Conflicts. Socialist mass housing

CONFLICTS. SOCIALIST MASS HOUSINGShrinking population in socialist mass housing areas in Eastern Europe by adapting Japanese methods and Asian conditions.

Andrius Ropolas Tokyo / Brussels

2014

Master Dissertation Project

Conflicts. Socialist mass housing

Andrius Ropolas

Supervisors Ohno Hidetoshi / Bruno Peeters

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Architecture

International Master of Science in Architecture, Campus: Brussels /

The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences Ohno Lab

2014

Funded by the AUSMIP grant ausmip.org

[email protected] / andrius.ropolas.eu

4 A. Ropolas / Conflicts. Socialist mass housing (2014)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all people who helped during this research. First of all professor Hidetoshi Ohno for his ad-vises and tolerance when I was occupying his precious time. Bruno Peeters for his calming tone and in depth responses from Brussels. Friends from Bulgaria, Poland, Romania who helped me understand better the common issues of social-ist housing areas in Eastern Europe. Friends from Korea, China and Japan who helped me to orientate myself through Asian context. My sister who was my eyes in a local context.

And all others who helped by having shorther or longer dicussions about the research.

A. Ropolas / Conflicts. Socialist mass housing (2014) 5



ABSTRACT

Shrinking population is a rarely discussed issue in Eastern Europe. However the statistics reveal that this region is one of the main hot spots for shrinkage. This paper suggests that socialist mass housing areas in smaller Eastern European cit-ies will be greatly affected by shrinkage. As a way to find strategies and define a mindset it is proposed to look at a specific urban conditions in Asia as a result of rapid urbanization, which was also the driving force behind socialist mass hous-ing areas. The experience of working with shrinkage in Japan is greatly support-ing the paper.

The complexity of shrinkage and specific socialist heritage issues are discussed through the spatial conflicts of socialist mass housing areas. Main identified conflicts are between private and public, city and countryside, past and present. This approach on conflicts tries to bypass huge amount of existing problems and to tackle directly their reasons. The goal is to find an answer if we need to solve these conflicts and how it can be done.

The paper concludes with main points on how to rebalance existing spatial conflicts. The key points are - privatization of vast green spaces, creation of fiber structures and reconfiguration of spatial characters of the areas. Paper suggests that it is not necessary to solve spatial conflicts, but instead - rebalance them. This should start a chain reaction and problems would solve themselves.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4

ABSTRACT 7

INTRODUCTION 11

SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING LINK WITH ASIAN MASS HOUSING 12

BACKGROUND OF SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING

AREAS AND ALTERNTIVES IN ASIA 19

URBANIZATION OF THE SOVIET UNION 20The roots - Constructivism 20Prefab mass housing units – khrushchevki 24Urban surfaces – micro-districts 28

CONDITIONS IN ASIA 32Tokyo - land readjustment 32Hong Kong - green contrast 34Seoul - gated communities 36Shenzhen - green boundaries 38

SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE

AND LEARNING FROM SHRINKING JAPAN 43

COMMON DENOMINATORS IN EASTERN EUROPE 44

CONSEQUENCES OF SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE 50

LEARNING FROM SHRINKING JAPAN 52Fibercity 52

CONFLICTS IN SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE 54

The complexity 541. Conflict between private and public 562. Conflict between past and present 583. Conflict between city and countryside 60

POSITIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING 62


SOLVING CONFLICTS IN

SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING AREAS 65

DO WE NEED TO SOLVE CONFLICTS IN SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING AREAS? 66

BORDERS 67

EDITING FIBERS 68Fibers 68Private and public 70City and countryside 72Past and present 74

LIMITATIONS 76

CONCLUSIONS 79

IN SEARCH FOR THE DIAGRAM OF EVERYTHING 80

POST-SOCIALIST FIBERCITY 81

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS 82

BIBLIOGRAPHY 86

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 89


Figure 1. Shrinking cities. Based on Atlas of Shrinking Cities


INTRODUCTION

First part presents overall issues and goals of the research. It introduces a global shrinkage issue, tendencies, the hotspots and the relevance of socialist mass housing areas.


“Industrialization did not only cause fast economic and urban growth, it also enabled unprecedented process of shrinkage” (Rieniets, 2011)

FOCUS OF THE RESEARCH

This research will try find common critical points for socialist mass housing areas in Eastern Europe in the

time of shrinkage. They should give theoretical mindset for practical actions which would be based on interpretation of Asian conditions and solutions. The theoretical and practical background of the Ohno Lab studies at The University of Tokyo on Fibercity will be used as a possible starting point for solutions.

The research is focusing primarily on conditions of second biggest (or comparable size and importance) cities of the Eastern European countries. Processes happening in capi-tals might be very different, shrinkage might be much small-er or even not meaningful and this research does not try to cover these situations. Although the goal is to find common solutions and research generic aspect of the socialist mass housing areas. A specific Dainava mass housing area from Kaunas, Lithuania will be used to illustrate theoretical find-ings. This area will be later used as a project design case to test practical solutions. This specific area was chosen as an example which could represent processes in most of Eastern Europe the best based on statistical reasons:

• Shrinkage in Lithuania (-19,61%) next 50 years is very close to an average of Eastern Europe (-21,36%) (United Nations, 2012).

• Second biggest city of Lithuania, Kaunas is losing its population (-23% during 2001-2013 period) (Statistics Lithuania, 2013).

• Dainava mass housing area is one of the first to be built in Kaunas (first constructions dating back to 1963) with biggest number of elderly (Kauno planas, 2013) and with highest number of apartments currently for sale per resident compared with all mass housing areas in the city (based on aruodas.lt public listings).

In the end, there is no goal to solve all problems of the shrinking cities in Eastern Europe, but focus on very im-portant generic parts of the cities and few very specific key issues.

GLOBAL SITUATION

According to United Nations world population will increase by 43,93% in 2060 compared with 2010, almost from 7 bil-lion to 10 billion (United Nations, 2012). This simple num-ber tells that we will need to build more, use more resourc-es. However it is not quite true. When looking at particular regions in more detail, we can notice that growth is not spread equally throughout the world and some regions will experience shrinkage. This means that new problems might occur by keeping existing infrastructure to be efficient and managing living environment to be pleasant and attractive. Japan is one of the countries where population will shrink the most – 19.51% comparing 2060 and 2010 data (United Nations, 2012).

Media often focus on Japan while talking about shrink-age, however there is a bigger region in a world which faces shrinkage at similar speed – that is Eastern Europe. Shrink-age in Eastern Europe is not an issue of few countries, but all region. This gives an idea that there must some common points among all countries. A total population of this region climbs over 328 million people (United Nations, 2012) and with decrease of -21.63% during next 50 years (United Nations, 2012) this would mean a loss of over 70 million people. A number equal to a total population of Poland, Bal-tic States, Czech Republic, Serbia and Bulgaria combined.

Looking historically this region was a part of Eastern Bloc where development ant politics were strictly controlled and most things were based on standardization. Over half of population in Eastern Europe lives in a socialist mass hous-ing areas (Stanilov, 2007, p. 181) built during Soviet regime. Naturally, shrinkage will greatly affect these areas. Of course, as growing number of total population in the world does not reveal the full story and we must look closer to find shrinkage, same applies to Eastern European cities.

Looking at the future it is easy to notice that capitals in the region can maintain population by attracting people from the regions, however it is more difficult situation for smaller cities. Particularly in the case of Lithuania we can notice that population of capital Vilnius in years 2001-2013 lost only 3% of population, however second biggest city Kaunas lost 23% during same period, while national loss was 15%


Figure 2. A map of population change in Europe during 2010-2060 period. Based on Eurostat data. Pluses represent countries growing more than 10%Lines represent countries between -10% decline and 10% growthMinuses represent countries shrinking more than -10% percentBlack solid line marks countries which were a part of Eastern Bloc


(Statistics Lithuania, 2013). That is why exploring second biggest cities, like Kaunas, can give better understanding and more useful answers to shrinkage in Eastern Europe. Similar situations can be found in all Eastern Europe region, meaning that it should be possible to find common answers to common issues.

SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING LINK WITH ASIAN MASS HOUSING

Socialist mass housing ideas in Eastern Europe were copied by Soviet government from Western European

examples (Listova, 2009), but they had completely differ-ent impact and purpose. Mass housing developments (with more than 2500 units) in Western Europe never were a big trend and now they takes only 3-7 percent of the market, as compared to Eastern Europe where this number jumps to 40-50 percent and where over half of population live (Stanilov, 2007, p. 181). In Western Europe these areas were seen as areas for less successful part of population, where in Eastern Europe they were built as a houses for masses. They did not focus on particular part of society as everybody had to be equal under communist ideology. Even today when mass housing areas in Western Europe are seen as prob-lematic places, as possible ghettos for immigrants while picture in Eastern Europe is completely different. Due to low number of immigrants, socialist areas house most of the population in Eastern Europe without any particular social order. However it is worth noting that it is slowly changing and residents in those areas are becoming less wealthy and misbalance starts to appear.

In Asia housing areas have completely different history than in Eastern Europe. They also often have some specific development differences due to specific contexts. However, like in Eastern Europe, mass housing areas in Asia are seen as a normal part of society where people live without any specific social status. In some places, like Hong Kong it is difficult to imagine a life not in an apartment building as they are the only possibility for Hong Kong to sustain its population. Rapidly growing population in Asia was and in some parts still is the main factor for building vast apart-ment housing areas. Same reasons were in Soviet Union where urban population started growing immensely in the

beginning of 20 century. Although Soviet Union started their housing experiments in early 20 century, the biggest construction boom in Soviet Union came later to the middle of the century. In Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong con-struction boom started around the same time as in Soviet Union. And, interestingly, the decline of rapid population growth, as in Soviet Union, in South Korea and Japan came at the same time too – around 1990.

China, on the other hand, started growing a little bit later. As China had close political and ideological ties to Soviet Union, they applied some already tested methods from Soviet Union to their planning system (Bruton et al., 2005, p. 229). However it is important to notice that soon China started adapting those methods and created new conditions. This evolution can be found by exploring the urban history of Shenzhen.

Another interesting relation is purely visual. The visual similarity of the housing blocks in Seoul and post-socialist countries is striking. Two completely different economic and political systems around the same time produced visually very similar solutions.

Similar thing can be noted while talking about repetitive-ness of housing blocks in Hong Kong. The socialist mass housing features like copy-pasted balconies, windows, build-ings are brought to a level where it becomes a dominant fea-ture of city landscape, cannot be unnoticed in Hong Kong. Here, again in different political and economic system, the continuous repetitiveness has similar visual importance in both natural and urban landscapes.

It is worth understanding background of housing block de-velopments in Asia more, as they can reveal some meanings and solutions for socialist mass housing areas in Eastern Europe. Undoubtedly, after further research it will be pos-sible to see socialist mass housing areas in Eastern Europe in different, wider perspective.


Figure 3. Construction of Capsule Tower. Kisho Kurokawa visited Soviet Union to find out more about prefabricated construction.

Figure 4. A construction of a typical socialist apartment. Picture by Stan Wayman, 1963.

