Socialist Urbanization Research Articles

Socialist urbanism and cultural infrastructure facilities in China: Cities of the Pearl River Delta and the Guangzhou cultural infrastructure facilities plan, 2003–07

The construction of “cultural infrastructure facilities” (wenhua jichu sheshi) in China – auditoria, exhibition halls, libraries, museums, performance centers – for state administration of culture and information originated in the 1950s with Sino-Soviet exchange and has continued throughout the reform era. However, scholarship on urban development in China, embedded in discourses of capitalism and modern planning, generally does not recognize this category of infrastructure construction by contemporary city governments. To address the lacunae, this article analyzes the history of cultural infrastructure facilities in socialist urbanism, their transfer to the People’s Republic of China from the Soviet Union, the conditions of socialist realism, and the continuity of cultural infrastructure construction since the 1980s. Evidence from the Guangzhou Cultural Infrastructure Facilities Projects Plan (2003 – 07) and cultural facilities sites in the new city center projects of Shenzhen, Shunde, and Dongguan demonstrate how the party-state prioritizes the planning and construction of cultural infrastructure facilities. Contemporary architectural designs for new cultural buildings represent the international aesthetic of reform while cultural facilities continue to house and display party-sanctioned culture and information for the people.

Review: Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

Review: <i>Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union</i>

ПОЛІТИКА ПРОСТОРУ, СОЦІАЛІСТИЧНИЙ УРБАНІЗМ І ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЇ: АНАЛІЗ ПЕРЕТВОРЕНЬ АДМІНІСТРАТИВНОГО ЦЕНТРУ КРИВОГО РОГУ

The urban spaces in Ukraine have been dynamically changed over the past decades, and the politics of space has also been transformed as a result of the changing imaginations on different types of the production of space – the socialist and the market one. During the transition period, the ideology of spatial development and politics that determine the goals, priorities and regulations in urban development have changed dramatically; as well as institutions and actors involved in the production of space. Thus, we observe today the process of not only physical transformations of urban areas, but also notions of them, priorities for their development, specific purposes, functions and regulation of their changes, spatial organization and its concepts, public involvement in the planning of urban areas. Post-socialist transition, in fact, denotes two completely different ways of producing the space – the socialist and the postsocialist. In this paper, we analyze the politics of space and spatial transformations, illustrating spatial restructurings through the changes of socio-political context - ideologies, institutions, actors and tools that shape it. We suggest that changes in the ways of the production of space and shifting from socialist to postsocialist urbanism are related specifically to the changes of these key dimensions. We consider the idea of Kryvyi Rih administrative center development through the several planning projects from the early 1930s (in relation to planning the socialist city in Kryvyi Rih) until the end of the 1980s (when project was partly implemented) in order to highlight the socialist urbanism as a spatial, social and ideological phenomenon. We analyze this urban space through the lens of socialism and post-socialist transition to illustrate how it transformed spatially, functionally and conceptually.

“The Master Rarely Casts His Eye Here”: Water and Urban Infrastructure in Postwar Vladivostok

The keyword socialist modernity has often served as the yardstick for scholarship on socialist urban histories. Many have stressed the so-called fundamental and micropolitical characteristics of ideology to understand the material and social lives of their cities. I argue that such a historiographical stance not only sidelines the variegated and conflicting experiences of urbanization, but also marginalizes how nature and space actively conditioned urban life and its social fabrics. By looking at water and its infrastructure in post-WWII Vladivostok, I argue how groups ranging from technical experts to everyday residents built the city around the cruciality of water supplies. This spawned debates about the limits of urban planning, the corruption of the municipal authorities, and the fight against epidemic diseases. Reframing socialist urbanization as that of “assemblages” opens new avenues that fuse the work of environmental and urban histories of socialism.

