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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Utopian visions confronted pragmatic realities across the Soviet Union's eighty years of existence, as the USSR designed and built cities they hoped would transform their people from a nation of peasants into model socialist proletarians. In this video, we review the history of Soviet urban planning from the 1917 Revolution all the way to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and discuss the core principles used to design Soviet neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
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All music courtesy of MusOpen: musopen.org
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befor watching i must say THANK U so much for making this video as an eastern european i always find it annoying how westerners say our cities look depresion while posting just winter photos, of course it's gonna look depressing since the trees are naked in the winter, theres plenty of vegetation here and it look beautiful espacialy in the spring when all the trees have flowers
Exactly, all the "depressing" photos of Soviet neighborhoods are always taken after the leaves have fallen and the grass died for the winter, but before any significant snowfall, so you're left with gray blocks surrounded by brown shrubbery. But in the summers, cities like Moscow or Warsaw fee like towns built in a forest!
@@EcoGecko I was just thinking about how much more livable some of those green cities look compared to a lot of cities here in the states which are often run down and look grim no matter the time of the year. Of course the richer parts of the city look nice but, only a certain few can afford to live there or it’s a tourist trap set up
@@optimusprime4542 Socialist countries cared a lot about parks and playgrounds around the apartment buildings, I live in Skopje (Macedonia, former country that was in Yugoslavia) and after independence the urban mafia in colaboration with government officials are tearing the parks away to fit more apratments.
@@EcoGecko Look at any old photos or film from the USSR and its always so bright and vibrant.
I think it's worth noting, seeing how many people here praise the parks, although parks and towns are very comfortable and walkabke, the comfort of living in these houses is kind of set aside by many. The houses themselves look completely uninspiring, dull, and absolutely identical (this phenomenon was even noted in one of the famous pieces of Soviet movie, where the character comes to the very exact house, in same street, with same surroundings but later figured out that, his condo was actually in another city). And as mentioned in the video, the area of living was very small, though there were efforts to increase that. And I am not even talking about the crime rates (which differ from microraion to microraion).
Source: My own life experience of 19 years out of 21 years of my life.
I learned a lot from this. the noise reduction thing is just unreal.
i live in a post-communist country too and the architecture in my neighborhood is similar so i was surprised to start paying attention to how it works and see the effects
However, this works with every development that separates the road from the inside of the block. Living in a block that was designed inthe 19th century, the built up edge does exactly the same. Even though you can rarely enjoy it as the children playing there are often louder then the roads on the other side.
Is noise reduction. not remove sound
Ban car
Planning to build some communist/post communist cities in Cities Skylines, this is very helpful, thank you!
Damn he's still hearting comments, now that's dedication!
Try out the "Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic", a city builder (or rather republic builder) set in Soviet reality. Urban and industrial planning is super important there
Communism involves a stateless, classless, moneyless society with the means of production held in common, a lack of commodity production which refers to producing things to be sold, a gift economy, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as Marx had worded it, the "withering away of state" as Engels had worded, to achieve a "Communist-Society" as Marx had called it. The nations which you most likely refer to as "Communist" are/were only Socialist and thus merely in the transitory stage between Capitalism and Communism. Socialism has done many good things improved literacy, education, healthcare, rights for minorities, rights for women, standards of living, qualities of life, caloric intake, lifespan, etc. They have also turned feudal backwaters into economic superpowers such as in the Soviet Union's case. According to a study called "Capitalism, Socialism and the Physical Quality of Life" by H. Waitzkin and S. Cereseto PhD published by the World Bank, given equal levels of economic development, Socialist nations had higher standards of living than Capitalist nations, also according to that same study, given equal levels of economic development, Socialist nations had higher levels of caloric intake than Capitalist ones, meaning contrary to popular belief, people in Socialist nations actually ate more food. That study can be found on various .gov and .org sites and has PDFs for you to download, if you want to read it. All of this information can be found from various other sources as well, physical and digital. Socialism had also turns nations into military superpowers such as in the Soviet Union's case. Planned economies are actually proven to be more efficient than markets such as in the case of Project CyberSyn where they used a computer planned economy, this was decades ago in Chile, think about what modern computers with modern computing capabilities could do! The reason for some Socialist nations having bad economies is NOT a fault of Socialism, it is often caused by economic embargoes, sanctions and other methods of destabilizing their economies caused by the United States, or the loss of some of the nations' biggest trade partners such as the DPRK(North Korea)'s economy ranking after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
I recommend the game, “Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic”
@@hoxhacat8195 get a life
Having visited both the US and many former Eastern Bloc countries, and trying to get round their respective cities on foot, I'd much rather live in any Eastern Bloc city than the automotive hellscape of Americana
Does this mean you would enjoy and prefer to live lifelong and multi-general (along with all the neighbors whom you share the building with) in an condo (most Eastern Europeans own their unit) in one of those microdistricts, or would you rather live in a leafy spacious suburb with single-family houses or even on a grand farm house if you could freely choose and money was not a factor? Would you be relaxed and totally satisfied from living in a microdistrict? Also, how would your relationship with all the neighbors who totally surround you in super close proximity cheek-by-jowl be? Would you enjoy, have great social activities frequently, and prefer to be with them, or is it something else?
@@00crashtest Living with flatmates in overcrowded privately rented housing of poor quality is already a reality for almost everyone I know of my class. More people than ever before are also living multi-generationally because they cannot afford to leave home. Contemporary capitalism has delivered this as a consequence of the logic of treating land and housing as speculative commodities.