Figure 5. Seoul Figure 6. Shenzhen Figure 7. Moscow


Population projectionsgeo\time 2010 2060 ChangeSerbia 9.647.000 6.297.000 -34,73%Ukraine 46.050.000 30.859.000 -32,99%Belarus 9.491.000 6.832.000 -28,02%Bulgaria 7.563.710 5.531.318 -26,87%Latvia 2.248.374 1.671.729 -25,65%Georgia 4.389.000 3.417.000 -22,15%Eastern Europe 296.183.000 232.927.000 -21,36%Russia 143.618.000 115.023.000 -19,91%Lithuania 3.329.039 2.676.297 -19,61%Japan 127.353.000 102.507.000 -19,51%Romania 21.462.186 17.308.201 -19,35%Germany 81.742.884 66.360.154 -18,82%Poland 38.167.329 32.710.238 -14,30%Estonia 1.340.141 1.172.707 -12,49%Hungary 10.014.324 8.860.284 -11,52%Europe 740.308.000 690.622.000 -6,71%Malta 412.970 387.422 -6,19%Slovakia 5.424.925 5.116.496 -5,69%Portugal 10.637.713 10.265.958 -3,49%Czech Republic 10.506.813 10.467.652 -0,37%Greece 11.305.118 11.294.664 -0,09%Slovenia 2.046.976 2.057.964 0,54%Netherlands 16.574.989 17.070.150 2,99%EU (27 countries) 501.044.066 516.939.958 3,17%Austria 8.375.290 8.868.529 5,89%Liechtenstein 35.894 38.328 6,78%Finland 5.351.427 5.744.452 7,34%Italy 60.340.328 64.989.319 7,70%Denmark 5.534.738 6.079.838 9,85%Spain 45.989.016 52.279.310 13,68%France 64.714.074 73.724.251 13,92%Switzerland 7.785.806 9.319.289 19,70%Sweden 9.340.682 11.525.240 23,39%Belgium 10.839.905 13.445.216 24,03%United Kingdom 62.008.048 78.925.262 27,28%Kazkhstan 15.921.000 20.541.000 29,02%Turkey 72.138.000 95.331.000 32,15%Norway 4.858.199 6.587.061 35,59%Iceland 317.630 435.030 36,96%Cyprus 803.147 1.134.460 41,25%World 6.916.183.000 9.957.399.000 43,97%Luxembourg 502.066 728.098 45,02%Ireland 4.467.854 6.544.749 46,49%Figure 8. United Nations and Eurostat data



Figure 9. Construction of a socialist mass housing area


BACKGROUND OF SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING AREAS AND ALTERNTIVES IN ASIA

This chapter covers the background of socialist mass hous-ing areas by exploring urban and architectural origins. At the same time urbanization of Soviet Union is compared with urbanization in Asia. Several specific condition from Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul and Shenzhen are explored as a possible alternatives for socialist mass housing areas.


URBANIZATION OF THE SOVIET UNION

Urbanization which took place in Soviet Union was the most intense at that time in the world. During the

most rapid period from 1926 to 1939 the urban population more than doubled reaching 55.9 million, while in U.S. for urban population to double it took 30 years and in UK 70 years (Pokshishevskiy, 1980, p. 35). Impressive statistics con-tinued as in 30 years period from 1955 to 1985 fifty million new apartments were built (Goldhoorn and Sverdlov, 2009). Also worth to mention that between 1956 and 1964, just in 8 years, quarter population of Soviet Union (54 million people) moved to new apartments (Bronovitskaya, 2009, p. 24). In Russia alone the urban population from 1926 to 1989 grew by 56% (Becker et al., 2012, p. 6) and in all Soviet Union urban population from 1917 to 1982 grew from 16% to 64% affecting 146 million people (Yanitsky, 1986, p. 265). All these numbers tell one simple thing - Soviet Union had to take a new approach to urbanization and architecture to cope with its changing society during the 20th century. This meant experimentation, failure and arguable success.

THE ROOTS - CONSTRUCTIVISM

In early days of the Soviet Union, one of the most interest-ing architectural movements at that time, constructivism was born. Constructivists had a strong relations with artists, but at the same time their architecture was oriented towards Communist party’s embraced social politics: “Their inno-vations were useful to a revolutionary regime in need of a dynamic visual language to promote communism” (Bradley and Esche, 2007, p. 402). Discussions started to find the most appropriate urban form for the communist society, but common opinion was dif-ficult to reach. The opinions dived in two camps – urbanist and de-urbanist schools (Bater, 1980, p. 22). Most of their proposals were utopian and speculating on infinite budgets, but their ideas later laid foundations for a socialist cities. Urbanists were influenced by “Garden city” concept (How-ard, 1902) and Le Corbusier’s theories, although the link is not completely direct (Bater, 1980, p. 23). On the other side, de-urbanists were very radical and “wanted an essentially townless socialist society in which age-old contradiction between town and country would be abolished once and for all.” (Bater, 1980, p. 23). Their idea was to spread people around the country based on linear urban forms and com-pletely forget the concept of the city.

Radical urban concepts were not realized, but some radical experiments on architectural scale did see the light. Among them - projects where constructivists tested their ideas on a new life style of a proletariats. The best known example of a new ideology is a Narkomfin building. Here architects of the project Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis tried not only to promote new type of architecture celebrating new technology of reinforced concrete, but also to address an urban challenge – create a social environment in the city (Ghazali, 2007). This was an important issue having in mind new political direction and increasing industrialization which was followed by urbanization. Main concept of the building was a total separation of individual sleeping cells from a common spaces. It was probably the most interesting example at that time which used standardization as a tool to create new urban condition. According to a new ideologies, residents had only small, 6 square meters for two people, individual cells for sleeping and all other activities had to


Figure 10. Ivan Leonidov – Magnitogorsk Proposal (1930)

Figure 11. Ivan Leonidov – Magnitogorsk Proposal (1930)


be common, shared with all other residents (Prevost and Dushkina, 1999, p. 9). Women were freed from cooking as everybody were eating at a canteen, children could spent their time in kindergartens. Big corridor had to replicate a village road and the configuration of a program had to en-able social experience. Overall, it was an attempt to remodel the concept of the traditional family and propose a com-munistic lifestyle, where society is your family. Narkomfin model shows first attempts of government to control society using architecture, a belief of architects that architecture can shape new model of people which later was proved to be an utopia (Smirnov, 2011).

Around the same time when Narkomfin project was com-pleted (1932), other architects and engineers were working on exploring possibilities of standardization by using prefab blocks and prefab dwelling cells. However after change in politics of the Soviet Union, when Stalin came in power in 1930s, constructivism was undesirable. Changed concept of society also changed the ideology of architecture - from avant-garde it turned to imperialistic Stalinist expression with interpretations of antique motives. Although archi-tectural expression was suppressed, the investigations on standardization continued: “At the Institute of Architecture in Moscow, Burov continued to investigate large-panel construction and eventually laid the technological ground-work for the architecture of the post-war-era” (Urban, 2013, p. 12). After the ruling of Stalin, the approach to society and naturally to architecture changed. New leader Nikita Khrushchev heavily focused on modernization and urbanization of Soviet Union. Instead of naïve, decorative Stalinist expression, on 1954 December 7, he gave a speech and promoted a new standardized mass housing program (Khrushchev, 2009) which roots can be seen in some early constructivist experiments.


Figure 12. Nikolai Milyutin’s plan for a Linear City. Residential area (А), industrial zones (Б). Railway running along.

Figure 13. Narkomfin building - one of the most famous examples of constructivist architecture, 1932


PREFAB MASS HOUSING UNITS – KHRUSHCHEVKI

“It is them [architects] who understand architecture as a decorative art rather than means of satisfying material needs of soviet people. It is them who waste the funds of soviet people on beauty which nobody needs, instead of building simpler, but more” (Listova, 2009) – it is this speech where in 1954 Nikita Khrushchev drew a new direction for archi-tecture and urbanization in Soviet Union. After it, architects became less important and architecture had one simple goal – to be cheap.

In 1939 the average space per person in Soviet Union was 5 square meters. When Krushchev came in power in 1953, the standard apartment size by first mass prefab house model K-7 was based on the concept of the minimum (which was also the maximum) 9 square meters per person. (Strelka In-stitute of Media, Architecture and Design, 2012a). It meant that one room apartment with all facilities was around 30 square meters, two rooms – 44 m2, three rooms - 61 m2 (Resog, 2014). For a lot of people these apartments were first personal property in their life and often first urban experience, as a lot of people came directly from villages.The speed and low quality of construction was an outcome of a tight economic pressures and political program. There are records of 5 story houses built in 5 days, but quality of them is unknown (Listova, 2009). First mass five story hous-ing K-7 could be built in 45 days – 15 days mounting prefab pieces and 1 month for interior finishing (Listova, 2009). Due to extremely low quality of K-7 model, where engineers proposed 4 centimeter thickness of inner walls and only 8 centimeters for walls between apartments, the structure was later updated to suit the needs of people better. Bigger and more comfortable apartments had to accommodate people better. To ensure that, the first residents of new prototype housing had visits from specialists of housing typology who checked the apartments to see how the residents inhabited the space. Although apartments improved, they still did not suit the needs of the people well, because the habits of people were not so easily predictable.

Today most of these buildings are in poor condition. First houses (type K-7) now are being widely demolished in Mos-cow (Complex of urban policy and construction in Moscow, 2014) , but improved house models (like I-464A) have a

theoretical 100-125 years lifespan (Ruseckas et al., 2009, p. 26) and make up a very important part of a residential mar-ket in Eastern Europe.

“It is them [architects] who under-stand architecture as a decorative art

rather than means of satisfying mate-rial needs of soviet people. It is them

who waste the funds of soviet people on beauty which nobody needs, in-stead of building simpler, but more” - Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist

Party of the Soviet Union, 1954 (Listova, 2009)


Figure 14. Construction of socialist mass housing area

Figure 15. Nikita Khrushchev

Figure 16. Prefab panel


Figure 17. 1-464A14-LT type used in Lithuania

Figure 18. 1-464-LI-15 type used in Lithuania


Figure 19. Fragment of the 1-464-LI-15 type used in Lithuania


URBAN SURFACES – MICRO-DISTRICTS

Repetitive, downgraded architecture created very monotonic urban environment – micro-districts. This problem was understood by the architects and builders as Valentin Galec-kiy, organizer of the first house building factory, has stated that they saw the ugliness, but it was just the most efficient and cheap method (Listova, 2009). Society also reacted to these developments and repetitiveness was often mocked in cinema and music (Rappaport, 1962; Ryazanov, 1975; Seryj, 1971). The most famous example in a movie “Ironiya sudby, ili s legkim parom!” shows a man who managed to find exactly the same as his apartment with the same door lock in exactly the same street, but in the different city.

Micro-districts did not have urban elements developed through centuries – street perspectives, houses, squares, intersections, boulevards. A border conditions where ex-change happen (Sennett, 2011, p. 324) did not find place in micro-districts. As typical example of modernist planning, micro-districts were planned thinking of them as surfaces. “Therefore, each of the zones must be separated so that they do not interfere with adjacent zones.” (Ohno, 2004, p. 28). Empty surfaces - landscapes were filled with grey concrete blocks around Moscow and later all Eastern Bloc (Snopek, 2011, p. 33). Although in some cases local architects tried to create more vibrant environment by constructing micro-districts in a more scenic landscape (Lazdynai district in Vilnius, Lithuania), they still lacked diversity.