Reclaiming Socialist Space, Caricaturing Socialism? Urban Interventions and the Cleansing of Political Content in State‐Socialist Public Housing After 2008

AbstractThis article introduces the concept of retro‐utopian urbanism to analyse post‐2008 urban interventions in three state‐socialist public housing neighbourhoods in Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study of Petržalka (Bratislava, Slovakia), Lasnamäe (Tallinn, Estonia) and Bródno (Warsaw, Poland), I examine different approaches to combating the stigma associated with socialist housing. It is shown that these urban interventions are a double‐edged sword, in that they challenge the widespread notion that socialist urbanism is totalitarian by weakening the significance of socialist ideas. The article argues that urban interventions contribute to foreclosing socialist alternatives in the present when they normalise “postsocialism”, a term I use to refer to neoliberal capitalism’s ideological framework that sees socialism as obsolete. The concept of retro‐utopian urbanism provides a lens through which to reflect on the limitations and challenges of urban interventionism, and to rethink the debate on, and the persistence of, postsocialism in and beyond Eastern Europe.

Hamhung, the second-largest North Korean city: Dynasty urbanism, colonial urbanism and socialist urbanism

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or North Korea), after Pyongyang, Hamhung is the second-largest city, with a population of 769,000. It has shown a unique development trajectory starting from an important regional military and administrative town. Pre- and during the Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), the changes in the structure and function of Hamhung were wide-ranging. After independence from Japan and the division between North and South Korea, the Korean War (1950–1953) broke out, leaving Hamhung in utter ruins. Then, the immediate reaction after the Korean War was to reconstruct the city which was carried out with aid from socialist fraternal countries, notably East Germany. Socialist urban development patterns followed. The purpose of this paper is to provide a historic review of Hamhung depicting these critical junctures with a periodisation of Hamhung's development – the Joseon Dynasty urbanism (1392–1910), colonial urbanism (1910–1945), and socialist urbanism (1945 - currently). However, through these multiple ‘mille-feuille’-like urban layers, spatial lock-in effects have been observed.

The Socialist Bratwurst: East German Urbanism and Its Reemergence in the Present

This article examines defining features of East German urban planning—primarily the housing complex and the city/settlement binary—and their relationship to Eisenhüttenstadt, a city founded in 1950 as Stalinstadt, an East German socialist utopia. Today Eisenhüttenstadt is home to a novel form of urban renewal in which architects and planners look to the socialist past for inspiration as they imagine a new urban future. I examine the history of socialist urbanism as it was implemented in Eisenhüttenstadt, as well as how residents and urban planners came to understand socialist urbanism in the years immediately following German reunification. I then examine an urban renewal program, started in 2014, that explicitly draws on the socialist past. In doing so, I aim to consider the socialist city not as an architectural form but as a set of practices, spatial imaginations, and ethical commitments that can be reanimated even in a capitalist sociopolitical context.

