The Ideal Communist City

Description

(From the preface)This book was initiated by the architecture -facultyof the University of Moscow in the late fifties. For theItalian edition in 1968 the material was enlarged andrevised by the authors, a group of young urbanists,architects, and sociologists, who represent a renewalof ideas and men that is taking place in Soviet Russia,especially in fields concerned with the organizationof the physical environment. Their work is particularlyoriginal in its general assumptions, method of inquiry,and choice of models. The authors turn away from theproposition that the city should attempt to restorethe habits and appearance of the countryside. Thisproposition adapted from the bourgeois naturalismof the nineteenth century, contradicted the ideological foundations of communism. By contrast, what isproposed in this book is world-wide urbanization. Theauthors design concept, the New Unit of Settlement,incorporates countryside with city, conceiving bothas a communication network, uniformly intense anddiffused.