On the other hand, strict scientific planning arranged public functions around the housing blocks in a convenient distances. Schools, shops and pharmacies were maximum 10 minute distance from the apartments (Bronovitskaya, 2009, p. 24). Stadiums, hospitals, libraries and other facilities were within a close distance, often in the centers of micro-districts. Greenery during the time grew and also became richer and inviting. These benefits of modernistic planning are appreciated even today as new generation of residents who grew up there have more natural feeling to this type of planning (Bronovitskaya, 2009, p. 25). This adaptation means that socialist mass housing areas eventually from forced lifestyle are turning to a lifestyle which people choose because of specific qualities, even if it

might seem uncomfortable for most of the people. Simi-larly as people choose to live in boats in Amsterdam or in flooded Venice.

“We did not have rich architectural elements, but just plain poor panels. It was possible to do only them, not

because we were such idiots, but be-cause it was possible to produce only

those type of panels in factories which we already had, with their standard

equipment.”- Elena Kapustian, architect, advisor of Russian academy of

architecture and building science (Listova, 2009)

Figure 20. Elena Kapustian giving interview to a TV programme “Sovetskaja Imperia. Krushchevki”.


Scientifically calculated arrangements of functions in city and mass housing area. Gutnov and Baburob, 1971Figure 21. Top - NUS in an agricultural zone.

Figure 22. Bottom - Plan of a NUS.


29.37 hectares

60.8% takes green spaces

over 600 trees

Coverage within 3 minutes from bus stop

5 floors, 9 floors, 12 floors

Informal path system

Commercial and public functions

Road structure


Figure 23. Opposite page - analysis of Dainava micro-district.

Figure 24. Orthogonal drawing of Dainava micro-district in Kaunas, Lithuania based on existing

situation. Dainava is one of the first socialist mass housing areas to be built in Kaunas with construc-

tions starting in 1963.


CONDITIONS IN ASIA

According to Asian Development Bank (2008) in next 20 years 1.1 billion people will move to the cities in Asia.

It is a unique shift in human history which is followed by intense construction of cities. In 2011 there were 23 megaci-ties (cities with population over 10 million) with 13 of them being in Asia, by the 2025 world is expected to have 37 megacities and 22 in Asia (United Nations, 2011, p. 5). The most standing out city in this sense is Tokyo which from 1950s is and will continue to be in the nearest future, the biggest megacity. However Tokyo is not developing now at extremes pace as it was until 1990s. Same can be said about Seoul, which is now balancing on the limit of becoming a megacity. Here population grew rapidly just after Korean war in 1953 and slowed down around 1990 (Oh et al., 2009, p. 16). However when Tokyo and Seoul slowed down Shen-zhen started demonstrating incredibly rapid development by growing population by 2 million every 5 years, which in 2020 should be over 14 million (United Nations, 2011, p. 222). But not only rapid growth and size is interesting while talking about urbanization, density is also one of the key factors. In this sense Hong Kong demonstrates examples of extreme density with its Kwun Tong area reaching 56 200 people per square kilometer (Hong Kong Census and Statis-tics Department, 2013a). This makes Hong Kong one of the densest areas in the world ( Jenks and Burgess, 2003, p. 245).

This vast urbanization produced special conditions and regulation forms which influenced mass housing develop-ment in those cities. In next sections several cases based on impressions from study trips will be explored. It is impor-tant to understand what is the background and meaning of each context and what allowed or forced specific urban forms to take shape.

TOKYO - LAND READJUSTMENT

Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 was a disaster for Tokyo, but at the same time it was a chance for rapid modernization – first subway line opened in 1927 and Haneda airport in 1931. However history repeated itself and during WWII To-kyo was heavily damaged once more. Reconstruction took again. In both times land readjustment method was used for urban reconstruction (Sorensen, 2000a, p. 52). Today land readjustment is called “The Mother of City Planning” (So-rensen, 2000b, p. 217), because 30% of urban areas in Japan are arranged using this method. It was and still is a very attractive concept because it can be self-financing model of regeneration combining at the same time a lot of differ-ent land owners. This model has a wide range of applicable situations including public housing projects, railway, transit, new town developments and etc. (Sorensen, 2000a, p. 53). The really basic idea of land readjustment is that landown-ers agree that location of their land would be adjusted and property resized – normally it becomes 2/3 of the previous size. However due to new infrastructure development and creation of public spaces, the land price rise and the land owners in the end make profit. At the same time additional land taken from landowners can be sold to developers, thereby financing the land readjustment process. As land readjustment can help to develop wide range of different situations - it also has some negative effects, like encouraging sprawl (Sorensen, 2000b, p. 218). Rapidly growing urban population in Tokyo led that in 1975 all 23 wards were almost fully urbanized (Zhao, 2006, p. 29). Naturally this led to further urbanization of urban fringe. Here land readjustment is extremely helpful for developers to rearrange a usually very fragmented property limits to a different patterns and free up plots for big developments (Sorensen, 2000a, p. 55). That is why residential develop-ments around Tokyo have a strictly planned order - they are basically developed in a tabula rasa situation. The strict zon-ing prevents diversity in the plots and functions are clearly separated. This can be seen by looking at a development of Kashiwa-no-ha station area. Developers can create any desirable situation they want, so the new high-rise apartment blocks are standing next to the express train station, big shopping center and a park.


In Tokyo possible problems with the contemporary needs and an existing situation are solved by applying land read-

justment method. Although it is not always perfect it can be used as a tool to arrange existing very complicated areas for

the future.

Figure 25. Before land readjustment

Figure 26. After land readjustment

Complexity of properties and big number of individual own-ers are often the problems to start any change in socialist mass housing areas. In Tokyo, land readjustment enabled very complex urban fabric to change and meet contempo-rary needs in very flexible way. However in a socialist mass housing areas this complexity is not in the land, which is owned by the government, but in the ownership of apart-ments. Thus land readjustment method could be remodeled as an apartment readjustment method where owners would be encouraged to swap or sell their apartments by getting benefits.


HONG KONG - GREEN CONTRAST

According to Miles Glendinning (2012) Hong Kong is a hot spot for mass housing. After World War II population in Hong Kong started booming. Both natural increase and im-migration due to civil war in China contributed to popula-tion increase from 600 000 in 1945 to 2.5 million in 1957 (Jenks and Burgess, 2003, p. 246).

Today most of the cities are looking after a compact city model, but in the past trends were different and sprawl was often the answer to the growing population in Europe and USA. Hong Kong also tried to distribute growing popula-tion by creating new towns. However in 1970s the down-sides of dispersed population became visible as the hilly terrain was separating new towns from center and lack of local economy could not make new towns economically self-sufficient ( Jenks and Burgess, 2003, p. 248). Urban planners had to rethink the strategy.

The government focused on providing public housing at low prices to keep up with economic demands. They could do it easily because they owned the land (Henderson, 1991, p. 172). However everything was not that simple, because Hong Kong by using capitalist model, was focusing on rev-enue and in 1970s they were making one third of all revenue from land leases - a biggest portion in the world (Hender-son, 1991, p. 172). This meant that they had a conflict – on one side trying to provide cheap public housing by using the land and on the other side - trying to make profit by renting out the same land to the developers. Naturally this led to minimizing the land area for public housing. To compen-sate loss, buildings had to go high. Henderson (1991, p. 173) sums up to what situation this policy led: “They are obliged to live in blocks of 35 to 50 stories, made up of apartments that are little more than glorified closets (with a predomi-nant floor-space allocation of 3.3 square metres per person), formed into estates and new towns with staggeringly high population densities.”

The design of first public housing projects did not pay a lot of attention to a free ground space, greenery or other typi-cal elements of western housing blocks. Instead, the estates were developed by focusing only on building volumes. This can be seen by observing some of the first developments

like Shek Kip Mei Estate (1953), Model Housing Estate (1954) and others. Of course having in mind all difficulties with land area, terrain and revenue policy it is hard to expect anything different.

Today urban area in Hong Kong takes up less than 25% of all land, around 40% of it is preserved for recreation and conservation (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Depart-ment, 2013b). Although the urban area has increased, so did the population which now is 7.15 million (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2013a). New residential projects, like Kin Ming Estate (Figure 27. and Figure 28. ), continues to follow the guidelines set by the first develop-ments and focuses primarily on the density, forcing residents to have their recreational activities in surrounding parks.

Hong Kong by having tight pressures for the land and specific terrain has produced a well working situation where greenery is not mixing with mass housing blocks. It is a contrast to the socialist mass housing developments where it was very important to provide vast green spaces around the buildings. However in both cases greens space makes a big and important part urban fabric and the main difference is purely a relation of a green spaces with a buildings. Hong Kong always being an epicenter of business and exchange gives an idea that today the speed, relation with a city and urban life is more important for people than daily wander-ings through green space. The presence of green space in daily life is still very impor-tant, but it can be just visual. As socialist mass housing is now playing by the market economy rules and the lifestyle of people changed accordingly, the organization of green space could adapt by interpreting Hong Kong experience. This means that the amount of green space could be reduced – it is not important anymore for buildings and green to mix, as long as the visual relation is maintained.


Hong Kong because of limited land, complex topography and high demand created an interesting situation where

green and urban spaces work well by being separated. There is very clear division between what is green and what is

urban.

Figure 27. Kin Ming Estate, picture by Baycrest - Wikipedia user

Figure 28. Kin Ming Estate


SEOUL - GATED COMMUNITIES

Population of Seoul started to increase rapidly after the end of the Korean War in 1953, but the modernization and con-trol of urban space began later. After the war a lot of people had to be relocated, so in 1950s government started to clear the slums to make space in the city. It continued in 1960s too: “Most areas near railroads, streets, sewage disposal facilities and crowded downtown areas were cleared” (Shin, 1995, p. 55). In 1962 First and Second National Economic Development Plans were introduced and rapid economic growth started (Oh et al., 2009, p. 10). Same year “Mapo Apartments” - first apartment block was built. Although there are not many scholar sources analyzing this pioneer of housing block areas in Seoul, the pictures (Figure 31. ) from that time reveal that Mapo apartments were already built on an existing urban fabric, moreover, they were built in a place of a former prison (Matt, 2006). This case demonstrates that in Seoul housing development started by a redevelopment of an existing urban situation which was initiated by a govern-ment policy. Other pictures reveal extreme contrast with surrounding area – clean modernistic courtyard and dense, low-rise maze of old streets outside the complex – the area of squatters which eventually was removed. The contrast is emphasized even more by a wall, which separates two situations, telling that the first residential development is Seoul was a gated community. Interestingly, this relates to the development before – which was a prison. Just instead of protecting outside from the inside, the sterile situation inside was pro-tected from the squatting outside.

Naturally, the redevelopment continued and in 1991, after 29 years, this complex was demolished. Today in this area we can find another residential development which con-tinues the tradition of gated communities. Similar to its predecessor, new development separates itself from dense urban fabric with diverse activities and encloses in a clean, sterile environment.

