Urban metropolitan areas continue to grow not only due to population growth in rural areas, but also by creating new settlements. The establishment of new settlements in the rural suburbs of major cities became widespread in Russia 15 years ago. For instance, 14 settlements formed around Perm in the past six years. Such settlements do not have any production (economic) importance by themselves. At the same time, the establishment of social infrastructure is not planned initially. At the first stage municipalities, in which new settlements form, receive significant economic benefit from the development of the rural suburban resettlement – village administrations budget is replenished by property and land taxes. For example, in the suburban district of Permskii Krai, through the establishment of new settlements, budget increased by 37-43% annually. The need of providing several new settlements with social facilities (e.g. schools, kindergartens, etc.) comes gradually. The establishment of such facilities within the boundaries of the rural municipalities is estimated at hundreds of millions Russian rubles. Thus, all the initial economic benefits from the development of new settlements are lost. Therefore, it appears that there is a need to develop optimization models of educational facilities within the boundaries of municipalities, in order to optimize their number, size and location. The aim of the developed model is minimizing both distance to educational facilities and cost of these facilities. Calculations show that the development of a regional optimization scheme of socio-educational environment of a rural settlement within the boundaries of the suburban zone will reduce expenditure on establishment and operation of these facilities on average by 20-25%.
