Abstract—: The microdistrict principle of urban environment organization, developed in Soviet urban planning, formed a certain configuration for placing trade and services facilities. However, the market transformations of the 1990s dramatically affected both the number of retail facilities and their location. The objective of this research was to identify the effects of retail development for the functions and morphology of Soviet microdistricts. The work is based on empirical data on St. Petersburg; the method involved both data analysis of telephone books published in the late 1980s and field mapping of selected areas of the city. It was revealed that today there has been a rapprochement of the retail functions of large housing estates areas and the historical center. The number and density of everyday demand facilities in microdistricts has increased by many times, while goods and services of periodic demand came out on top in terms of the number of facilities. Episodic demand retail has ceased to obey the center–peripheral principle in terms of placement. The Soviet spatial monopoly principle was replaced by the spatial competition principle, which significantly transformed the morphology of the urban space.