On a personal note, I would much prefer to live in an urban area not dissimilar to Eastern Bloc microdistricts. I have in my life lived in the countryside, in a city, and in the UK equivalent of suburbs (a 'new town' constructed mostly from the 1960s, with additional estates built in the 1990s, all relatively car dependent), Honestly the city was the best experience, and yes I did have to live with flatmates, though I never had a problem with any of them across multiple different houses. In fact if money were not a factor I think I would still prefer to live in something like a housing cooperative or in a community land trust. Not necessarily cohabitating in one house/flat but having a flat in a larger communal building, which brings the benefits of communal living but also gives space for privacy, with an ownership model that excludes the possibility of using it as a speculative asset. I have also lived in a brutalist building before, and aside from the lack of air conditioning (which is not standard in housing in the UK) I can't say I have any complaints about it (and I am a fan of the style aesthetically speaking so I would quite like to live in a brutalist building again if possible). In terms of the spatial planning of the built environment, I also very much liked the fact that everywhere I've lived that was in a city I could simply walk to a shop within 2-5 minutes of my housing so I could buy food without needing to do a weekly big shop at a large supermarket. One of the things I find most irritating about living in new town suburbs is that if I want to get food, shopping is realistically a drive away. And that was especially true in the countryside. Likewise socialising in an urban area is preferable to me because the population density means you can have multiple venues, pubs, cultural activities, etc. be economically viable in a way that just isn't when there are fewer people. Plus, the higher population density in urban areas is complimented by ethnic and cultural diversity, which makes life just more interesting because there's ore going on with different people bringing different things to the table so to say, compared with the new town I presently live in which is 98% white. Similarly, public transport is generally better in cities as the population density makes more routes and higher frequency services more viable. Presently, I have to drive to work despite it only being four miles away because public transport in and between new towns built for cars is infrequent, expensive, monopolised by one company since privatisation, and services finish well before my working hours finish.
So yeah, overall living in something like an Eastern Bloc microdistrict, or an otherwise walkable urban area, would be ideal from my own perspective.
@@Randomaited Great thing that you prefer living in multi-family housing units. For people like you who don't mind living in MFH, living in condos (specific term under apartments and flats defined as owning the unit as opposed to renting it) with good neighbors is the best possible way forward by far because you get to have your own personal real estate (so you don't have to pay rent and at least still have a place to truly call yours) as your primary residence, yet you still get to have your private piece of land and backyard/garden (proudly shared with the other owners) and not have to pay for the full maintenance cost yourself because it is shared among the hundreds or thousands of owners. Also, your yard will probably have way better amenities and be way bigger than with a single-family home because everyone can afford the big piece of land and everything on it by pooling their resources. Best of all, it will be the most eco-friendly by using up the least wildlife land and having the least emissions from everyone traveling the shortest distance to do errands or visit friends and loved ones. Furthermore, you'll never feel lonely from having all the hundreds of neighbors around you. When you're feeling down, just knock on the door and at least one of them will be glad to assist you (consel you and give you friendly advice) because of somewhat random chance from there are so many of them around. Also, if you have a medical emergency and there is a publicly known shortage of ambulances, there's a good chance that someone in your huge building (even though not all have cars because they simply don't need it, combined with the secondary reason that there is not enough parking there for every working adult to have a car) will be willing to dive you to the hospital for the same reason as above. I now then hope that all countries in the EU and EFTA relax their zoning restrictions to allow high-rise condo towers to be commonplace, because it will easily solve the housing problem by simply utilizing the precious land several dozen times more efficiently. I actually hope they do the same in the English-speaking countries too, because we are facing the same problems here too, especially in the US with all the migrants from Latin America.
@@00crashtest you're spamming that same question over and over again.
13:45 Those "desolate" areas look just like any council estate here in the UK
I mean a bombed out city looks like most of the uk
This is lovely. I wonder how many of those ideas could be adopted for theoretical eco-cities of the modern era, with an entirely new planning and architecture system.
I live in eastern Europe and these places are like hell. You can be sure they are even more alienating than the American suburbs. It is a completely inhumane, psychotic, mediocre and coffin like way of existence. Breaks my heart to see these ideas copied in Asia and Africa nowadays, don't even consider it.
@@TheBombson If its run down and not taken care of it is horrible, but so is anything else. Well looked after Socialist housing that has seen regular investments - insulated fascades, windows, improved centralized gas heating, elevators etc. is wonderful to live in.
Source: South-eastern European, lived in Czechia as well
@@ChaplainDMK the ones with insulated facades in tacky colors and pvc windows? Those are even worse. As is the contemporary housing built in exactly the same typology. I'm confident the public should be extremely critical of it, this kind of architecture has more to do with concentration camps than urbanism or place-making.
@@TheBombson And why exactly are they worse?
@@TheBombson i live in bucharest in a neighborhood t built in the 70s and i can tell you it s way better than the new suburbs
Great video. I myself live in a khrushchyovka in one of the mentioned cities, and I can confirm the accuracy of everything you said (as far as I know, anyway). What the "shock transition" to capitalism in the 90s did to Polish urban planning is fucking disastrous, and we are still desperately trying to recover from it (or, in some cases, doubling down on destroying livable, green spaces). We need help.
Also, sidenote, great Polish pronunciation! You don't sound exactly like a native speaker, but it's damn near close. You obviously put effort into it, and that's just cool af, especially since non-Polish people wouldn't even notice you butcher it if you didn't care not to.
Shock transition fucked things everywhere, even in traditionally capitalist countries with slight state control like mine (Argentina) ruined a lot of lives in just a decade
So do you enjoy and prefer to live in one of those, or would you rather live in a spacious suburb with single-family houses or even on a grand farm house if you could freely choose and money was not a factor? Are you relaxed and totally satisfied from living in an osiedle? Also, how is your relationship with all the neighbors who totally surround you in super close proximity cheek-by-jowl? Do you enjoy, have great social activities frequently, and prefer to be with them, or is it something else?
@@00crashtest would I prefer to live around people, services and hobbies or alone in the middle of nowhere in a mansion secluded from people, services, job opportunities, educational institutes etc.? Prior, of course.