역사도시 평양의 사회주의 도시화 과정 - 도시구성과 건축양식을 중심으로 -

평양은 427년에 고구려의 수도가 된 이후 1600년 이상의 역사를 지닌 역사도시이며, 고려와 조선 그리고 일제강점기에는 한반도에서 제2의 도시로서의 위상을 가지고 있었다. 1948년 9월 9일 이후 평양은 조선민주주의인민공화국( Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)의 수도가 되었다. 사회주의국가의 수도인 평양은 자본주의 국가와 달리 중심상업 및 업무지구가 존재하지 않으며, 평양의 상징적인 중심공간은 광장과 공공문화시설로 구성되었으며, 주거지는 직주근접을 원칙으로 계획되었고, 간선도로의 주경관은 집합주택에 의해 형성되어 있다. 이러한 도시구조와 도시경관은 고구려의 수도였던 역사도시 평양이 일제강점기까지 유지해왔던 모습이 아니다. 천년 넘게 유지되었던 역사도시의 모습은 일제강점과 함께 빠르게 변화하기 시작했으며, 1948년 이후 사회주의 체제가 구축되면서 변화의 방향이 달라졌으나, 현재의 물리적 도시구조의 틀은 6.25전쟁 이후 구축되었다. 본 연구에서는 옛 평양성을 중심으로 도시구조와 건축 측면에서 고구려의 수도였던 역사도시 평양이 어떠한 과정을 거쳐 사회주의 도시로 변모되었는가를 살펴보았다.BR 역사도시 평양의 심장부인 평양성은 사회주의체제 성립이후 불과 반세기만에 사회주의 체제를 표상하는 도시의 심장부로 변모되었다. 변화의 시작은 대한제국의 출발과 함께 지어진 풍경궁의 건설과 철도 부설과 함께 시작된 평양탄광의 개발이었고, 일제강점하에서 진행된 한반도의 병참기지화 속 공업화의 일환으로 전개된 평양성 밖의 공업지구 조성을 통한 시역의 확장 그리고 해방 후 사회주의 정권의 출범이었다. 해방 직후 실시된 소련의 군정 하에서 사회주의 도시계획과 건축이 부분적으로 이식되었지만, 결정적인 변화는 6.25전쟁으로 전파된 평양의 복구과정에서 적용된 사회주의 도시계획과 전쟁으로부터 도시를 보호하기 위한 도시계획이었다. 이 과정에 6.25전쟁전 소련과 동유럽에서 수학한 김정희를 비롯한 건축인들의 역할이 있었다. 그러나 전재복구과정에서 소련과 동유럽 사회주의 국가의 복구지원 과정에서 평양의 중심부와 이식된 유럽의 중정형블럭의 공동주택과 신고전주의건축양식의 문화시설에 전통건축 어휘와 장식이 일부 사용되기는 했지만, 본질적으로 북의 인민들에게는 이질적이었다. 북의 도시와 건축이 동유럽의 영향에서 벗어나기 시작한 것은 전재복구가 성공적으로 마무리되어 경제적 기반이 확보되고, 1956년 이후 김일성 체제가 확고해지고 ‘우리식대로’를 정책의 전면에 내세우면서다.BR 시작은 전통건축양식을 채택한 공공문화시설이었고, 전통건축형식에 인민들의 요구를 담은 현대조선식건축인 민족건축형식이 1960년에 등장해서, 소련과 동유럽에서 이식된 신고전주의 건축양식이 사회주의리얼리즘의 북한식 버전으로 대체되었다. 도시구조와 경관측면에서는 중정형 블록의 공동주택이 1970년대 본격화된 도심재개발사업으로 해체되고, 오늘날 초고층 공동주택을 중심으로 하는 평양의 도시경관이 형성되었다. 마지막으로 1982년 대동강과 김일성광장을 사이에 두고 인민대학습당과 주체사상탑이 건설되면서 마지막까지 유지되었던 대동강과 금수산에 의한 자연의 질서는 새로운 상징적 경관축으로 대치되었다.

Review: The Socialist Life of Modern Architecture: Bucharest, 1949–1964, by Juliana Maxim

Review: <i>The Socialist Life of Modern Architecture: Bucharest, 1949–1964</i>, by Juliana Maxim

The Battle of Žižkov: Urban Planners’ Transition from Heritage Protection to Neoliberal Discursive Planning

On the example of working-class Prague quarter of Žižkov, the article studies the interrelation between heritage protection of late nineteenth-century tenement housing and neoliberal city policies after 1989. It locates the common root of both phenomena in the strong sense of crisis of socialist modernist urbanism among urban planners and architects since the early 1970s. The criticism of socialist urbanism culminated shortly before the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in a public struggle against demolition and redevelopment of the entire Žižkov quarter, led by a group of young architects. The article concludes by describing a bitter victory as the quarter’s architecture was eventually saved, while neoliberal urban policies and gentrification eroded its working-class nature. This process illustrates a major shift in urban expertise from social planning under socialism to neoliberal discursive planning in which a “story” of a city is constructed through preservation of belle-époque tenement housing.

