socialist city

Abstract

The period of the “socialist project” occupied the biggest part of the 20th century. Hugescale social experiments have greatly shaped the present-day city’s appearance. The second half of the 20th century evidenced an unprecedented volume of housing and industrial technologies in house construction and design. Most of us, today’s citizens, live in the neighborhoods and houses built during the socialist era.
Belgrade and Split, Sverdlovsk, Sevastopol, Magnitogorsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Odessa, Moscow – all the cities represented in this issue demonstrate the achievements of the period of the “socialist project”.
Having defined the historical heritage as a phenomenon of the socio-economic development, the civil society of Irkutsk pointed out again the urgency of this issue. It also concerns other cities that respect their history. Without history, without heritage, there is no future. Including the heritage of the 20th century.
We would like to devote the main topic of the issue to recollections of how residential neighborhoods were formed in socialist cities, what people and what processes defined that formation, in which cases the ideology influenced the appearance of cities, and in which cases cities grew and developed according to their internal regularities. The purpose is not only to pay our respect to wonderful masters, but also to learn the humanistic approaches to space arrangement from them again. It is a good thing in the times of domination of completely different goals related to making a quick profit. It is a good thing for all.