Ideal would be to live in a mansion (or even a small cute cabin) in the middle of the nature with an almost instant access to the city services and buzz at will. That is, however, extremely unsustainable in multiple ways (traffic induced pollution, emissions, habitat loss, etc.) and destroys the city for its inhabitants. Its a pathological utopia that doesn't work in real life, and trying to reach it brings nothing but destruction, suffering and death.
Huge reason why Americans dislike cities is because the American cities are mostly trash. That is because they're designed and built to cater to the traffic from the suburbs, not for the inhabitants of the cities. That causes up to 70% of land area being reserved for roads and parking lots (in Europe and Asia the number is often less than HALF of that), makes the cities extremely loud, dangerous, polluted and completely kills the streets. Even the individual building aesthetics in the US are often designed to look good from a car driving by.
@@00crashtest Suburbia is where dreams go to die mate. Rural living isn't all it's cracked up to be either, you're screwed if you have a heart attack and the nearest hospital is hours away.
@@Tofu_va_Bien well there used to be a time when small towns near rural area were not dead and hospitals worked, these days you're dependent to bigger urban area for healthcare...
i didn’t realize how interesting urban planning is! i’ve watched almost all the vids on your channel today. thank u 😊
I'm glad you enjoyed them! There'll be plenty more coming eventually.
Thank you for the video! A minor additional point I consider interesting is how cold war era fears of nuclear attack influenced city planning in soviet times: since sometime around late 50s regulations were enacted that required buildings to be constructed with wide enough spacing in between them so in case one of them collapsed, debris won't cause the collapse of neighboring buildings. This regulation resulted in a very wide gaps between tall structures and it is clearly visible if you compare soviet city blocks from 40s and say, 60s or 70s. I suspect something similar was in place with Polish and other eastern European cities as well. You have mentioned how concerns about nuclear war affected suburban planning in the US, so I thought it's curios to compare)
Thank you, I hadn't heard of that! I was aware of the influence on American planning (shopping malls were actually pitched to the Department of Defense as a component of nuclear defense), but it's really interesting to hear that similar concerns were at play in the Eastern Bloc.
the end was so sad :(
disappointing anime ending
I absolutely love your videos, it's such a niche mixture but very much needed. Thank you!
Well, thank you for watching them! I'm glad to see that people are interested in these topics.
Damn, seeing this and then comparing it to how cities are "planned" in the modern US (ie. put industrial/polluting parts of city near the poor and minority neighborhoods and pretend they don't exist) really got me thinking that we live in the worst timeline.
Whites are on a trajevtory of becoming a minority in America, wdym?
Planning to build up a beautiful socialist town in my country. This is exactly what I need in terms of understanding the task at hand.
I've lived in the lomonosovsky district while studying in Moscow. Never expected to see it on TH-cam.
So did you enjoy and prefer to live in one of those, or would you rather live in a spacious suburb with single-family houses or even on a grand farm house if you could freely choose and money was not a factor? Were you relaxed and totally satisfied from living in an osiedle? Also, how was your relationship with all the neighbors who totally surround you in super close proximity cheek-by-jowl? Did you enjoy, have great social activities frequently, and prefer to be with them, or is it something else?
@@00crashtest here's more things besides money:
1) Russians live around 55N, that's above even most of the Canadian population. In Russia, over half a year, the yard of the house is not useable. No pool parties, no deck, no BBQ. Instead, you have to clean snow from your house to the road.
2) Maintenance. Maintaining a private house, heating, plumbing, rubbish, et. is YOUR problem. Maintaining a flat is much easier to do, because a company is responsible for that. If the pipes burst on Christmas Eve - it's not you looking for a plumber.
3) Commute. Living in a commie block 100 m from a bakery and 200 m from a supermarket and a hair salon, 300 m from bus stop, 500 m from a school, a kindergarten and an underground station - is really different from living in a separate house. Most places you just kinda... walk to. Car? Car who and what for?
4) Secret to relaxation? Well, living at a high enough floor and a park right beneath your windows. Those soviet neighbourhoods are very green, overgrown with 30 m tall trees. They cancel noise from the ground by a lot. The noisiet neighbours are birds actually...
Neighbours in Russia mostly don't interact socially that much.
I love these videos. The style reminds me of something a teacher would play on a VHS tape in middle school except actually good.
Another excellent video. The commentary on Poland was excellent, brings a fresh new perspective on why cities like Warsaw and Wrocław are immensely manageable from a tourism and quality of life perspective. Would love to see an episode of “dictator-built” cities such as modern Bucharest or modern Athens!
So would you enjoy and prefer to live in one of those microdistricts in Poland, or would you rather live in a spacious suburb with single-family houses or even on a grand farm house if you could freely choose and money was not a factor? Would you be relaxed and totally satisfied from living in an osiedle? Also, how would your be relationship with all the neighbors who totally surround you in super close proximity cheek-by-jowl? Would you enjoy, have great social activities frequently, and prefer to be with them, or is it something else?
Fantastic video! I'm trying to experiment with this sort of planning in city-building games. Tropico, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, Cities Skylines, SimCity... I'm not very good at it though. Would love to see you do a video translating your knowledge of Soviet urban planning into some sort of simulation!
I'm a big Skylines fan, though I'm eternally bothered by how dependent zoning, and hence building construction, is on roads. It isn't really conducive to the creation of mikroraion-style developments, or for that matter, lots of other car-free urban forms.
this is an amazing video and very nice description. these designs of microrayon have been built with great practical function use and financial prudence. though there are some who criticise this , i for one found them to be very helpful and as a long term solution to the housing problem that existied in eastern europe.
I always build micro districts in cities skylines unintentionally. Or well I guess it is intentional but it feels the most natural.
