Research Project and Thesis
Elke Beyer
This dissertation project analyzes how urban centres were conceptualised and built in the USSR in the late 1950s and 1960s - during the period of rapid urbanization and consolidation of living standards in Soviet state socialist society after the war and after Stalin’s death. It departs from the question in what way ideas, programs and processes of modernising and organising society at large were tied up with urbanist proposals and plans. By placing the Soviet approaches in international context and by tracing the transnational exchanges of ideas among urban planners, I seek to understand how - arguably - universal notions of progressive urbanism and the desirable character and outlook of civic centres were developed in an expert community of planners in this period. Case Studies of planning and building new civic centres include examples in Moscow, Zelenograd, Tashkent, Ul'yanovsk, and Togliatti.
Elke Beyer
This dissertation project analyzes how urban centres were conceptualised and built in the USSR in the late 1950s and 1960s - during the period of rapid urbanization and consolidation of living standards in Soviet state socialist society after the war and after Stalin’s death. It departs from the question in what way ideas, programs and processes of modernising and organising society at large were tied up with urbanist proposals and plans. By placing the Soviet approaches in international context and by tracing the transnational exchanges of ideas among urban planners, I seek to understand how - arguably - universal notions of progressive urbanism and the desirable character and outlook of civic centres were developed in an expert community of planners in this period. Case Studies of planning and building new civic centres include examples in Moscow, Zelenograd, Tashkent, Ul'yanovsk, and Togliatti.