Large Housing Estates Under Socialism

Harnessing large urban housing estates in former socialist countries as a resource for the future housing supply requires innovative and practicable strategies and concepts. What are the challenges to be overcome? How can the often mono-structural estates be altered, and how can spatial and cultural identities be reinforced? Which role does the community play in these former socialist neighborhoods? The contributors to this volume present perspectives from different disciplines, both in academia and practice. The exchange of international experiences creates the base for further debate and learning and provides insight into the multiplicity of challenges and approaches today.

Harnessing large urban housing estates in former socialist countries as a resource for the future housing supply requires innovative and practicable strategies and concepts. What are the challenges to be overcome? How can the often mono-structural estates be altered, and how can spatial and cultural identities be reinforced? Which role does the community play in these former socialist neighborhoods? The contributors to this volume present perspectives from different disciplines, both in academia and practice. The exchange of international experiences creates the base for further debate and learning and provides insight into the multiplicity of challenges and approaches today.

This open access book focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It also explores claims that a distinctly “westward-looking orientation” in their design produced housing estates that were superior in design to those produced elsewhere in the Soviet Union (between 1944 and 1991, Estonia was a member republic of the USSR). The first two parts of the book provide contextual material to help readers understand the vision behind housing estates in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These sections present the background of housing estates in the Baltic Republics as well as challenges and debates concerning their formation, evolution, and present condition and importance. Subsequent parts of the book consist of: demographic analyses of the socioeconomic characteristics and ethnicity of housing estate residents (past and present) in the three Baltic capital cities, case studies of people and places related to housing estates in the Baltic countries, and chapters exploring relevant special topics and themes. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and advocates interested in understanding the past, present, and future importance of housing estates in the Baltic countries.

This book focuses on the spatial transformations in the most dynamically evolving urban areas of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. It links the restructuring of the built environment with the underlying processes and the forces of socio-economic reforms. The detailed accounts of the spatial transformations in a key moment of urban history in the region enhance our understanding of the linkages between society and space.

Urban Planning During Socialism delves into the evolution of cities during the period of state socialism of the 20th century, summarizing the urban and architectural studies that trace their transformations. The book focuses primarily on the periphery of the socialist world, both spatially and in terms of scholarly thinking. The case study cities presented in this book draw on cultural and material studies to demonstrate diverse and novel concepts of ‘periphery’ through transformations of socialist cityscapes rather than homogenous views on cities during the period of state socialism of the 20th century. In doing so the book explores the transversalities of political, economic, and social phenomena; the places for everyday life in socialist cities; the role of professional communities on production and reproduction of space and ecological thinking. This book is aimed at scholarly readership, in particular scholars in architecture, urban planning, and human geography, as well as undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students in these disciplines studying the urban transformation of cities after World War II in socialist countries. It will also be of interest for planning officials, architects, policymakers and activists in former socialist countries.

Mass housing in Germany, Russia, and Ukraine represents an enormous volume of housing today and therefore a huge resource for the future development of cities. But transformation of these districts is needed due to the functional, societal, and technical problems and challenges they face. How can sustainable, socially compatible, ecological responsible, and economically efficient development be achieved? The book summarises the results of a three-year research project. Based on the selected case studies, it points out the qualities and values as well as the problems and potentials involved in spatially transforming prefabricated housing estates from the 1960s and 1970s. The specific features and characteristics of the socialist city are evaluated with respect to their potentials and difficulties, and with regard to the requirements placed on future district planning and development. Hence this book contributes to the on-going discussion and serves as a valuable basis for developing planning strategies.

This open access book explores the formation and socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in Europe. Are these estates clustered or scattered? Which social groups originally had access to residential space in housing estates? What is the size, scale and geography of housing estates, their architectural and built environment composition, services and neighbourhood amenities, and metropolitan connectivity? How do housing estates contribute to the urban mosaic of neighborhoods by ethnic and socio-economic status? What types of policies and planning initiatives have been implemented in order to prevent the social downgrading of housing estates? The collection of chapters in this book addresses these questions from a new perspective previously unexplored in scholarly literature. The social aspects of housing estates are thoroughly investigated (including socio-demographic and economic characteristics of current and past inhabitants; ethnicity and segregation patterns; population dynamics; etc.), and the physical composition of housing estates is described in significant detail (including building materials; building form; architectural and landscape design; built environment characteristics; etc.). This book is timely because the recent global economic crisis and Europe’s immigration crisis demand a thorough investigation of the role large housing estates play in poverty and ethnic concentration. Through case studies of housing estates in 14 European centers, the book also identifies policy measures that have been used to address challenges in housing estates throughout Europe.

Garish churches, gabled panel blocks, neo-historical tenements—this book is about these and other architectural oddities that emerged in Poland between 1975 and 1989, a period characterised by the decline of the authoritarian socialist regime and waves of political protest. During that period, committed architects defied repressive politics and persistent shortages, and designed houses and churches which adapted eclectic historical forms and geometric volumes, and were based on traditional typologies. These buildings show a very different background of postmodernism, far removed from the debates over Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson, or Prince Charles in Western Europe and North America—a context in which postmodern architecture stood not for world-weary irony in an economically saturated society, but for individualised counter-propositions to a collectivist ideology, for a yearning for truth and spiritual values, and for a discourse on distinctiveness and national identity. Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland argues that this new architecture marked the beginning of socio-political transformation and at the same time showed postmodernism's reconciliatory potential. In light of massive historical ruptures and wartime destruction, these buildings successfully responded to the contradictory desires for historical continuity and acknowledgment of rupture and loss. Next to international ideas, the architects took up domestic traditions, such as the ideas of the Polish school of historic conservation and long-standing national-patriotic narratives. They thus contributed to the creation of a built environment and intellectual climate that have been influential to date. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in postmodern architecture and urban design, as well as in the socio-cultural background and transformative potential of architecture under socialism.