Cities Skylines is actually a great example for this sort of planning! The Cims have a pretty high tolerance for walking, so as long as you place commercial and office zones, and all basic services, near your residential areas most people will just walk to everything, drastically reducing traffic.
@@EcoGecko wait really, so I can build an actual city which isn't Eucledean Zoned in City Skylines. I've got to redownload the game now.
Been making microdistricts in Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic and it's working out well.
Diky za video! As a Czech I can relate to everything mentioned in the video. I am wondering, could you make a one about 'Never built projects of Soviet Moscow'?
Ooh, that's a great topic! I assume you mean the Palace of the Soviets and such projects? I do have my next Sotsgorod video already planned out, but I would definitely make one about various unrealized projects across the USSR.
I want to thank you for sitting down and going over the books, covering important parts of how and why it happened in that way. This analysis helped me direct myself towards a better idea.
I appreaciate the effort a lot. Thank you, once again.
I'm glad you found it useful! Getting sources got this one was a real pain--thankfully the Chicago Public Library had a single copy of a really rare text I was able to access after a week of digging.
It appears to be worth the hassle, in my oppinion. Now I hope to be able to make something worthwhile myself.
Good luck with any future endeavours!
So glad I found your channel. I've been looking for good videos covering the topic of Communist architecture and planning for ages.
Glad to see a video of this kind of quality on such a niche topic. Looking forward to seeing more of this!
Thank you! I have one or two one-offs planned before the next Sotsgorod, but there'll be plenty more eventually.
Fantastic channel, watched all content in one sitting (got the covid so I'm quarantine-ing :(
As a professional musician (composer), I'm loving your soundtrack choices. Like, you actually went and used Cambini?!
Was wondering what kind of relationship you had with music, did you ever dabble in the art? Any musicians in the family? Any reason for choosing the music you do for these topics?
Again, thank you for all your work, you've earned one dedicated follower here! Wish you the best.
I merely grew up with lots of classical music around, nothing more. It helps that it's by far the easiest genre to find in high quality Creative Commons format! I deliberately use lesser-known composers, or lesser-known works of famous composers, as I find that really popular works can be distracting for viewers--hence Cambini and others. The main purpose of the music in my videos is to make the denser, academic content flow more smoothly, hence my preference for the Baroque and Romantic genres.
Nice video. Is there a reason why you concentrate on Poland so much?
Thanks! Polish is my native language, so I simply have better access to sources and information from there compared to other Eastern Bloc countries. In addition, Poland and especially Warsaw generally has higher quality Google Maps images compared to, for example, Russia, so I can better show off the built landscape in the video. However, I do recognize that the video is quite Poland-centric, and I intend to integrate a lot more examples from the former USSR in future videos.
O kurwa!!
@@EcoGecko oh you're Polish? damn, I barely noticed that because you sound so much like a native american english speaker
@@LaSanya2001 uhhhhhh
It helps that I've spent most of my life in the US!
I would also look at how much housing availability has developed in the USSR, not just at housing space.
just found this channel, great combination of interesting content, good foundation in sources and nice music selection, you earned yourself a sub!
Well researched & presented. Fascinating! I'd love to find out more about Russian & Eastern European industrial buildings, their design is so original, thank you
What an awesome and interesting video, thank you!
I really cant understand why they came to the conclusion to build those strange highrise buildings and increase the population of the microraions.
If the services arent cost-effective, why dont they reevaluate which services are needed for 3000-5000 people? Nobody needs two libraries in a dristrict with 3000 people, but this doesnt mean that its a good idea to scrap the whole project and just ruin everything with dystopian blocks and suburban malls.
After reevaluating, the not-cost-effective services (or that which are not useful for 3000 people) could be perfectly located in a "district-center", surrounded by like 8-12 microraions. From the document you've shown it's clear that this division even existed (i thnk it was called residental district or so)
There they could place the services like larger libraries, bigger schools etc, which are still easily reachable by foot, as all microraions in the district border the district center.
And the goal for carfree-cities would be completely easy to reach with that.
This center would then accommodate between 25.000 and 60.000 people, a way better scale for bigger services. This would completely reduce the need for strange suburban developments like you showed later in the video. Also this would be the pefect place for train strations to reach the center as fast as possible with a Metro-Train.
I didn't really get into the details of it, but you're right that starting in the 1970s there was an effort to more centrally consolidate services in a city center well-served by public transport. Unfortunately by then the economy was starting to strain, so the massive projects of the earlier years were never replicated.
just finding your channel now. Super, super stuff. Thank you for making these!!
I appreciate the video :) I Enjoy listening to you speak on these topics, I find them very interesting to listen to
This is absolutely amazing!!! Extremely informative, easy to follow, and enjoyable
this channel is great! need more of this sorta stuff
Awesome video man. Channel deserves way more attention and is making me think about where I want to live very seriously in terms of avoiding suburbia etc
Thank you! I grew up in a suburb myself, and my hope is that people eventually realize what a disaster the last half century of urban planning have been and aim for something better.
Не ожидал, что кто-то вообще упомянет мой родной город Кемерово! Всегда считал, что за пределами Кемеровской Области о его существовании и не догадываются.
Splendid work with this video!! 👍Superbly done!! 👍
I love your videos, keep up the excellent work!
This is a fantastic video. There is just something about the Classical Stalinist-era cityscape, however unpragmatic it may be.
I've really dreamed of a page like yours. Thanks a lot! Very good content.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the comment ☺️
Very well made, thank you for this! Would love to see more on this topic!
As it happens, I'm currently working on the next Sotsgorod! I hope to have it out around early February.
@@EcoGecko Excellent! I can't wait!
12:45 Wow! Thanks for including my beloved Chertanovo! Even though i live in the Central part of it, I still think Severnoye is awesome to live in.
So nice to hear from an actual resident! I'm glad you like it there, it looks quite nice.
Great video as always!