Discourse of Modernist Heritage and New Ways of Thinking about Socialist Urban Areas in Eastern Europe

Discourse of Modernist Heritage and New Ways of Thinking about Socialist Urban Areas in Eastern Europe

Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism

AbstractA quarter century following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies, many of the dwellings, utilities, and public spaces built by these regimes continue to be cherished by their inhabitants and users. This has only increased as post-socialist urban landscapes undergo an ever-intensifying process of neoliberal “re-privatization,” de-planning, and spatial as well as economic stratification. Scholars, however, continue to produce accounts emphasizing how socialist cities and buildings, as well as the audacious social goals built into them, failed. This article provides a critical overview of recent literature on built socialism and identifies a tension between two parallel ethnographic and historical narratives. One argues that built socialism failed, because it was too obsessed with the economy and industry and neglected every other aspect of social life. The other pins the blame for failure on built socialism's alleged fixation with aesthetic or discursive realms and its corresponding neglect of the economy. The article closes by suggesting pathways for comparative scholarship that consider built socialism in terms of not only collapse and disintegration, but also success and endurance; not simply ofeithereconomyoraesthetics, but also of their reciprocal inter-determination and co-dependence. We must look beyond the lens of imported theories and consider “vernacular” or “emic” concepts rooted in the specificities and singularities of the socialist city itself.

Transport in Mikrorayons

Residential housing compounds known as mikrorayons were enclosed within vast housing estates and served as central features of socialist urbanism in the Eastern Bloc. To reduce daily travel, designers located the communities on well-considered metropolitan sites and proposed embedded commercial opportunities and community services. This article examines, twenty-five years after the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the vision and implementation of transport planning in these modernist residential districts. A novel source of information is a rich literature, published during the operative years of the USSR, which explains and promotes contemporaneous socialist urbanization. This literature is enhanced with subsequently published critique and commentary to explore commuting, mobility, and transport-land use interaction vis-à-vis the legacy of central planning for housing estates. Findings suggest that various elements of built environments that were vital to access and mobility significantly lagged the timing, quality, and completeness of housing construction. The Soviet system substituted proximity for mobility in certain aspects of urban life, but incomplete service networks in residential districts meant that the promises of propinquity were unrealized.

From Tractors to Territory: Socialist Urbanization through Standardization

This article proposes that the Fordist model of industrial standardization enabled and empowered the Soviets to enact distinctly socialist, decentralized, urban patterns. It follows the design of the Kharkiv Tractor Factory (KhTZ) and the socialist city ( sotsgorod) to house its workers, built outside of the first capital of Soviet Ukraine between 1930 and 1931. The near-impossible schedule of Stalin’s hyperindustrialization drive, known as the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), limited the options both tractor factory and sotsgorod designers could pursue, which made easily replicable architectural types and models particularly attractive. Once tested on an experimental site like KhTZ, a type deemed successful joined the ranks of those ready for slight adjustment—a process known as priviazka in Soviet architectural discourse—and export to far-flung sites in the Soviet sphere.

Urban development and migration processes in the urban region of Bratislava from the post-socialist transformation until the global economic crisis

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to understanding population migration in Central European urban regions and its connection with urban development. This topic has been addressed in other studies, focused mainly on large cities, particularly Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw. Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, is a relatively small city at the core of one of the most economically developed regions in Central Europe. The region has experienced a transformation of migration trends, from those determined by socialist urbanization to trends resembling those observed in Western Europe. Similar to those of other major Central European cities, recent patterns of migration to and from Bratislava are characterized by a rising intensity of concentration and decentralization, but also reflect several unique historical circumstances. Furthermore, the results indicate that the global economic crisis that erupted in 2007 has eased the intensity of the observed processes, although it has not changed their nature. This effect is similar to that of the economic decline in the 1990s.

Czechoslovak light rail — Legacy of socialist urbanism or opportunity for the future?

