Unfinished project as a way to conceive Soviet urban planning in the 1920s and the 1930s: The case of socialist cities

Abstract

The article examines the appropriateness of using the concept of 'unfinished project' in relation to the practice of Soviet urban planning in the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on the case of socialist cities, the author shows that the very attempt to evaluate the process of their construction following the strict normative logic of 'consistency with the plan' appears to be ineffective. That could be explained by the fact that the most Soviet settlements of the 1920s-1930s were designed in the context of constantly changing urban planning principles and standards, and that resulted in the emergence of various interim 'plans' and 'projects' influenced by situational factors, particularly by the current recourse base, organizational conditions, etc. In this context, the notion of 'unfinished project' becomes nothing more than a formal characteristic of the building process in an attempt to describe the current stage of project implementation in the absence of any clear evaluation criteria. Moreover, the normative use of this notion does not allow see Soviet urban planning as it was done in the regions, with its unique city-planning solutions produced and original methods and technologies developed by Soviet architects under extreme working conditions. The author suggests that such a strategy sprang from the adoption by public discourse of the 'unrealized utopia' narrative which saw the Soviet architectural tradition in the symbolic categories of 'unimplemented project' and 'unrealized future'. According to this narrative, 'unfinishness' is not so much of an analytical characteristic or evaluation criterion but is primarily a metaphor and a figure of speech that shape a certain perspective of the Soviet architecture and determine the character of its analysis.