Great video on a fascinating subject!
This is fascinating, thank you!
Thank you for watching! If you're interested in this topic, I'll eventually be making more videos on it.
I'm looking forward to them ^_^
Gonna binge your old stuff in the mean time ;)
Fascinating. I live in one of those soviet "mikroregions" in Warsaw, Poland. In Warsaw we call them "osiedla" ("settlements"). My osiedle was built in the late 70's or early 80's and it is just insanely well planned. It's super green, there are shops and services and amazing public transportation close by, two parks, a school, a kindergarten, a library, a healthcare center, lots of space to walk. And it's true there's not much noise form the main road nearby. Cars are allowed in the smaller streets but speed limits are very strict. The only bad thing is that the apartment blocks are high (10 floors) and ugly. But they're quite far apart so you can't look into your neighboors' windows, which is a problem in newer neighboorhoods.
So do you enjoy and prefer to live in one of those, or would you rather live in a spacious suburb with single-family houses or even on a grand farm house if you could freely choose and money was not a factor? Are you relaxed and totally satisfied from living in an osiedle? Also, how is your relationship with all the neighbors who totally surround you in super close proximity cheek-by-jowl? Do you enjoy, have great social activities frequently, and prefer to be with them, or is it something else?
@@00crashtest If you put the question like that - when money is not a factor - i would definitely prefer to live in a small house with a spacious garden, somewhere on the verge of a dense forest ;) I guess most people would prefer to live close to nature.
I'm not sure about the suburbs as I can only catch a glimpse of typical American suburbs in the movies, but I imagine it may feel kind of... trapped? You only have your yard, and you need a car to go anywhere, and there is not much countryside-like nature around to compensate for it. But maybe I'm wrong.
The soviet osiedle is not perfect, it has many downsides. I just wanted to say that this kind of urban neighborhood is not so depressing and post-apo as it is usually portrayed in popculture :) It is well thought out and living here is very comfortable.
I admit I'm not totally relaxed here because people really live packed in a block of flats like sardines in a can and we sometimes hear each other's activities through the walls :/ If I were to build an osiedle today, I would make all the apartments completely sound proof. But it still wouldn't make all the stress from living so close to other people disappear. I know some of my closest neighbors by name, but tbh I choose to not have much intractions with them because I'm not a very social person, and that's ok too. But if I ever need to borrow anything, they are always willing to help ;) But some people get very close and become friends with their neighbors.
All in all, I'd prefer to live in a detached house in the countryside because of the quiet and nature, but I wouldn't trade the osiedle for it because of the proximity to everything and how much time it saves.
@@myczycz Okay, I see that you really like your osiedle. Enjoy your osiedle then and have an excellent time in it!
@@00crashtest Thank you! Yes, I like it even though it has many downsizes.
@@myczycz But since you've lived in your condo flat for so long (presumably your whole life), wouldn't you have totally gotten used to all the noise and other negative interactions from living packed together so tight and not even notice it (be aware that the negative interactions exist) anymore, meaning that you don't even have stress in the slightest bit anymore? That's because there is actually no physical stress even in the tiniest bit on the body from living in a small condo unit in a high-rise with thousands of other people. It is only that stress is a product purely from psychology in that case because the surroundings are unnatural to the body and initially overwhelm the brain.
Very interesting!
Just found your channel from the Workers and resources Soviet republic subreddit
I love that game! Once I get through my current video backlog it would be a lot of fun to apply the concepts from this video to create a city in that game.
I live in Wierzbno, Eco Gecko twisted the name a little lol. I'd love to live in MDM, a neighbourhood built in the earlier style, but I really like it here.
It's true that the interior of the mikrorejon is quiet an peaceful, but my apartment windows go out towards the big street with a tram line. Trams are great, but pretty loud.
Yes, I'm sorry about the name! For some reason I was persistently reading it as "Wiebrzno" and didn't notice until it was too late. Glad to hear from an actual resident!
@@EcoGecko you were great at pronouncing Polish names in general though, hats off to you!
Very interesting topic for video, thumbs up.
Very interesting video. Videos like this make me more and more interested in urban planning. You earned a new sub today!
Thank you and welcome! My goal has been to get more people excited about urban planning, so I'm glad to see it's working :)
Brilliant video as always!! :D
Great video, learned a lot! Thanks
This was so, so good; fastest subscribe for me ever. Can’t wait for the next one : ]
Do you have a list of sources or recommended reading on the topic?
You'll be pleased to know that the next Sotsgorod is currently in production!
Regarding sources, the Pallot book I cite is probably the best source about Soviet planning at the highest level, with detailed description of the history, principles, and bureaucratic organization of urban planning in the USSR. While the book is a survey of Soviet planning in general (mainly their economic planning), it contains several thorough chapters on how cities were designed and managed. Unfortunately it's very difficult to track down a copy these days.
I've also been reading "Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era", which focuses on architecture but has a lot of good information about city planning as well, especially outside the Soviet Union. That's a more recent book and probably easier to track down. If you're looking for something more micro-level, I recommend "Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town" by anthropologist Kinga Pozniak, which a more qualitative work based on interviews of residents of a large planned town built during Poland's communist era.
Unfortunately there aren't many comprehensive surveys of Soviet urban planning itself that I'm aware of, at least in English. It's really too bad, because there's a lot we could learn from it: Soviet urban planning in, say, the 50s was just miles better than any other major urban scheme anywhere else in the world at the time. Soviet housing has a pretty drab reputation (not entirely undeserved, the quality of the actual building construction was typically quite poor), but the urban planning has held up very well. The anthropologist Pozniak even notes that when interviewing residents of 50s-era Soviet blocks, today's residents favorably compare the design of their neighborhood to post-Soviet developments.
@@EcoGecko Wow, thank you for the quick and informative response Comrade; really getting those brownie points from me. Will look into those sources as I found your video fascinating.