Although gated communities are heavily criticized, in Seoul they work quite well and are appreciated by the society. They can be seen in the first mass residential developments and are continued to be built today. Most of the new residential

areas in Seoul today are gated. The biggest concentration of gated developments in the city center are in Sinbanpo-ro area which is next to the famous Gangnam entertainment district. It is interesting relation where calm and at first sight boring gated residential area is next to a lively and open part of the city. Same as first “Mapo Apartments” development which created an island of open space in a dense squatted neighborhood.

Probably it is this vivid contrast which makes gated com-munities in Seoul work. Socialist mass housing areas could benefit from gated areas not by trying to promote safety or prestige, but by trying to create a contrast to an existing context. It can be a tool to bring new spaces to the city.


In Seoul issues with private and public property are solved by creating gated communities. Often criticized concept of

gated communities here works quite well and is well ac-cepted by society.

Figure 29. Secured entrance to the areaFigure 31. Mapo apartments in 1963

Figure 30. Fenced streetscape


SHENZHEN - GREEN BOUNDARIES

Shenzhen is noticeable for its green areas and vast scale which is a contrast to dense and compact neighboring Hong Kong. This can be compared to the spaces which are found in soviet planned areas. And indeed in the beginning of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) the city planning was still based on the Soviet Union planning model – cen-trally controlled 5 year plans (Bruton et al., 2005, p. 229). In 1986 this model started to change and fit better immense growth (Bruton et al., 2005, p. 231). Interestingly, the first developed, Luohu area was following more Hong Kong model of space and had relatively narrow – 2-4 lane streets and walkable distances (Zacharias and Tang, 2010, p. 223). However with further growth more cars came to the city and city planners decided to focus further developments on cars by using green corridors (Zacharias and Tang, 2010, p. 223). In modernistic fashion, roads are now surrounded by green buffer zones.

The similarity of the new city center Futian with Le Cor-busier’s plan for Paris cannot be unnoticed, as Zacharias and Tang (2010) notice: “The cite radieuse model is unmistak-able, although its reasons are not entirely what Le Corbusier had in mind.” New city center was planned on an agri-cultural land (Wang et al., 2009, p. 959) and this situation enabled any decision possible. New housing districts were planned in Shenzhen using similar ideas, but illegal hous-ing was appearing on the edge of the city at the same time. This was due to very fast growth, when at the same moment city needed cheap housing for people from rural areas and new housing for richer urban residents (Wang et al., 2009, p. 959).

Although most of the first developments were often based on the same layout, later developments tried to introduce more variety to the urban fabric. But the base of the road and city structure was laid on soviet planning principles mixed with influence of Le Corbusier and the result is a lack of spatial diversity. Housing blocks often are clearly divided and separated from each other by immense amount of greenery. Often greenery and road axes are making distanc-es unwalkable.

Promotion of vast green spaces between the buildings and the roads in Shenzhen brings an opposite than desired effect and creates spatial problems. Greenery is good, but in this case we can see that ammount is also important. This idea of overdose of qualities can be seen in socialist mass hous-ing areas too. Too many green public spaces create unneces-sary distances and unusable voids. Shenzhen can serve as an example to demonstrate that excessive green space can bring negative effects.


In Shenzhen too many green spaces create a very monotonic streetscape

and unwalkable distances.

Figure 32. Green boundaries

Figure 33. Unwalkable distances


HONG KONG“green contrast”

unbuilt area in a test site

Hung Hom

76%

SEOUL “gated communities”


Sinbanpo

82%

SHENZHEN “green boundaries”


Lianhuacun

85%

TOKYO “land readjustment”


Kashiwanoha

80%

10 min


KAUNAS

unbuilt area in a test site Dainava

89%

Figure 34. Opposite page - A comparison of mass housing areas in different Asian cities by built/unbuilt ratio in an area covered by 10 minutes walk (400 meters radius).

Figure 35. On the right - same size area in one of the densest, Dainava socialist mass housing, areas in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Figure 36. On the left - aerial view of Dainava.


Figure 37. Photo by Alexander Gronsky from series “Pastoral 2008-2012”


SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE AND LEARNING FROM SHRINKING JAPAN

Here socialist mass housing phenomena is explored as a common property of Eastern European countries. The con-sequences, issues and potentials are covered while concept of Fibercity is presented as a tool for actions. At the same the main conflict points in socialist mass housing areas are identified.


COMMON DENOMINATORS IN EASTERN EUROPE

Is it possible to find common denominators for all post-socialist countries? These countries are very different

with their climate, culture, religion and history, but one implied political ideology for the same period, with same beginning and end, produced common elements. Ivan Szeknyi (2008) argues that urban forms in socialist societies did not differ that much. Usually centers of the cities were deteriorating and the new developments around the city were booming by building massive housing developments (Szelenyi, 2008, p. 304). As the main reasons for this pro-cess he mentions nationalized urban housing market. Private housing was permitted only in the villages for a long time and city development was entirely under control of the state. However, as Szelenyi (2008, p. 304) describes, the state was interested in a fast and cheap developments. City centers were not attractive for fast and cheap developments due to already existing urban fabric. Renovating and upgrading old buildings was not efficient and fast enough. All focus of socialist government was primarily on a new mass housing areas on the edge on the cities in a tabula rasa condition. “Infrastructural and architectural aspects of urban develop-ment were typically oriented almost exclusively to the local industrial combine and its attendant (large scale) housing estates” (Beyer and Brade, 2006). These developments were often generic with small adaptations to a local climate. By having similar urban forms governed by similar rules, these cities after 1990s inherited similar problems.

After 1990s Eastern Europe went to the state which Janos Kornai described this state as ”crisis of post-communist transformation” (Szelenyi, 2008, p. 309). In 1995 Szelenyi predicted that growing economies will lead people in East-ern Europe from mass housing areas to the city centers and mostly to the suburban areas (Szelenyi, 2008, p. 315). Which we can now confirm is true. Most of the post-socialist cities are experiencing suburban growth which is very connected with a socialist past (Nuissl and Rink, 2005). It is a paradox in time of shrinkage that cities are expanding regardless shrinking population. It is agreed that higher income people move to suburban and central areas, which means that mass housing areas are slowly becoming inhabited by lower income population (Stanilov, 2007, p. 183). Having in mind shrinking population perspectives which project over 20% of shrinkage in Eastern Europe (United Nations, 2012), we

Construction Change Capitalization


Plodviv, Bulgaria; City population: 339 077

Kaunas, Lithuania; City population: 311 148

Krakow, Poland; City population: 758 334

Cluj-Napoca, Romania; City population: 324 576

Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; City population: 1 250 619

Lviv, Ukraine; City population: 729 842

Figure 38. A comparison between different cities in Eastern Europe. City cen-ters, socialist mass housing areas and suburbs.

Figure 39. Opposite page - 3 common steps for a socialist mass housing areas.


Picture: 214 ул. „Бригадирска“, Plodviv, Bulgaria; City population: 339 077

Picture: 6 Birželio 23-iosios g., Kaunas, Lithuania; City population: 311 148

Picture: Franciszka Kniaźnina, Krakow, Poland; City population: 758 334


Picture: Kulparkivska St, 135, Lviv, Ukraine; City population: 729 842

Picture: Aleea Ciucaş 7, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; City population: 324 576

Picture: 4 ул. Композитора Касьянова, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; City population: 1 250 619

Figure 40. A glimpse inside socialist mass hous-ing areas today in different countries. There is almost no difference between these areas. They hardly reflect climate or cultural back-ground of the countries.


needs is one of the main problems today in socialist mass housing areas. However it is worth to mention that some of features of socialist mass housing areas, like pedestrian access, reduction of cars, high density, are seen as an objec-tives of contemporary developments today (Scott, 2009, p. 62).

The activities were planned in the center of the block furthest from the edge – the highways. However today we can notice an opposite situation where main roads are most attractive locations for commercial functions – turning the most active part of the areas from the center to the edge (Figure 42. ). This shift creates a lot of spatial conflict.

can imagine that this rising misbalance of income can be a serious issue. However, shrinking population does not mean more vacant housing in Eastern Europe yet. The living space per person in this part of Europe is still low compared to a Western Europe. For example in Russia average size per person is 19.6 square meters as in Denmark it jumps to 51 or Norway 74 (Beyer and Brade, 2006). But with drastically dropping population rates number of vacant houses and apartments will increase.

Similarities can be found not only in history, urban patterns and social problems, but also in architectural and spatial realities of today. It is easy to see similarities by comparing visually socialist mass housing areas in different countries (Figure 40 on page 47). This comparison reveal little dif-ference in architecture and space.

However the easiest way to find common denominators in socialist mass housing areas is to look at their guide book. In 1960s a group of architects and planners from The University of Moscow led by Alexei Gutnov published a book called “The Ideal Communist City” (English version which is referred here came out later, Gutnov and Baburov, 1971). It was a summary and justification of developments which were already being built. Here authors justified and explained in a scientific way the ideal urban configuration which can be seen in a diagram of New Urban Settlement (Figure 41. ). This book predicted that 75% of global popu-lation by the year 2000 will live in a cities and because of that, we urgently had to rethink the way our cities are built, the way we live. Based on the communist model of soci-ety, predictions of the future and problems of that time in the cities, it was justified the need to build repetitive high-rise blocks with community centers in the middle, next to highways with easy access to public transport. The lack of private space is seen as necessary element to socialize in gen-erous green public space. Connectivity with a city center is not emphasized as the main goal is to bring people to work in industrial complex and back.

What can be noted from that book, that everything is trying to have an order: leisure, work, industry, education. And as we see from the wrong prediction in the book about global population growth, not everything what is predicted and planned becomes true. Inability to adapt to unpredictable


Figure 41. THE IDEAL COMMUNIST CITY New Urban Settlement diagram (Gutnov, 1971)1. Residential units2. School and sports area3. Rapid transport above pedestrian level4. Highway5. Community center

Concentration towards center

Activities on the edge

Figure 42. THE NOT IDEAL POST-COMMU-NIST CITY An adaptation of NUS to a contemporary situation (drawing by author) 1. Residential units2. School and sports area3. Main street4. Shopping center, gas station, kiosks5. Parking in public space6. Green perimeter

12

3

64

4

4

4

4

5


CONSEQUENCES OF SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE

“…almost half of all medium-sized cities in Europe are experiencing population and economic decline…”

(Schlappa and Neill, 2013, p. 10). Tendencies of shrinking population in Eastern Europe can just add more impor-tance and dynamism to the existing conflicts and at the same time, shrinkage can be seen as a tool to change these areas to better. The consequences of this process are very well described by Hidetoshi Ohno in a theory of Fibercity (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006). Although there focus is on Japanese context, almost everything can be applied to Eastern Europe too, as the projections show similar tenden-cies. Main mentioned moments of shrinkage are: disap-pearing rural villages, increasing number of vacant homes, unmaintained infrastructure, growing attraction of a city center, political and social focus on elderly (as their numbers will increase, they will become main voters), less attention to youth, pensions will shrink as society will get older and as a consequence the economy will face great challenges (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006, p. 3).

