How did planners design Soviet cities?

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream when you sign up at the link in the description you also get access to nebula a streaming video service that city beautiful is a part of every New Year's Eve millions of Russians sit down to watch the 1976 romantic comedy the irony of fate it's a national tradition in the movie the protagonist ends up drunk and in Leningrad unaware that he has taken a plane for Moscow he gets into a taxi and tells the driver his address in Moscow it turns out there's a street with that same name in Leningrad and the building at the address is the exact same as well the protagonist stumbles into the building and finds that his key works in the lock to what he thinks is his apartment he doesn't notice any minor differences and falls asleep in someone else's bed I don't want to spoil the entire movie here but you can imagine when hijinx a romance ensue after this epic mix-up but the whole joke is based on the reality of Soviet housing it's so standardized that a scenario like this is plausible the cherry on top is this movie's introduction which explains how the soviet union got to be this way it depicts a local architects designs overridden by the central state which then proceeds to place the exact same nondescript housing blocks in every part of the USSR regardless of climate I wish more romantic comedies hinged on some planning subplot like this Russia you're lucky we get stuck with movies like Love Actually look this movie confirms a stereotype that a lot of people have about Russia and countries in the former communist bloc when you think about Russian cities those cold plain mid to high rise buildings are what come to mind they're often set in nondescript landscapes on the edge of cities in this video we'll learn more about how the elimination of private property dedication to providing housing for all and the encouragement of communal living let's have very different cities in the Soviet Union when compared to Western counterparts for those needing a very brief history lesson the Soviet Union more formally known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics existed from 1922 to 1991 the Soviet Union was a byproduct of the 1917 Russian Revolution where Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin overthrew the successor government to the Romanov constitutional monarchy the Bolshevik government instituted state socialism with strong central government authority over local planning they believe that the physical form of cities should reinforce the principles of Soviet socialism and city should be reimagined with that goal in mind private property was eliminated in all land was in control of the central state as you can imagine these changes would have a profound impact on how cities would be planned designed and built but it's important to know that the Soviet Union at its apex controlled one-sixth of the total land area on the planet it spanned 11 time zones in two continents in its 69 year history I'm gonna be speaking about Soviet city planning very generally but it's important to know that regional variations existed and ideas evolved through time it's fascinating to compare cities in Estonia which had a lot of contact with Western Europe two cities deep in Russian territory that's a topic for maybe another video Soviet City Planning in the 1920s and 1930s at the beginning of the Soviet Union focus on the transition from private property to state control of land as well as early attempts at creating cities according to socialist principles architects and planners at the time championed a form of modern architecture known as constructivism the austere industrial functional design was a perfect fit for planners and architects past with providing housing for millions of people in fact Russia had its own University for teaching modernist architecture which closely paralleled the more famous Bauhaus in Germany many constructivist ideas came from the school and it had influence beyond the Iron Curtain the basic principle of Soviet city design of this era was that everyone should be spending their time outside in communal environments working eating socialising and so on thus Soviet housing was built with the barest minimum of living space the result was buildings that were basically dormitories and that's how they are used today they were built in the constructivist style so they were not only small but plain perhaps unsurprisingly living full-time in industrial style dorm rooms was not popular with the general public this phase did not last long the next prominent apartment building type is often referred to as this danke as they came to be associated with the Stalin era from about 1930 to 1950 they came in two flavors smaller cinderblock structures were built for the working class while larger brick buildings with ornamentation or the Communist Party elite the larger still link has aged gracefully and represented some of the finest state constructed housing in the history of the Soviet Union these housing units were prized right up through the fall of the USSR Soviet city planning stall during World War two as most of the state's resources were dedicated to rebuilding industry rebuilding cities in the years that followed the next big epoch and Soviet planning came after Nikita Khrushchev came into power after Stalin's death Khrushchev had an interest in domestic policy and reform and housing was high on his list of concerns his interest came from when he was the head of the Communist Party in Moscow in 1950 he led a large-scale housing construction project in the city his interest was building many homes and quickly Khrushchev and his architects and planners developed a standard building type that came to be known as Khrushchev cos they were all 5 storeys tall because elevators were be needed for buildings any taller and elevators weren't in the budget they were built out of prefabricated concrete panels and a team of builders could assemble a Keshava in two weeks units and these buildings were small though not as small as the constructivist dorms of the past a one-bedroom unit was 30 square meters and a three-bedroom unit was double that kitchens were tiny only six square meters these may have been perfectly sized for a small family but in reality they often housed multi-generational households when Khrushchev became leader of the entire Soviet Union he scaled up the Russian housing program to the entire nation at the peak of the program 60 million people lived in Kirchhoff cos that's