The paper examines how residents of urban-type settlements in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) organize their leisure. Urban-type settlements occupy an intermediate position between urban and rural settlements and remain an important component of regional settlement systems; however, their residents’ everyday practices, including leisure practices, remain understudied. Most leisure research, both in Russia and internationally, focuses on urban or rural populations, while residents of urban-type settlements rarely receive scholarly attention in this field. The study underpinning this article was conducted in 2025–2026 and employed a mixed-methods research design combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The empirical data were collected through focused interviews with residents from a range of sociodemographic groups in two urban-type settlements in Yakutia (n = 24) and a structured questionnaire survey of residents of the same settlements (n = 112). The findings show that residents’ leisure practices are shaped by the interplay between the opportunities afforded by local infrastructure and the settlements’ connections to a wider geographic area. Two models of leisure organization were identified: (1) active use of resources in the regional center (Yakutsk), with trips to the city forming an established part of everyday life; and (2) reliance primarily on local infrastructure and informal leisure spaces, with relatively infrequent trips to larger centers. The study shows that trips beyond the settlement often serve multiple purposes and that residents’ leisure practices are not confined to the opportunities provided by local infrastructure. These practices reflect a way of life specific to urban-type settlements, grounded in a combination of local rootedness and spatial mobility. This combination enables successful adaptation to life in these settlements and is an important resource for their resilience.

leisure practices, everyday life, leisure infrastructure, spatial mobility, way of life, urban-type settlements, Sakha Republic (Yakutia)

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