All these processes are true for both Japanese and Eastern European contexts, however one moment considering im-migration might be different. As Japan sees a possibility of growing immigration rates as one way to maintain work-force, in Eastern Europe this can be a difficult challenge. Europe has a great history on migration and it is historically very natural process, however the most attractive countries for immigrants are in Western Europe where economy is strongest. So if Eastern Europe does not keep up their economies with Western Europe soon, it is hard to imagine big flows of immigration which could balance the shrinking population. In socialist mass housing areas this possibility would mean that due to relatively small amount of foreign-ers, these areas are unlikely to become ghettos for immi-grants.

Another moment which is important to clarify while talk-ing about socialist mass housing areas is a possibly growing attraction of the city centers while population is shrink-ing. It is hard to tell a precise trend for all Eastern Europe. People will not abandon quickly just recently built suburban houses, nor city centers can become a massive attraction points soon, as the heritage restrictions often limit develop-ments and make them more expensive. But global tenden-

cies, following compact city model, shows that in a long term city centers should become the most attractive areas. Looking at examples from Denmark and Netherlands, it is easy to imagine a combination of new developments and heritage areas working together in Easter Europe too. Even though, in some countries like Poland, socialist mass housing areas are still very popular, they are now becoming second or third generation houses. Minimum moderniza-tion, which is done now, like insulating, upgrading heating system and repainting, has only temporary effect. Without a more radical renovation the quality of these apartments will not be able to compete with recent developments in the city centers. Over half of population in Eastern Europe live in mass housing areas (Stanilov, 2007, p. 181), meaning that perspectives of shift towards the city center will greatly affect socialist housing areas even if they are still popular in some countries today.

Shrinking population will introduce more change in social-ist housing neighborhoods. These areas already have seen some change by adding functions – shopping centers, res-taurants, office buildings, but did not experience change by reduction. In this case it is reduction of people. Although it might seem that new added functions are directly depended on population of neighborhoods, it is not quite true. New commercial functions are probably just partly depended, because, they are focusing mostly on streets - car users. So if population will reduce in the neighborhoods, it should not have a massive effect on the new commercial activities on the perimter of the areas.

Growing number of elderly will need more green, recre-ational spaces and elderly facilities. As described in report by Urbact (Schlappa and Neill, 2013, p. 38), it is important to keep active lifestyle, delay dependency for elderly and environment should encourage this. However, existing generic feeling and still present mono-functional design of the neighborhoods does not create an attractive aging envi-ronment. Existing conflict for a public space, where public space is invaded slowly by chaotic car parking and commer-cial activities, can be more present if residents will not have more control over it. In shrinking society landscape will gain more importance (Schlappa and Neill, 2013, p. 31), so the debates for control over it will naturally rise.


Even if renovated, neighborhoods are still seen as a socialist housing areas. In the future, it can be argued, that because of their difference, specific character, they have possibil-ity to become new hip areas and be gentrified. Moreover, knowing that industrial areas are now often converted for a residential purpose, this might seem possible. However in-dustrial areas often have unique spaces and are becoming in-creasingly rare in the cities. It is very different with socialist housing areas, as they are generic and very common in most of the cities in Eastern Europe. This means that these areas are unlikely to be seen with a positive attitude in the future. Proposals talking about the historical value, like Belyaevo Forever (Snopek, 2011) project proposing to include Bely-aevo socialist housing area in Moscow to UNESCO, can be seen more as provocative discussions than real possibilities. Deteriorative view on socialist housing areas can lead to psychologically less comfortable environment.

To be able to react and use described negative impacts of shrinkage as an opportunity to reshape socialist mass housing areas for better, we need tools. There already have been different possibilities proposing what has to be done, but they are often too general and avoid direct answers by providing huge palette of possible actions (Schlappa and Neill, 2013; Hollander et al., 2009; Laursen, 2008). At the same time they agree that “urban shrinkage demands new approaches to urban planning, design and management” (Schlappa and Neill, 2013, p. 43). This means that it is not enough just to find some examples which some shrinking cities successfully applied. We need a completely new ap-proach towards a contemporary city, a new mindset.


LEARNING FROM SHRINKING JAPAN

After decades of growth Japan now faces an opposite tendency – rapidly shrinking and aging population.

Japan has similar population tendencies as Eastern Europe. Estimated population shrinkage in Japan from 2010 to 2060 is -19.51%, while Eastern Europe it is a little bit bigger -21.63% (United Nations, 2012). However differently than in Eastern Europe, country is adapting and preparing for future challenges. A big focus is on aging society, which is a consequence of shrinking population, public spaces are often well designed for visually impaired, and government is trying to adapt economy for future realities. Urban scale also has model focused on shrinking population. After decades of different proposals for expanding Tokyo to the Tokyo bay, at the times facing shrinkage there is a proposal to manage shrinkage and use it to improve the living condi-tions – Fibercity.

FIBERCITY

Fibercity is a contemporary city vision developed by Hi-detoshi Ohno at The University of Tokyo (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006; Ohno et al., 2012; Ohno, 2004). Although it focuses on Japan and especially Tokyo, the methods can be translated to different context and scale too. It was already shown in a research on Nagaoka city in Japan (Ohno and Wada, 2012; Ohno et al., 2012). Although Tokyo and Nagaoka cannot even be compared in size (Tokyo metropol-itan area has over 35 million population and Nagaoka just reaches 280 thousand), Fibercity vision showed that it could be adapted to both contexts.

Not only ability to adapt to different scales is interesting in Fibercity. This concept fully understands the modern-istic planning nature and clearly explains the transition and difference from traditional modernistic planning to a shrinking city vision of Fibercity. It is very important aspect, because nature of socialist housing areas in Eastern Europe is extremely modernistic, thus a model working with them should have a relation and understanding of their strong modernistic nature.

Fibercity confronts traditional 20th century city model – Atomic city model and proposes to look at a city not as a machine, but as a fabric (Ohno, 2004, p. 38). Fibercity

concept goes beyond restrictions of a geometrical city forms and accepts the unpredictable shapes and flows as the driv-ing force. Exchange, democracy of mobility, reliable urban system with various possibilities are the main values. It can be said that it encompass in one place theories of Richard Sennett on borders and boundaries (Sennett, 2011) and Christopher Alexander ideas laid in “City is not a tree” (Al-exander, 1966).

As a way of acting Fibercity proposes editing existing rather than radical modernistic creation from tabula rasa approach. As Fibercity sees a city as a fabric rather than machine, it proposes to edit it by using fibers – linear elements. This is a new concept which goes away from modernistic zoning of surfaces to a more free, democratic and adaptable linear structure.

Focus on linear elements does not deny modernistic history, it proposes how to influence it without again creating tabula rasa. Importance of linear elements is coming from the needs of XXI century – exchange and freedom of mobility (Ohno, 2004, p. 28, 31).

Diverse range of applications and flexibility is another important feature of Fibercity strategy. As in a fabric, fiber does not have to be always the same and can be used in many different ways to achieve complexity. “In concrete terms various strategies may be conceived, such as insert-ing a new border into an existing domain, substituting an isolating boundary with one that encourages exchange, or relaxing the opposition between domains by blurring their boundaries” (Ohno, 2004, p. 37). This method does not demand huge investment, which can be an issue in a city with shrinking population and economy. It is very important to have this in mind while working with socialist housing neighborhoods where economical questions are always very sensitive matter as there is a tendency for lower income residents to live.

The main challenge using this model for a socialist mass housing areas is to recognize exiting linear elements and to find where new should be created.


Figure 43. An illustration of the Fibercity from “Tokyo Fibercity 2050”, Ohno, 2006.


CONFLICTS IN SHRINKING EASTERN EUROPE

THE COMPLEXITY

“… mass housing was above all a movement that was domi-nated by conflict, by emergency.” (Glendinning, 2012). We cannot start talking about soviet mass housing areas without recognizing the full complexity of the issue. Ac-cording to Miles Glendinning (2012) mass housing emerged from conflicts of struggle for salvation, threat, market demands and some other practical issues. In post-socialist countries this conflict is even more visible and the descrip-tion can be expanded with more elements. Soviet housing block areas encompass huge amount of different issues at once, because at the same time they relate to completely different political, economic, historical situations. They are one of the few remaining elements in post-socialist soci-ety which try to glue the break of Soviet Union in 1990s. As most of the structures built during the times of Soviet Union are demolished or converted unrecognizably, these areas often stand unchanged - at the same time they are in the past and in the present. It covers the conflicting rela-tion of soviet housing areas with two political ideologies, two economical directions and two architectural and urban realities. These areas leave a strong modernistic mark on the cities which cannot be redeveloped or change as easy as some industrial or infrastructural areas of that time. Ulti-mately these areas hold a conflict between communism and capitalism. Although this is overall very broad conflict and can be expanded to various fields, it can also be identified from architectural point of view.

Michel Foucault has proposed a concept of heterotopia (Foucault and Miskowiec, 1986) which is focusing on “other” spaces. It is a concept to define the space which is here and not here, which is real and not real at the same time. This concept does not state that all conflicts neces-sarily are heterotopias, but is shows that heterotopia often has a contradictory or even conflicting elements. We can use heterotopia as a way of looking at conflicts which soviet mass housing possess. Heterotopia is an interesting concept to explore a mass housing areas, because heterotopian space could not have a place in soviet society where everything was planned, mass housing was standardized, and living space scientifically calculated. There could not be any place for otherness or unpredictability. This can be seen in a typo-

logical guidebook (Zveadina and Blashkevich, 1978) and the book “The Ideal Communist City” (Gutnov and Baburov, 1971) where all possible living conditions were set, meaning that people are unable to do anything beyond that. Thus by recognizing heterotopia we can find those delicate elements of soviet mass housing areas which are able to adapt, change and create new meanings by respecting strict and top-down implied planning attitude.

There are seven original definitions of heterotopia which cover different types of spaces. During last decades the concept was elaborated by other thinkers too and now it is difficult to state precisely all possible meanings. So to keep the idea of heterotopia original, without any additional interpretations, we can try to find the spatial conflicts as heterotopias based on seven original definitions proposed by Foucault – heterotopias of crises, deviation, compensation, time, juxtaposition, purification and illusion (Foucault and Miskowiec, 1986).

Firstly, let’s try to find what social mass housing areas are not. These areas cannot be called heterotopias of crises, because they are not spaces for people in crises, neither for people out of norm or with special needs – they are not heterotopias of deviation too. Not heterotopias of compen-sation as these areas do not compensate anything. Gated communities can be seen as a heterotopias (Low, 2008; Hook and Vrdoljak, 2002) and by Foucault’s definition they would be heterotopias of purification. However, almost none of the socialist mass housing areas after 1990s became gated. In most cases the land between the houses remained public and accessible to everybody.

However soviet mass housing areas impose a contradiction of time, because they are spaces from different ideology, which does not exist now, in a contemporary world, stand-ing often unchanged. In a way they can be compared to a museums and this means that they are heterotopias of time. Also there is a conflict between city and countryside. They were built as ultimate symbols of urbanization, with great connectivity to the city for a new type of dweller, but at the same time they offered vast green space and ability to run away from urban environment. This contradiction makes soviet mass housing areas as a heterotopias of juxtaposition. Lastly, if soviet housing areas are not gated, they still possess


a conflict between private and public. It is because before 1990s everything officially was owned by the government. Later apartments became private, but public space remained public (Marcuse, 1996, p. 167). This sharp artificial division of private and public sometimes creates an illusion that resi-dents own their courtyards – these areas became a heteroto-pias of illusion.