the entire population of Italy all living in essentially the same buildings the Communist Party was not against ornamentation or beauty but their priority was a Bic wa tea and equality the soviet union had promised all of its citizens a home in the only way they could do that was with mass production of very few building plans these building plans were polarizing amongst the public many hoped for more amenities or a larger unit while others grew to love them the Soviet government often compared them to US public housing which were eventually inhabited by very low income households the building's often lacked maintenance and policing the crew shoka's were for everyone and were better kept the Communist Party used this point to highlight how their political and social systems were better than those of the West I've spent a lot of time in this video talking about housing housing was critically important to the Communist Party's socialist agenda but there are other aspects to Soviet City planning as well I mean what kind of neighborhood did all those kashaf cos create the answer was the McCrory on which translates to micro district in English so that's the word I'm going to use instead of butchering that word over and over again micro districts for the urban building blocks of new Soviet cities and the additions to existing ones there were areas of around 10 to 60 hectares that housed around 20,000 people they also included senior centers childcare schools shops and restaurants the idea was that everything a person needed on a daily basis except to work would be within 500 metres of a residents home micro districts would also include things residents needed less frequently such as health care facilities but not every micro district would have one there are space such that a resident we know further than 1500 meters from it micro districts were typically surrounded by arterial streets they were designed so that residents could access everything in their micro district on foot our Tyrael streets carried car bus and tram traffic residents were expected to use mass transit when moving throughout the larger city such as on their commute to work while the Soviet government was more centralized than western ones Soviet cities were less centralized Western cities in the 1950s and 1960s were designed to move people from the suburbs to the central city and back again Soviet cities were designed to move residents from any one point to any other point many new Soviet cities were built around a mine or steel mill so most workers weren't commuting to the center anyway micro districts were critical to the realization of the socialist city they were called the smallest administrative unit in the Soviet reorganisation of urban territory they were designed so that everyone would have the same housing and access to all of the same amenities no micro district would be any better than any other and because Soviet cities were less centralized it wasn't like micro districts closer to the city centre necessarily gave those residents a shorter commute the self-contained unit of the micro district was perfect for adding on to a city almost indefinitely as new employment uses such as offices or factories popped up new micro districts could be added to the edge of the city like simple building blocks after Khrushchev came Brezhnev and some of the laser focus on efficiency and standardization fell to the wayside if you see Soviet apartment buildings taller than five stories they're probably built after 1964 when Brezhnev was in power there was still standardization this was still the Soviet Union but there's also more consideration of climate and local conditions instead of one standardized apartment building there were several as Soviet cities began to expand outward planners begin to value density new apartment buildings were now 9 to 16 stories and included elevators the unit's themselves were larger and nicer than those in Kirchhoff cos but smaller than the Stelling cos this model of planning lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union Soviet cities show how different urban form can be if the underlying societal goals are different the Soviet Union's socialist perspective called for the elimination of private property encouragement of communal living and housing for all the result is mass-produced apartment buildings and standardized urban districts with pedestrian access to all daily activities save work this video is not meant to be an endorsement or critique of this city type I will say that it's amazing that love it or hate it Soviet citizens find the time every New Year's to laugh about it hey if you want to see an extra minute or two a video on this subject go sign up for nebula Nebula is a streaming video service filled with videos from thoughtful creators like Wendover productions Lindsay Ellis and Tom Scott I've started adding bonus commentary to these videos at the end in place of ads as a way of saying thank you for signing up I'm not the only creator doing this either a subscription to nebula starts at just three dollars per month or twenty dollars per year that's ridiculously inexpensive for the amount of support you're giving to all of these thoughtful channels and if that wasn't good enough you also get access to the streaming documentary video service curiosity stream let's say you're interested in learning more about cities they have videos about Rome future 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Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 2,445,270

Keywords: city planning, town planning, urban planning, urban design, Khrushchyovka, stalinka, microrayon

Id: JGVBv7svKLo

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Silvarden]

For anyone traveling through Ukraine I highly encourage to give Slavutych a visit. It's one of the youngest Ukrainian cities (it was build to accommodate the Chernobyl Disaster victims) and it was built by architects from 8 different Soviet republics. So the city has 8 distinct districts that represent different architectural styles of the Soviet era.

[u/BasenjiFart]

I watched this a couple days ago and it's very well researched. Absolutely worth watching.

[u/[deleted]]

That movie he talks about in the beginning is actually worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVpmZnRIMKs

[u/bullyhunter7777]

Thank

[u/titanq22]

I love City beautiful. He’s one of the best the best YouTube channels for wholesome content

[u/Roman1493]

Russian matryoshka among us? https://studio.youtube.com/video/aA6PwU8neu8/edit/basic