Keep up the good work and catch you in the next video
Este vídeo me traz saudades do que não vivi... Great video !
"We'll also be making copious use of Russian and Polish newsreels from the communist era", you really know how to hook me right from the start
Mikrorayons are what we should pursue in a new eco socialist society
Dude I love your videos. Please keep making this stuff. It reminds me of donoteat1, another top notch TH-cam channel for anyone else looking for similar content.
"Bunny boxes" as are somehow called this tall prefabricated buildings might not be the most aestethic way of living but renovation to make these neighbour more pleasant require way less resources and time then american suburbs do. Lots of these buildings were modernised (usually main goal is lowerinw heat looses with little bit of colour changes) and their maintance is also easier.
Lost of post-soviet new appartmen building works in similiar way, usually just with some minor (but welcome) desing changes.
I had put off watching this video for so long. This is some great stuff and I will prolly read the book you cite.
Really good video. There seems to be a common theme with urban planning in much of the world, that being that there are good designers, but bad governments. It seems like there were a lot of good socialists in the USSR's urban planning groups, though later on as you mentioned they were told to centralise most city services in new developments despite so-called '15 minute neighbourhoods' being generally preferable.
If I'm interpreting correctly, urban planning standards seemed to fall over time, with constructions being more depressing and utilitarian, and more malls being constructed in place of local stores. I think this could have been a very early warning sign of the collapse of the USSR, or perhaps a sign that the government was becoming less interested in someday achieving socialism. Someone's neighbourhood and built environment are a key piece of their material conditions. I doubt the collapse to neo-liberalism came out of nowhere, I think the decline in urban planning standards was part of a quiet transition towards it.
The reason was generaly, a cost and efficiency (and death of Stalin). So, e.g: Nowa Huta first built in 50's was made from bricks. But cost was huge and from 60's they started building from prefabricated concrete elements. Was cheaper, faster, they could build higher and accommodate more people- more people needs malls :) In Poland it's stops around 90's but in Russia trend it's pretty much same as it was.(update: in Russia is even worse it was)
That idea of having all services closer to people also made monitoring them much easier as people did not move around as much. Of course how well it was made reality varied, but Soviet city design had strangely brutal humanity in it.
Just found your channel, great video!
Thank you for watching! I hope to add one more to this series before the year ends.
Very nice!! I love this video. more
This is excellent! When can we expect a part 2?
Thank you!
Creating my last series all in a row burned me out a bit, so I'm alternating Sotsgorod episodes with one-off videos on other topics. This means that the next Sotsgorod probably won't be for another 2-3 months, but I have plenty planned after that!
Took an electric scooter throughout Moscow, unbelievable urban live in this micro districts. I was amazed!! Living units are super tiny though, i couldn't adapt
This is pretty good video
Oh hey who would have guessed history and everyday life is so much more complex outside of the political propaganda! All cheek aside, good video man
I have now watched all your videos. I need more 😿.
They're on their way! Though the next one won't be here for another month or so.
@@EcoGecko Please take your time :). As a scientist I enjoy that you are citing actual academic publications in these videos, and I know by experience that reading dense scientific text takes patience.
Apart from the quality of the content, you have perfectly nailed down the Polish pronunciation sir! Respect! :)
I would hope so, it's my native language after all! Though I didn't realize until long after releasing the video that I'd been incorrectly reading "Wierzbno" as "Wiebrzno" for the entire production period.
Nice keep good work 👍
I really want to see a part 2 to this video
Part 2 and many more are certainly coming, though it'll be a while before I get to them.
11:39 heeeeyy my family is from wierzbno!! i've been there quite a lot, it's very nice!
i would say there are suburbs around warsaw though, my aunt lives in them and they have big fences going all the way around the houses with not much walkability (more biodiversity of plants compared to the US standard of just grass, tho!)
This was an amazing and informative video. Now I have to add Poland to my list of countries to visit.
I love how you maintain at least a very neutral view of socialism
Don't want to rush you haha, but do you know when we could expect your next upload? Really loved your videos and I'm just wondering thanks.
Hi London! I'm definitely way behind schedule, but I'm currently working on a new video, and hope to have it out within a month. The current video is a one-off on another topic, but will be followed by another Sotsgorod.
Eco Gecko thanks sounds great, any hints about what the next videos going to be on?
@@l0ndon429 We'll be talking about how an Austrian named Victor Gruenbaum accidentally transformed post-industrial American urban planning in the exactly opposite way of how he intended.
@@EcoGecko ooh sounds great thanks, cant wait!
This was so well done, instasubscribe
Very great and instructive video!!👏👏👏
I'd like to see the case of other european countries (like Spain, as I suggested in the last video, which is quite similar to soviet neighbourhoods).
BTW, I don't know what's the point of 0:22. Are you referring to ecological disasters like Chernobyl or Aral sea drought or the concept of industry as a whole?
Off-topic PD: We've got a minimum vital income due to COVID-19 that could be permanent (Yey?)
Regarding the "disastrous projects" comment, I do eventually want to talk about the general environmental disaster that was Soviet industrialization, especially in Siberia and Central Asia (with the Aral Sea matter being the most dramatic).
Congratulations on the income! It's good to see that some people are holding up alright.
Emmm... I found this tweet of an italian urban planner. I guess is worth to check out to prepare future content...
twitter.com/ChittiMarco/status/1269400050754519040
You frame prefabrication as a cost cutting measure, but I would say it's an important and useful innovation.
I'll answer both of your comments at once here. To be honest, the shift to prefabrication is something I'm less familiar with--it unfortunately is not addressed in any of the sources I have access to. That said, I have since found a book I believe is relevant, and hopefully in the next year I'll have a chance to discuss prefabrication and Soviet housing in in general in much more detail. Prefabrication used to be popular in the US (the famous Sears homes) and has made a minor comeback in the last several years, so it would be an interesting topic to address more generally.