THREE CONFLICTS

Heterotopia is a spatial theory, so we can assume that the conflicts which fit to the description of heterotopia are also spatial. In this case, we can identify three conflicts as het-erotopia – conflict between private and public (heterotopia of illusion), conflict between past and present (heterotopia of time) and conflict between city and countryside (hetero-topia of juxtaposition). All of them relate to different scales – conflict between private and public relates to a block scale, conflict between time and present relates to a time scale and conflict between city and countryside relates to a city or even regional scale. This analysis reveal the most important dimensions for socialist housing areas. They reflect a change which happened to socialist mass housing areas during their time independently of the configuration of houses. How-ever to be able influence these spatial dimensions we must understand them better and find tools and solutions which are flexible enough to work.

“… mass housing was above all a movement that was dominated by conflict, by emergency.” - Miles Glendinning (2012)

Figure 44. Miles Glendinning during lecture


1. CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

The fuel for architectural movement in late Soviet Union during construction peak was pure modernism as it very well responded to political needs of standardization and low cost. Modernism as a style, according to Charles Jencks ( Jencks et al., 1977, p. 9), officially died on July 15, 1972, but not in Eastern Bloc countries. For most of these coun-tries the official death of modernism was 1991, December 26 – the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Differently from Western Europe, the death of modernism in this region was sudden too.

This means that Soviet housing areas are the symbols of the modernism in post-socialist countries. A fight between modernist planning qualities and disadvantages with todays urban realities blend in to a bizarre juxtapositions where suddenly strictly planned children playgrounds become a spontaneous car parking, where public green spaces become shopping centers (Stanilov, 2007, p. 272). This conflict be-tween private and public happens because of the functional-istic nature of these areas – everything was built at once as an end result. Now various overlaps appear which, often un-successfully, try to adapt these areas to contemporary needs. People seek for individualism in a homogenic environment. As an outcome, new developments in the post-socialist cit-ies often become gated (Polanska, 2010, p. 295). However even with rising demand almost no mass housing areas built before 1990s in Eastern Europe became gated. Conflict between individual and common can be seen in the building facades, where lack of boundaries between private and public responsibility leads to a deteriorating environ-ment (Stanilov, 2007, p. 182). But it is mostly visible in the public space where needs of different people merge in to one abstract entity of things. Residents of mass housing blocks are not pleased by seeing “their” green space being privatized and urbanized, but often they did not have any possibility to influence these processes (Stanilov, 2007, p. 272). As Stanislov writes, privatization not only included empty, undesirable spaces, but parts of parks and commu-nity facilities too. Too make things even more complicated, often these fragmented developments did not do their best to link and integrate with surrounding community focused mostly on car users. New shopping centers, fast food chain

restaurants, office buildings in socialist mass housing areas disturbed the public space and invaded modernistic nature of these areas. Almost always these new facilities con-centrated on the edge of the areas next to the car traffic, thereby shifting attraction from the center of the areas, as it was originally planned, to the edge. As a consequence this can be seen in chaotically shifted routes and spatial hierar-chy. However these intrusions by creating a conflict opened static environment for a change and this can be seen as positive side of these developments.


Private illegal parking garages taking over public space. Picture from Nizhny Novgorad, Russia.

Kiosks on a public space and apartments on a ground floors turning into commercial facilities.

Picture from Nizhny Novgorad, Russia.

Children playgrounds in courtyards are turned into spontaneous car parking. Picture from Kaunas,

Lithuania.

Figure 45. Images by Google Steetview

Figure 46. Plan drawings


2. CONFLICT BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT

We are beginning to preserve more and more recent build-ings. Today a more significant building which is 50 years old can be easily seen as a heritage. This naturally raises questions in post-socialist countries about their socialist heritage. Sometimes seen as an “inherited” heritage it never leaves public apathetic. It is a conflict as a historical heritage (Glendinning, 2012). “Postsocialist identity formation in-volves conflict over the past” (Young and Kaczmarek, 2008, p. 54).

Even generic structure of socialist mass housing areas some-times is argued to be a value, which is worth preserving (Snopek, 2011). In some cases socialist mass housing areas receive cultural heritage status (Lazdynai district in Vilnius, Lithuania), sometimes they are demolished (demolition of khrushchevki districts in Moscow). It is hard to tell which approach is the best, but it is clear that these areas possess a conflicting value as heterotopias of time. Due to small change during their lifetime, one can feel that they have traveled to the past while visiting one of these neighbor-hoods.

Inevitably post-socialist cities which have strong mark of socialist heritage are changing. As Young and Kaczmarek (2008, p. 66) concludes, there are usually three ways how post-socialist cities deal with their socialist past – neglecting socialist times and focusing on pre-socialist “Golden Age”, creating an anti-communist identities or accepting elements from the past and including them in to the present. This dif-ference is coming from different historical and contempo-rary experiences (Young and Kaczmarek, 2008, p. 66). It is easy to understand that approach to the socialist mass hous-ing areas will be different in each context too. Thus, balance of conflict between past and present is never the same. Depending on each city and its interpretation of socialist past there are variety of ways to deal with socialist mass housing areas – from minimal change to unrecognizable intervention (Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design, 2012b). Nevertheless, we have to understand that existing conflict which promotes memory of socialism makes socialist housing areas more special than any similar development after 1990s. Without conflicting memory a lot of places would become a simple generic spaces – without

it Chernobyl would become just another ruin (Zubrow, n.d., p. 3). The need to change must be recognized in a social-ist mass housing areas, but at the same time there must be a possibility to differentiate this change for each context. Some cities could neglect them, ignore or promote as a part of the identity.


Moscow, Russia 1962 Kaunas, Lithuania 1982 Cluj Napoca, Romania 2012

Figure 47. Image Figure 48. Image Figure 49. Image by Google Steetview

Figure 50. Time-lapse diagram


3. CONFLICT BETWEEN CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE

When talking about shrinking population in Eastern Eu-rope we have to recognize a paradox. Although counting from 1990s the population is constantly reducing, cities are physically growing. This is due to the state control housing market for long years. A lot of people around the cities re-gained their family land and started changing land use from agriculture to residential. Vast amount of people suddenly started building private houses. This can be seen not only as the need of individual, personalized space, but also as an escape to a countryside. During socialism people living in suburban or rural-suburban areas often cultivated gardens and had livestock (Enyedi, 1996, p. 117) and even today similar elemnts can be found. Socialist mass housing areas, originally built around the city centers, after 1990s sprawl today are between suburbia and center. Planned with green courtyards and parks these areas can be seen today as a mix between city and suburbia-countryside.

The roots of a conflict between city and countryside can be traced back to the early concepts. In the dawn of the mass housing programs in Soviet Union there was a gen-eral tendency of decentralization (Scott, 2009, p. 62). There were a lot of different studies on decentralization, but the most wide spread and accepted model is described in a book “The Ideal Communist City” (Gutnov and Baburov, 1971). This model can be connected to Ebenezer Howard idea of garden city (Howard, 1902; Scott, 2009, p. 62). “Less like Le Corbusier and more like Ebenezer Howard, the Soviets tried to create self-contained new towns beyond the central city, rather than segregate residential, commercial, industrial, and cultural uses” (Scott, 2009). In the famous “Garden City” diagram with three magnets – town, town-country, coun-try, the juxtaposition of town and country is clearly visible (Figure 51. ).

This conflict can be found looking at a mobility too. Func-tionally planned, housing areas have great public transport connectivity to the center, but at the same time residents prefer having cars. This can be seen as overlap of subur-bia where residents are depended on cars and a city center where people tend to use public transport.

But mobility and spatial proximity are not the only ele-ments which keep mass housing areas in limbo. Interesting to notice is that in socialist times the concept of collective gardens in the outskirts of city was popular (Mincyte, 2007). There people had their small houses for temporal stay and small piece of land which they could cultivate. In a way this can be seen as a compensation for a lack of space for people in their mass housing apartments. However during post-socialist times, this property often was sold or converted to a permanent houses. A link with a countryside for people in mass housing areas weakened and the original compensation idea does not work.

Figure 51. Garden city diagram by Ebenezer Howard, 1902


suburb

socialist mass housing

center

Figure 52. View to a courtyard. Kaunas, Lithuania

City center

Figure 55. A section of a typical post-socialist city

Figure 53. View to the city. Kaunas, Lithuania

Socialist mass housing

Figure 54. Location in the city.Cluj Napoca, Romania

Suburbs


POSITIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING – THEORETICAL SUSTAINABILITY

Even though there a lot of issues with socialist mass housing areas, they have a lot of positive qualities

too. Planning ideology promoted walkable distances, high density, great public transport connectivity, focus on social interaction and environment where children could reach their schools and kindergartens without crossing any roads (Bronovitskaya, 2009, p. 24). These are the qualities which are often promoted today in a sustainable compact city developments ( Jenks et al., 1996, p. 4). The amount of green space attracts residents too. And having in mind cheap rent, these areas seem to provide a good balance of qualities and price.

As described by Elkin (Elkin et al., 1991, p. 12), sustainable city “must be of a form and scale appropriate to walking, cycling and efficient public transport, and with a compact-ness that encourages social interaction.”. O’Toole (2005) in his article “It’s ‘Smart Growth,’ Comrade” concludes that similarities between New Urbanists, smart-growth (or com-pact city) and the socialist planning ideology “are far more numerous than differences”.

Theoretically socialist mass housing areas have potential of sustainable cities, however existing conflicts and poor ex-ecution of theories led to a hardly sustainable environment. It can be argued that people see the benefits of sustainability and that these areas even with existing problems provide special qualities which are often not found in any other parts of the city.


Figure 56. Photo by Alexander Gronsky from series “Pastoral 2008-2012”.


Figure 57. Fragments of solutions applied to the Dainava mass housing area in Kaunas, Lithuania


SOLVING CONFLICTS IN SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING AREAS

This part presents a mindset towards the conflicts in social-ist mass housing areas - the possible way of looking at issues and their solutions. Later, possible actions are discussed based on conclusions from the previous chapters.


DO WE NEED TO SOLVE CONFLICTS IN SOCIALIST MASS HOUSING AREAS?

The true essence of socialist mass housing areas is solv-ing conflicts: “Architectural practice has been inspired,

therefore, by the valid conviction that a socialist society cre-ates new methods and new possibilities for solving its social problems.“ (Gutnov and Baburov, 1971, p. 151). Urban and architectural design for a communist society heavily reflect-ed on basic ideas of Karl Marx (Gutnov and Baburov, 1971, p. 26). He is a creator of social conflict theory and through socialism theories he tried to solve the problem of classes. These ideas were reflected by building repetitive housing blocks where everybody, regardless of their status, would live in the same type of apartments. Common property and sharing facilities where part of ideology too. But in the end the goal to create a classless society was not achieved. Utopian Marxist idea to create classless society by using architecture as one of the tools failed. In such conditions it might seem smarter instead of solving existing conflicts in socialist mass housing areas, just to reevaluate and balance them. Otherwise solutions might reflect the past totalitarian attempts to achieve some perfect condition.