This article focuses on the development of the Czechoslovak ‘rychlá tramvaj’ (‘fast tram’) systems in Prague, Bratislava and Brno. Its aim is to examine whether these systems meet the requirements of light rail and whether it is possible to continue their development as a functional light rail city transport system. A further aim is a detailed analysis of the conditions and contexts affecting the gradual development of ‘rychlá tramvaj’ schemes in three selected metropolises in the former Czechoslovakia.Urban development in Czechoslovakia was affected by the socialist planning system that constructed large housing estates on the edges of metropolises during the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, many commuters had to be moved between them and city centres daily; therefore, the necessity for high-capacity ‘rychlá tramvaj’ connections became apparent. After socio-political changes in 1989, a market economy was introduced and the trends of commercial and residential suburbanization have modified the spatial structure of the cities, and mobility has begun to be increasingly dependent on cars. In response to this, city councils departed from further development of ‘rychlá tramvaj’ schemes. Currently, the emphasis on sustainable mobility is apparent, principally because of smart city solutions, an environmental focus and a common European transport policy; thus, municipalities are rediscovering the virtues of light rail lines again. Because the ‘rychlá tramvaj’ systems from the 1970s and 1980s are still in operation, transforming them into modern light rail systems appears to be a convenient and cheap solution.

Rural Disadvantaged Children's Educational Problems and Related Policies in China

This manuscript sets out to state the complicated educational situation of rural disadvantaged children and related policies suggestions. By analyzing the local survey data, we find that the rural disadvantaged children's educational problems is of great importance and has a strategic significance in promoting a new socialist rural construction, urbanization and industrialization process, building a harmonious society.

Framing Criticism and Knowledge Production in Semi-peripheries: Post-socialism Unpacked

More than two and a half decades after the demise of actually existing socialism, much of the contemporary literature produced about CEE is still organized around a dichotomy between and post-socialism, transforming the region in an epistemic enclave. This paper clarifies the agencies of CEE scholars in producing these epistemic landscapes and adds to the analyses that describe the devices developed in peripheries that contribute to the asymmetries between the core and their academic hinterlands. I address the positioning games played by the CEE scholars, the modalities in which their various critical agendas became embedded in global fluxes of ideas, and their important role in co-producing the self-Orientalizing narrative on socialism and post-socialism. Following the debate between Thelen (2011, 2012) and Dunn & Verdery (2011) over postsocialism as a strategic case, my contention is that the various degrees of epistemic enclavisation of the region spring from the various types of global partnerships, which forge critical alliances predicated on attributing history to West and taking out the East from the normal flow of history, coevalness being denied. I further develop this point by making appeal to an example, the understanding of socialist urbanization in the 1980s and 1990s. I illustrate why the over-emphasis on differences between and capitalism, and and post-socialism, and the underestimation of similarities, such as accumulation by dispossession and class decomposition, is a wrong analytical option. I plead for a more Gramsian understanding of counter-hegemonic alliances making.

Reclaiming Rights to the Socialist City: Bureaucratic Artefacts and the Affective Appeal of Petitions

A long history of war and revolution in the industrial city of Vinh has perpetuated cycles of mass destruction followed by urban renewal. This paper examines citizen responses to the shift from post-war socialist urbanization that sought to eradicate inequality to post-reform city planning that advocates private property. It asks: how do urban residents at risk of relocation articulate their rights to the post-socialist city? Tracing the use and circulation of bureaucratic artefacts between citizens, developers and the state, it shows how government documents, far from being mere tools of state regulation, are productive of active, participatory subjectivities and a growing sense of moral–political agency. This agency manifests itself in the collective act of petitioning through which residents contest urban redevelopment and the withdrawal of the state by employing the language of tình cảm (sentiment) as an affective tool and logic of bureaucratic rationality.

Planning of Fishing Village in Dou-Long Port

With the development of building a socialist harmonious society and urbanization，building a new socialist countryside has become the focus of town planning.The industrial resources of Dou-long port,residents’ living environment and infrastructure are analyzed in detail in this paper. Some reasonable means of settlement are given according to the situation presented in Dou-long port’s development such as Distribution of scattered residential areas, road congestion, waste of land resources. After planning,you can achieve a radical improvement in the quality of life of residents.What more Dou-long port’s dirty and messy environment will be changed greatly.