Urban Planning for Leftists?

[RadioRaheem84]

Considering the extensive economic, social and urban planning the Soviets undertook, or any major ML country of the 20th century, are there any books on urban or economic planning that they left behind?

I would really like to know how leftists built cities.

Thanks.

[Jose Gracchus]

Allow the major industrial ministries to provide the housing for 'their' works, attached to each enterprise, was the Soviets' brilliance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't know if that's "brilliance" or buffoonery.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

I would really like to know how leftists built cities.
Thanks.
You might want to start with Eve Blau's The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919-1934, which has a superb analysis of the context of Socialist planning in Vienna. Red Vienna's urban planning was widely admired and copied - including contacts with Russia.

In general, though, you might investigate any number of progressive urban planning movements in Germany and elsewhere, the line between Communist and Progressive housing theories and practices is a very blurred one. Even a major "traditional" architect like Adolf Loos was involved in low-cost housing projects, and there's a continuity between Corbusier's urban planning and the Soviet's, viz the CIAM group, which continued Corbu's philosophy. Hannes Meyer, director of the Bauhaus and a founder of CIAM, was a Marxist and an urban planner, and a collaborator with El Lissitzky, the great Russian designer. Meyer spent some time in Russia, as did Julius Tandler, a major figure in community health planning. Both left in the mid-30s.

Hope this answers your question.

[not your usual suspect]

I don't know specific works. But a general leftist approach to urban planing is going to include such things as: encouraging the mixing of people from different areas (de-ghettoizing); having green spaces; making spaces "safe" (though how is a different question); and making non-car means of transport (e.g. bike, bus, train, walk) easy to use and safe.

[heirofstalin]

leftist urban planning is mostly create more compact inner city areas and rare suburbs, with more collective means of transport, and more basic and equal architecture.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

From another thread on the breakdown of the divide between the city and countrysid (http://www.revleft.com/vb/fusion-town-and-t157185/index.html?p=2164613)e:

It should also be noted that a number of ideas around this question sprung up in the initial period after the October Revolution.

The idea of garden cities, originally inspired by the socialistic Novel "Looking Backward" gained some support. Linear cities too. And constructivism, which was also interested in city planning, arose.

Magnitogorsk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitogorsk) was originally supposed to be constructed as a linear city.

The furthest attempt to break down the divide between city and country came later. The constructivist architect Mikhail Okhitovich argued for something called "disurbia," in which series of connected single-unit dwellings would be spread over large areas. The constructivists were basically driven out of public life as the revolution degenerated. (Okhitovich was kicked out of the party, rejoined, and was kicked out again. "Disurbia" was rejected, the journal of the Organization of Contemporary Architects was criticized by the politburo and then closed after it backed disurbia, and Okhitovich was imprisoned and then killed after he criticized the rising nationalist tide and cult of personality around Stalin. "Socialist realism" and classicism took over.).

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_urban_planning_ideologies_of_the_1920s):

"The disurbanist school was led by the theorists M. Okhitovich and M. Ginsberg. In contrast to the urbanists, the disurbanists saw the achievement of the Marxist goal of the dissolution of the difference between town and country as the total abolition of the traditional concept of the town. They proposed that settlement be dispersed across the whole of the Soviet Union in the form of continuous ribbon developments. Individual dwellings would be distributed along roads in natural and rural surroundings, but within easy reach of communal dining and recreation amenities. Employment centres would be located at road junctions, with bus services transporting workers from their houses. Whilst individual living space would be private, the disurbanists proposed a communal lifestyle similar to that proposed by the urbanists.

"Proposals put forward by the disurbanists included Okhitovich’s 1930 plan for Magnitigorsk which consisted of eight 25km long ribbons converging on a metallurgical plant. Ginsberg imagined that Moscow’s population be emptied and resettled in long linear zones of communal houses through forests, serviced by bus stations and zones of recreation and service amenities at regular intervals."

* * *

I should also probably mention the "social condenser," which was promoted by the constructivists. The idea was to contribute to the break down in divisions and hierarchies with the use of architecture... so that, for example, two different kinds of work spaces (maybe a train office and a radio station) would overlap, causing people to interact instead of being walled away in specialized areas... or public spaces would be placed in a way to draw in people from all walks of life.

* * *

Some books you may be interested in include:

Building the Revolution: Architecture and Art in Russia 1915-1935

Frederic Chaubin: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

Plans, Pragmatism and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities

Soviet City: Ideal and Reality

You should be able to find them all fairly easily.