Regarding housing availability, I seem to recall some statistics from "Planning in the Soviet Union" that suggested that per capita housing unit construction in the USSR was below the rate in the US in the same period, though I'd have to investigate that further.
@@EcoGecko indeed, I think this channel B1M did some videos on prefabrication. And now that you mention them, I do remember some internet post those sears homes, I do believe they were for single family homes or such.
Very cool
Kewl. How did urban planning fit in with the 5 year central plans?
Dr. Pallot notes in her book that there was often a lot of tension between the 5-year economic plans and urban planning more broadly, since effective urban plans typically had to be planned and conformed to over several decades rather than five-year periods. The short-termism of 5-year-plans sometimes undermined longer-term urban planning goals, for example by encouraging the haphazard placement of industry to meet economic goals at the expense of the built environment, or the mass production of housing without regard for the quality of the building itself or the organization of the urban pattern more broadly. The story of Soviet urban planning in general is one of multiple, competing, overlapping agencies and bureaucracies fighting over resources and prioritization, often leading to substandard results in terms of urban and housing quality.
I love how green Soviet cities are.😊😊😍😍
What is the second to last building?
The very science fiction looking one of interlocked T's with open vertical spaces?
Thank you
It's the ministry of highways in Tbilisi, Georgia. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet bloc architects sort of went wild and came up with buildings that look strangely futuristic to this day.
@@shatterquartz Thank you!
:) Absolutely wonderful videos but could you raise the volume next time? Even at full volume it’s a little hard to hear.
Thank you, and thanks for letting me know about the volume! I'll see about turning it up in future videos.
Eco Gecko thanks man I really appreciate it :) also I love your videos on suburban sprawl and it’s environmental impacts. Hope you can make some more videos like that in the future, and again thank you!
@@bugluver Yes absolutely, there will (eventually) be more Suburban Wasteland videos! I'm working on some other projects now, but once those are done I'll get back on it.
Apartments on the loud side of the microdistricts be like "sucks to suck".
Seriously tho, they are valued much less, and typically the poors have windows to the outside of a microdistrict and richer people enjoy the quiet greenery.
Yes, that's certainly true! It's not just cars too--I recall the older trams in Warsaw being extremely loud. I can only hope that this problem because less of a concern as cities reprioritize cars in the future.
electric cars are quieter because they don't have an engine.
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa yes and no...
Certainly, electric cars would be a significant improvement. However, they still cause noise when in large numbers. Moreover, for example where I live, cars aren't the biggest source of noise pollution anyway. It's streetcars and busses and trains, and those will be loud no matter what.
That feels logical however that won't be the case because most of the noise modern ICE cars produce while in motion is actually tire noise and not engine noise.
And I thought only donoteat makes this sort of videos/podcast
If you like this, you should also check out honker3d!
@@EcoGecko thanks for the rec. youtube algorithm is really disappointing as this is the first time I heard of that channel.
The Greater Moscow Project reminds me so much of the Venus Project. I wonder if they're related?
I think they're related insofar as they are both inspired by the Garden City movement, which advocated for suburbanization in the form of dense, green satellite towns outside of major cities.
That said, look up the Italian city of Palmanova on Google Maps--the idea of a dense, round, utopian planned city goes back way further than the Industrial Revolution.
Oh dear, you mentioned "Soviet". The trolls are gonna love this one.
greetings from the soviet utopian city of Chelyabinsk !
Poor city . Because China Steel more Cheap
I live in a 1300 square foot condo or 120 square meters. How did the largest communist flat or condo compare in terms of square feet or meters?
Most where around 30-60 square meters
There was some variance based on the size of family, but typical apartments in a Khrushchyovka ranged from about 300 to 600 square feet. It's worth noting that these blocks often came with communal facilities for cooking and the like, so the actual "living space" you had was a bit bigger than those numbers sound, since you didn't necessarily need room for a kitchen.
Party elites and other important individuals did get somewhat larger apartments, but not especially massive ones (one source cites an example "elite" apartment as being around 800 square feet, including a private kitchen and bathroom). However, these apartments were typically built to a much higher standard of quality than normal apartments, in addition to being more centrally located in the city. Soviet housing stock was generally pretty poorly constructed, to the point where even state media would occasionally poke fun at poor workmanship in new buildings. As a result, having a well-constructed apartment was often more of a privilege than having a large one.
Alongside all this, you do have to keep in mind that these blocks generally had superior outdoor amenities compared to modern American developments--you just can't beat being within walking distance of so many things, and having a quiet, enclosed park just outside your doorstep. Having lived both in American suburbs and (for a brief time) in a (renovated and updated) socialist block, the amenities of the latter do somewhat make up for the cramped space inside the home itself.
I m a fan of Google maps and I can say that this microdistrict type of urban planning is still in use in Russia and Ukraine. You can easily find newly built or under construction buildings that just "continue" from the previously built ones. You should make a video about Yugoslav urban planning. Not to brag but we were even more ahead of time in both ideas and design. We were our own socialist branch, separate from USSR and it's satellites.
Yugoslavia is an interesting point, I don't know much about the urban planning there and would definitely need to read up about it. I'll certainly talk about it in a future video if I find a good source.
Is there a reason so many of the examples are in Poland?
Yes, three reasons. First of all, Warsaw especially is an ideal example of Soviet planning, since it was largely leveled during the war and was rebuilt almost entirely from scratch afterwards. You can even see the different "waves" of socialist planning as you move further from the core--first the socialist realism in the central areas, then the Khrushchyovkas further out, and then the tall blocks on the periphery. This makes Warsaw especially an excellent case study. Poland was also the largest and wealthiest of the Soviet satellite states, so there are more examples of "ideal" Soviet planning there than anywhere else outside of the USSR.