Moreover, sociologists see a conflict almost as a necessity of a modern city. However this conflict must be a democratic one. Richard Sennett has argued that: “When conflict is per-mitted in the public sphere, when the bureaucratic routines become socialized, the product of the disorder will be a greater sensitivity in public life to the problems of connect-ing public services to the urban clientele.” (Sennett, 1970, p. 198). Here a small everyday conflicts are had in mind. Having a variety of small everyday conflicts and confronta-tions allows people to develop themselves and at the same time prevent serious conflicts to breakout. Of course this means that not only good conflicts exist, but also negative ones, however they often need more time to develop, but at the same time they are more serious. These negative con-flicts are often fostered in a communities which are closed off from the rest. Richard Sennett often mentions few type of examples which often foster conflicts – suburban neigh-borhoods, ghettos and slums (Sennett, 1970). They try to create an illusion of belonging, of a safe space, but by that encourages the fear of the outside. Today the list of these spaces can be expanded by adding gated communities and mass housing areas (even those which are not ghettos, slums or gated). We can notice that today architecture in a post-

socialistic environment, can encourage separation and social enclosure by trying to achieve higher security or prestige (Ciupalaite, 2012). This tendency poses a threat for a social-ist mass housing areas that existing conflicts combined with a perspectives of shrinking population can become even more serious.

Having in mind that the socialist mass housing areas might be not the best places trying to achieve some ideal condi-tion without conflicts and that conflicts are important part of the modern city, we should not be afraid to leave them. If conflicts have potential to become more serious or already are negative they should be readjusted to get a positive social effects as described by (Sennett, 1970, p. 139): “For experi-encing the friction of differences and conflicts makes men personally aware of the milieu around their own lives; the need is for men to recognize conflicts, not to try to purify them away in a solidarity myth, in order to survive.”

city

future

past

private

public

countryside

Figure 58. Diagram combining all conflicts on a spatial scale


BORDERS

Existing spatial conflicts between city and country-side, public and private, past and present can be seen

beneficial if well balanced. Conflict between city and countryside can be balanced by differently arranging these two conditions. Today it is hard to distinguish what social-ist mass housing areas are, because everything is mixed in one place. By clarifying conditions it might be possible to have a city atmosphere next a countryside atmosphere. Same applies to a public and private or past and present conflicts where it is hard to find any borders between two conditions, everything is simply mixed. Without having any borders social exchange is not that strong. To have a border where exchange can happen (Sennett, 2011, p. 326), we must have two different conditions which border separates (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006, p. 9). Border is also a place not only for exchange, but conflict too. This means if it is possible to insert or adapt a border between conflicting elements, it will not remove the conflict itself, but rather make it more beneficial.

In Japan lack of attention to the borders during 20th cen-tury resulted that most of suburban housing estates of that time “are in miserable state right now” (Ohno, 2004, p. 28). This can be applied to most of the mass housing areas built around the world in 60s and 70s and Eastern Europe is no exception. But there are good examples too where borders play impor-tant role. Rail network in Japan often works as a border for exchange. In Tokyo’s Kashiwanoha area insertion of express line in the middle of a new development generated an active place where commercial area meets residential estate area. In other places in Tokyo or Osaka it is possible to find stretches of elevated rail tracks and under them variety of local activi-ties. Anything from dining, drinking to workshops and shops. Hong Kong gives some great examples too. In one of the densest neighborhoods Mong Kok in the evening some streets become a market places. People from neighborhoods around rush to buy goods. These marker streets sometimes stretch long way through different blocks. They are borders where exchange happen. These fiber like structures do not diminish identities of the areas they are touching, but rather work like stitching elements by using their potential.

We can notice that today perimeter of the socialist mass housing areas is gaining more importance. Naturally new activities try to appear next to the main roads while centers of the areas are losing attention. New shopping centers, advertisements, restaurants can be seen as a first gateways connecting originally isolated areas. Diagram based on cen-trality and atomic logic of New Urban Settlement (Figure 41 on page 49) is no longer valid. This shift towards an edge shows a natural need for a new borders in socialist mass housing areas.


EDITING FIBERS

The easiest way to deal with new spatial needs and work with existing conflicts in socialist mass housing areas

would be by changing urban fabric. This would involve tear-ing down existing buildings, building a lot of new structures to introduce housing diversity, rearranging spaces, changing big roads to small scale roads, creating continuous flows through areas and providing a lot of new facilities which in the end would create a city like atmosphere. In this way socialist mass housing areas would become a continuous parts of the cities.

It is a natural way for architects to work with issues by creating new buildings, functions, roads and often this ap-proach works well. There are a lot of examples where cities are trying to regenerate areas in this way, like Lyon Part Dieu area in France or Aarhus station area in Denmark. But socialist mass housing case is different. All Eastern Europe is experiencing dramatic decrease of population and social-ist mass housing areas often take a big part of the cities. Naturally this leads to a question of finance and the need for big amount of new facilities. Vast size of socialist hous-ing areas would demand a lot of investment, but decreasing population will produce big financial challenges and at the same time, the need for new facilities will decrease. No less important is to remember that during Soviet Union times, city centers of the cities were not a primal focus and today there are a lot of possibilities to develop city centers of post-socialist cities. The regular way where change is based on radical redevelopment and urbanization cannot be applied in socialist housing areas. Actions must achieve maximum effect with minimum investment.

Fibercity theory can be used for working with shrinkage in socialist housing areas. It respects modernistic nature of these areas, promotes a biggest effect with minimum investment, focuses on contemporary needs and is flexible to adapt to various scales and situations. Conflicting nature of socialist mass housing areas can be edited using Fibercity too.

FIBERS

Essential part of Fibercity are fibers. As they are linear type elements, they can stretch and influence different segments. Existing fibers differ from city to city. Bigger cities have more diverse palette of fibers and smaller cities have less. In Tokyo, elevated train tracks and metro lines can be seen as fibers (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006, p. 8), while in smaller Eastern European cities these kind of elements do not exist. Transportation networks of buses, trolleybuses and sometimes trams are the most obvious kind of fibers. Depending on the city structure, rivers and unbuilt slopes can be seen as fibers too. At city scale it is easier to find them, but in closer scale, like a district, it is a little bit more difficult.

We have to understand that freedom of movement is an es-sential part of our cities (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006, p. 9), thus fibers on a scale of districts can be of recognized in linear elements which encourage or correspond to move-ment. It can be linear parks, stretches of land along the road, inner spaces between buildings creating direction. Existing variety has to be recognized, but it is also important to find where new fibers can be inserted or updated.

Figure 59. Informal path structure - (in)visible fibers of the district (Dainava, Kaunas, Lithuania).


Figure 60. Fibers in Kaunas city: rivers, linear green spaces, major roads.


PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

Today the land in the socialist housing areas is public, how-ever the conflict between what is public and private rises, because existing needs ask for different situation. By recog-nizing natural commercialization of land in the perimeter we can imagine a further progress. This could lead to a continuous active strips along the roads becoming places for exchange which were not foreseen in the original plans. Now this process is happening slowly, chaotically and new functions often do not take into a consideration residential blocks around. Seeing main roads running along the perim-eter of the socialist mass housing blocks as fibers leading to the city centers, it would be possible to create new develop-ment possibilities which could benefit housing areas.

Privatization of the perimeter is a possibility which would benefit mostly commercial functions and would clarify only commercial part of the private-public conflict. There is another side of the conflict which is a private needs of the residents. Today all residents share the same space for their personal needs, but it is not theirs. In a case of Seoul this is solved by creating gated communities. Although it is a simple way for clarifying everything, it removes the possibil-ity of the social conflict which can be beneficial.

On the other hand, the idea of gated communities is very attractive to a lot of people. Examples in Seoul shows that it can work well, as long as it creates a contrast to the sur-rounding area. Existing vast amounts of public land in the courtyards of socialist mass housing areas could be given to the residents for a specific use. It would ease manage-ment costs for the government and excessive public land is anyway not beneficial for residents. As it can be seen in case of Shenzhen, where too much of green space creates distant spaces.

Assigning land around the perimeter and in the courtyards for private use does not remove the existing conflict be-tween public and private. The space around the buildings would remain public as people need to access their apart-ments. Schools and kindergartens in the center of court-yards would stay and they would need public access too. Public interests would overlap private needs in some places, but from undefined conflict this would turn to a more de-

fined beneficial conflict.

This overlap can be created by insertion of linear parks run-ning through the blocks. These parks could connect public facilities within each block and make a greater urban impact on the city.


Figure 61. Rearranging private and public conflict in a Dainava micro-district in Kaunas, Lithuania.


CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE

Essence of the existing conflict between city and country-side is the overlap between the need to live in a city and a need to have a getaway from it. This can be traced back to the original ideas where socialist mass housing areas had to provide different kind of lifestyle on the edge of the city with close proximity to the nature. As a compensation for a life in a small apartments people had collective gardens outside the cities. Today this changed and socialist mass housing areas are not anymore on the edge of the cities while collective gardens are often sold.

Following the setup of the private and public conflict we can see that city life is starting to take over the perimeter. This is where city type of functions like shopping centers, daily facilities, restaurants appear. On the other hand, courtyards as originally planned are still very green. Trees became bigger, almost no new development took place in courtyards. This naturally leads to a point where we can imagine apartment buildings being in a schizophrenic situ-ation – one part of them facing countryside atmosphere and other side being in the city. Clear separation of two vivid atmospheres can be seen best in a case of Honk Kong where city does not overlap with a greenery. Although it is a unique situation of Hong Kong, similar vision could reinforce a special character of socialist mass housing areas as unique spaces of the cities. At the same time generic apartments would become more diverse as they would have very differ-ent views through the windows.

To emphasize the contrast between the two, courtyards could be seen as a place to bring back the collective gardens closer to the residents. At the same time, idea of the collec-tive gardens could be updated with a contemporary needs. They could become places for elderly to spend their time taking care of vegetation and places for young families to teach children about nature. A great example of similar type of space can be seen in Tokyo where next to Kashiwanoha station, Urban Design Center Kashiwa, people can harvest vegetables and later a chef prepares meal from them. In socialist housing areas products could be prepared in a new restaurants which could be located on the perimeter of the area.


Figure 62. Rearranging conflict between city and countryside in a Dainava micro-district in Kaunas, Lithuania.


PAST AND PRESENT

Conflict between past and present reflect different kind of spatial situation. Here not the space itself is important, but how it changes in a relation to the surrounding spaces. Socialist mass housing areas since their construction in most cities did not change a lot. The museum-like feeling where space gives an opportunity to travel back in time is often positive in fast changing world. On the other hand, when everything is changing except the residential area, it might give a negative psychological impact to the residents. This could be managed by trying to balance the value of memory of the past and the need to reflect contemporary situation.

Tokyo gives a great case with widely applied land readjust-ment system where it enables a complex urban fabric to adapt to contemporary needs. The adjustment is done by redefining existing properties and as exchange giving a profit to the owners. Similar idea can be applied to the socialist mass housing areas where every apartment has different owner with different needs. In time of shrinkage it is possible to imagine that not all buildings might be fully occupied and this might lead to inefficient use and difficult management. Standardized apartments mean that most of the apartments in different buildings are structurally the same. For people there should be no big difference if they would need to change their apartment to the one in a building close by. Apartment readjustment process could lead to an easy way of tearing down building when a critical mass of empty apartments in the area would appear. The buildings which would be left, should be renovated and residents for their efforts should get some kind of benefit. In this case it could be a private piece of land in the courtyards or in some cases on the perimeter of the areas.

