlement, on the one hand, and the
peculiarities of the settlement process itself with its dynamics, transformations and changes, on the
other. This is a very complex task that requires in-depth methodological and methodological
developments. The paper uses statistical and research materials. The second important component of
settlement is the network of settlements (settlement network). The methodological scheme for
analyzing settlement networks has been developed in great detail in social and geographical studies and
is represented by numerous developments. In the context of this work, it is necessary to identify the
main typological characteristics of the settlement network that determine the genetic types of
settlement. The territorial organization of the population of a certain territory has the following
typological features: a genetically related network of settlements has a characteristic functional and
settlement structure with a certain list of functional and genetic types of settlements, their quantitative
ratio and hierarchy, with more or less pronounced central locations and regional centers; a genetically
related settlement network has a peculiar set of settlement locations and their evolutionary change
associated with the development of the network; the network of settlements has its own territorial
structure with a typical configuration, density and population of settlements, forms of their placement
- single, group, agglomerated, area; the combination of such characteristics represents the territorial
structure of the network of settlements. The question of correspondence between administrative-

territorial systems of settlement, on the one hand, and genetic types of settlement, on the other, remains
open. In a general sense, there will be no such correspondence: each of the administrative systems of
settlement can, in principle, have a particular combination of genetic types of settlement and vice versa.