Which brings me to the second reason: Google Maps generally has higher resolution images and satellite views of Polish cities than those in the former USSR, which allows me to better represent examples in the video.
Finally, Polish happens to be my native language, so I simply have better access to sources and materials from there than in other Eastern Bloc nations. That said, I do recognize that this video is especially Poland-centric, and plan to integrate more diversity in future videos in this series.
Time to boot up Workers and Resources...
While I would argue these aren't perfect they are by and large conceptually places I would want to live. Granted this is because i can't drive so bringing the things i needto within walking distance is important. However there is also the fact that building 'car first and only' type cities induces demand which clogs roadways and makes them unsafe for anyone *not* in a car, which induces more car centric building because 'you can't get around there without a car as is what's the point in doing it any other way' and on and on.
So I personally love the concept. I know nothing of the exicution, but also think combined with a robust transit system, build with bikeability in mind, and its theoretically going to be a place that is ironically better for cars, because you have far fewer of them out and about, which makes it far better for those that *need* to be in a car for htier errends.
"Communist era"
Communism involves a stateless, classless, moneyless society with the means of production held in common, a lack of commodity production which refers to producing things to be sold, a gift economy, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" as Marx had worded it, the "withering away of state" as Engels had worded, to achieve a "Communist-Society" as Marx had called it. The nations which you most likely refer to as "Communist" are/were only Socialist and thus merely in the transitory stage between Capitalism and Communism. Socialism has done many good things improved literacy, education, healthcare, rights for minorities, rights for women, standards of living, qualities of life, caloric intake, lifespan, etc. They have also turned feudal backwaters into economic superpowers such as in the Soviet Union's case. According to a study called "Capitalism, Socialism and the Physical Quality of Life" by H. Waitzkin and S. Cereseto PhD published by the World Bank, given equal levels of economic development, Socialist nations had higher standards of living than Capitalist nations, also according to that same study, given equal levels of economic development, Socialist nations had higher levels of caloric intake than Capitalist ones, meaning contrary to popular belief, people in Socialist nations actually ate more food. That study can be found on various .gov and .org sites and has PDFs for you to download, if you want to read it. All of this information can be found from various other sources as well, physical and digital. Socialism had also turns nations into military superpowers such as in the Soviet Union's case. Planned economies are actually proven to be more efficient than markets such as in the case of Project CyberSyn where they used a computer planned economy, this was decades ago in Chile, think about what modern computers with modern computing capabilities could do! The reason for some Socialist nations having bad economies is NOT a fault of Socialism, it is often caused by economic embargoes, sanctions and other methods of destabilizing their economies caused by the United States, or the loss of some of the nations' biggest trade partners such as the DPRK(North Korea)'s economy ranking after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Communism isn't somebody's dream coming to fruition, it's the inevitable historical stage and a result of the resolution of class antagonisms and conflicts within society, you don't understand it, if you were born in Vietnam for example, you probably would because they teach you dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism from Kindergarten to secondary school. You see, the state only exists as a result of class antagonisms and conflicts and serves whichever class wields political power, under capitalism, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois class do, under socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat (working class), the workers do. All class society is dictatorship, capitalism is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not dictatorships within the absolute, liberal sense, but class dictatorships. The class that holds political power serves their interests and represses the opposing classes, Stalin explained it best, read some theory lib: "Hence the three main aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
1) The utilisation of the rule of the proletariat for the suppression of the exploiters, for the defence of the country, for the consolidation of the ties with the proletarians of other lands, and for the development and victory of the revolution in all countries.
2) The utilisation of the rule of the proletariat in order to detach the labouring and exploited masses once and for all from the bourgeoisie, to consolidate the alliance of the proletariat with these masses, to draw these masses into the work of socialist construction, and to ensure the state leadership of these masses by the proletariat.
3) The utilisation of the rule of the proletariat for the organisation of socialism, for the abolition of classes, for the transition to a society without classes, to a socialist society.
The proletarian dictatorship is a combination of all these three aspects. No single one of these aspects can be advanced as the sole characteristic feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the other hand, in the circumstances of capitalist encirclement, the absence of even one of these features is sufficient for the dictatorship of the proletariat to cease being a dictatorship. Therefore, not one of these three aspects can be omitted without running the risk of distorting the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only all these three aspects taken together give us the complete and finished concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
low production = low co2
WOW! Hold on a sec! I had no idea a Soviet architect influenced Bauhaus&Le Corbusier
Your video would greatly benefit from good compression on the audio, I could barely hear it.
So 100 years ago the Soviets already had a better understanding of urban planning than Americans do now? Turns out space travel wasn't the only thing they were better at.
wow
Jeez, these old microdistricts certainly seem fine compared with modern ones on the outskirts of large Russian cities, full with 30-storey houses, usually no trees, bad roads and not enough hospitals/schools/other infrastructure
I guess the real question, is how to incorporate that model, in to other cities......worldwide....
Kinda wanna see what the living conditions and prices are in those compared to places like the US.
I`m not sure about other coutries, but in russia all these apartments were free for inhabitants and after the collapse of the USSR were privatised by these inhabitants also without payment. Because of this only small percent of russians rent apartments, and almost nobody considers renting a permament way of living. It is slowly changing in big and growing cities, where young people migrate for better education and jobs.
@@sodinc that sounds good. I live in Latin America and renting is too expensive... and forget about buying a house here if you are working class it just doesn't happen
@@ksvba96-36 for my generation (20-30 years old) in Moscow it is the same now. 35 and older had it better
@@sodinc Im the same generation... im 25 years old, this generation is fucked up everywhere you go
@@ksvba96-36 basically yes, and it probably will be worse for the next one.
What a time to be alive!
Oh boy I get it add another way to pronounce Kamchatka
as an avid Risk player I'm up to about 7 now.