Kuba Snopek notices that spatial composition can be the main value looking from a heritage point of view in this type of areas, not so much the buildings themselves (Sno-pek, 2011, p. 97). Apartment readjustment could trigger spatial change of the areas and combine past and present. However depending on each context this change could have different scale and speed.


Figure 63. Rearranging conflict between past and present in a Dainava micro-district in Kaunas, Lithuania.


Figure 64. Fragment of proposed readjustment in Dainava area, Kaunas, Lithuania.


CONCLUSIONS

Ending part summarizes the research and brings several main points which were discovered. Main action points are presented while describing their limitations and possible further research directions.


LIMITATIONS Not all socialist mass housing areas are the same, not all of them are built using the same planning logic. There are various reasons why they are different - from political status of the country to a personal ambitions of the architects, but it is important to understand that this research has its limits and cannot cover completely all types of socialist mass hous-ing.

Research was based on an idea of a soviet mass housing areas with generic characteristics, such as:

• main city roads running around the perimeter of the area, • areas created in tabula rasa condition, • public facilities and public land in the centers of the

blocks, • satisfactory building condition.

If some of these factors are different, the area might have different conflicts and naturally the solutions will be differ-ent.

Figure 65. Examples from Lviv, Kaunas and Tallin demonstrates how different areas in different countries can have potentially same characteristics and in the end possibly same conflicts with similar solutions. All areas have

important city roads running along the perimter, public facilities in the center and vast green spaces.

Examples from Cluj Napoca, Plodviv and Vilnius are shown as cases where conflicts might be different. In cases from Cluj Napoca and Vilnius there are

no important city roads on the perimeter of the areas. This could cause that the conflict between private and public might be not important. In case from

Plodviv, the area does not seem to have public facilities in the middle, neither any public space around - the relation between surrounding area is very differ-ent. This means that conflict between city and countryside, public and private

could not present.


Cluj Napoca, Romania.

Plodviv, Bulgaria.

Vilnius, Lithuania. Tallin, Estonia.

Kaunas, Lithuania.

Lviv, Ukraine.


IN SEARCH FOR THE DIAGRAM OF EVERYTHING

This research was mostly focusing on a common as-pects of socialist mass housing areas. This leads to an

idea that it should be possible to make a diagram of perfect post-communist block - in a way an evolution of New Urban Settlement (NUS) diagram (page 49). Logically, what needs to be done is just to apply actions based on conflicts between private and public, city and countryside, past and present on top of NUS or any other generic representation of socialist mass housing area and the result would be a diagram solving all problems.

But it is a false assumption, because originally diagrams which were representing perfect socialist block were based on the atomic logic – they were completely isolated from the context, the areas themselves were seen to be built in tabula rasa condition. Today it is not the case, all of these areas have different relation with the city, functions and how they changed over time is very different. At the same time, discussed methods were heavily focusing on the conflicts in relation to the surroundings. This makes it impossible to summarize everything in one useful diagram. Socialist mass housing areas today are similar, the solutions can be simi-lar too, but the application is very different and it should encourage diversity between neighbouring areas. Instead of trying to have one unified misleading diagram it is better to talk about palette of solutions which can be mixed every time differently using the same mindset.


POST-SOCIALIST FIBERCITY

Fibercity theory is flexible enough to adapt to different contexts. However this research took a little bit different

angle and did not try to apply this theory to the city scale rather it was an attempt to work with the very specific parts of unspecified cities. The results are possible actions for transformation of socialist mass housing areas which allows them to be integrated in the post-socialist Fibercity. These actions encourage shift and focus to the edge of socialist mass housing areas, around the main public transportation networks which can be seen as fibers - the most important part of Fibercity. Further actions help to deal with other aspects of shrinking cities – vacant houses, occupation of elderly and use of empty spaces.

Having in mind that post-socialist cities often have several mass housing areas, there should be a way to create different charachters in them. This would enable a healthy competi-tion between different blocks to attract or maintain resi-dents. These charchters could emerge from existing spatial oppurtunities. The logic of most mass housing areas is the same, but distances, open spaces, proximity to the center, greenery is different. These spatial configurations could be main points for finding diversity.

Post-socialist Fibercity should be another research which would be connected to a specific city. But this research could help to edit and provide freedom while working with big, very important and originally static socialist mass hous-ing areas. Although there was no intention to investigate a scale of post-socialist city, but from research findings it is possible to see some tendencies. The planning strategy during socialist regime left city centers underdeveloped. In future compactness can lead to higher concentration of people in the center. The roads leading there often will run through socialist housing areas as the planning strategy was focusing on great connectivity in these areas. Shift toward the edge in socialist housing areas could leave courtyards as voids in the cities. Further development of centers and socialist mass housing areas becoming voids of specific, often rural atmospheres could be a new characteristics of a post-socialist Fibercity.

Figure 66. Socialist mass housing areas in relation to the fiber structure of Kaunas city.


RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS

Research tried to find possible ways to work with a shrinkage in a post-socialist countries. The background

of socialist mass housing is a specific political ideology and rapid urbanization. Built in the same way, at the same time by the same political system, today these areas have com-mon issues, regardless of the culture, climate and religion of the countries in Eastern Europe.

The view on the socialist mass housing can be expanded by looking at the outcomes of rapid urbanization in Asia where similar needs produced different conditions. Four different specific situations in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Soul and Shenzhen either gave ideas for possible change in socialist mass housing areas or showed a way which should not be followed. It was concluded that it is possible to adapt a land readjustment strategy from Tokyo to readjust the apart-ment ownership, gated communities in Seoul is a case which shows how to insert a contrasting environment in the city and Hong Kong demonstrates an alternative of balancing green spaces in mass housing areas. On the other hand Shenzhen revealed that too much green is not always a quality.

It became apparent that the complexity of the shrinkage in post-socialist cities is connected with a complex issue of socialist heritage in Eastern Europe. In a post-socialist countries it is important not only to adapt existing social-ist mass housing areas to the trends of shrinkage, but at the same time it is necessary to adapt them to a post-socialist condition. One of the key common charachteristic of the socialist mass housing areas discovered in the research was a shift of activities from the center towards the perimeter caused by new commercial functions.

Looking just at specific problems does not make sense as the complexity causes too many of them and it is hard to tell which are the most important ones. A step back must be taken. The research proposes to look on a reasons of these problems, the conflicts which trigger them. In this case the scope narrows down and it becomes possible to define focus.

Research suggests that “otherness” or as described by Foucault “heterotopias” (Foucault and Miskowiec, 1986)

is something which was not foreseen in original plans of socialist mass housing areas. Thus conflicts which could be described as “otherness” are unique and special in that con-text. These conflicts are based on the change from socialist to post-socialist environment. They generate problems, but at the same time also a special character of the socialist mass housing areas. Conflicts are seen as important parts of mod-ern cities (Sennett, 1970), thus instead of removing them it is proposed to maintain them. Main identified conflicts with such qualities are:

• Conflict between private and public• Conflict between city and countryside• Conflict between past and present

Furthermore research suggested that it is necessary to have a mindset or a vision to work with socialist mass housing areas as separate examples and study cases cannot give con-vincing direction. In this case a theory of Fibercity (Ohno and Ohno Laboratory, 2006) was a mindset. Thus further listed possible actions should allow socialist mass housing areas to become parts of a bigger city scale vision which would be based on the same Fibercity mindset.

The main actions are based on three spatial conflicts and the shift of activities from the center to the perimeter:

• Privatization of land on the perimeter and in the courtyards

• Creation of contrasting urban and rural atmospheres within the blocks

• Spatial reconfiguration of the housing areas

In the end, research shows that complex issue can be tackled by focusing on a few specific reasons of the problems rather than problems themselves. Readjusting existing conflicts should allow problems to solve themselves. But it is impor-tant to remember the limitations and importance of each different context. It is doubtful if ideas of this research could be applied to all of the socialist mass housing areas, because not all of them have same characteristics and the cities have different interpretations of socialist heritage.

Existing differences of the context would lead to different results even if the same mindset would be followed.


city and countryside

private and public

past and present

Figure 67. Readjusting three conflicts


Figure 68. This page: Actions applied to a Dainava socialist mass housing area in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Figure 69. Next page: A plan for a Dainava socialist mass housing area.

Linear “fiberparks” connecting public facilities in blocks around. They define and create links between different areas of the city. By decreasing unused public space, municipalities with their limited budget can focus on management of linear spaces.

Linear developments on the perimeter of the blocks define commercial activities and integrates areas with the city. Newly available land next to main transportation arteries can be attractive for busi-ness. Money generated from that land can stay in the block and finance other processes.

Private space in the courtyard of the block gives control to the residents and frees government from the management. This extra quality can ecnourage residents to be involved in to the changing of the block.



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Cover and backside illustrations are by author.

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(accessed 5.27.14).Figure 17. Author unknown [Drawing]. At http://telekom.org.ru/katalog-zdaniy/litovskie-

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pp. 108.Figure 22. Gutnov, A.Ė., Baburov, A. (1971). The ideal Communist city, I Press Series. G. Braziller.

pp. 121.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


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php?p=102120267#post102120267 (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 34. Drawing by author.Figure 35. Ibid.Figure 36. Hnit-Baltic (2014). At http://maps.lt/ (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 37. Gronsky, A. (2012) [Photohraph, from series Pastoral 2008-2012]. At http://www.alexander-

gronsky.com/#/portfolio/works/pastoral-2008_2012/0 (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 38. Google (2014). At https://maps.google.com/ (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 39. Collage by author.Figure 40. Google (2014). At https://maps.google.com/ (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 41. Gutnov, A.Ė., Baburov, A. (1971). The ideal Communist city, I Press Series. G. Braziller.

pp. 118.Figure 42. Drawing by author.Figure 43. Ohno, H., Ohno Laboratory, (2006). Tokyo Fibercity 2050. The Japan Architect No. 63,

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Vilnius, Mintis. At: http://www.miestai.net/forumas/showthread.php?p=762216 (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 49. Google (2011). At https://maps.google.com/ (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 50. Drawing by author.Figure 51. Howard, E., 1902. Garden cities of to-morrow (being the second edition of “To-morrow: a

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Figure 56. Gronsky, A. (2012) [Photohraph, from series Pastoral 2008-2012]. At http://www.alexan-dergronsky.com/#/portfolio/works/pastoral-2008_2012/0 (accessed 5.27.14).

Figure 57. Drawing by author.Figure 58. Ibid.Figure 59. Ropolaite, R. (2014).Figure 60. Ibid.Figure 61. Ibid.Figure 62. Ibid.Figure 63. Ibid.Figure 64. Ibid.Figure 65. Google (2014). At https://maps.google.com/ (accessed 5.27.14).Figure 66. Drawing by author.Figure 67. Ibid.Figure 68. Ibid.Figure 69. Ibid.


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