Preservation of socialist urban landscapes

Ref.: 155
Key theme: 02 Functional integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 14/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

LONG, Colin * (Australia) - Deakin University

ABSTRACT

Urban landscapes reflect the political, economic and social contexts in which they were created. In many countries the transition from socialism has led to uncertainty about how to deal with the built legacy of the socialist period.

In Moscow, despite years of post- Soviet change, the traces of communism are everywhere, especially in the monuments of Stalinism, the Moscow Metro and the Stalinist- gothic skyscrapers such as the Moscow State University and Hotel Ukraina. The scale and functionality of these structures protects them from demolition, but do Russians have any sense of them as heritage, as worthy of protection because of what they say about the past? The destruction of other symbols of the communist era such as statues and the Moscow Hotel, suggests that the idea that communism left a valid built heritage is still contentious. The reconstruction of pre-revolution buildings such as Kazan Cathedral and the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer only serves to reinforce the suspicion that many Russians, understandably, are more interested in forgetting the communist period than in commemorating it. In Berlin, a city whose painful history is written so clearly in the built environment, the idea of communism as heritage is clouded by a number of factors: the complexity of the city's traumatic past (how does one deal with the heritage of Nazism?); the process of reunification and the rise of 'ostalgie', nostalgia for the GDR; the redesignation of Berlin as reunited Germany's capital; the development opportunities represented by areas that were wastelands while the Wall divided the city. In East Berlin the built legacy of communism is inescapable, especially at Alexanderplatz and Karl Marx Allee, and further from the centre at the large state housing estates. Yet even in Berlin uncertainty about how to deal with the legacy of communism in the built form of the city remains palpable. Understandably, most of the Wall was removed without due consideration for how its malign presence could be commemorated. Alexanderplatz remains a rather derelict monument to socialist grandiosity and urbanism, and is undergoing rapid redevelopment ­ but how does a city sensitively remake urban precincts which drew their function and spatiality from a disappeared socio-economic and ideological system?

In the transitional socialist states still run by communist parties, such as Laos, Vietnam and China, rapid development and equivocal attitudes towards the socialist period place the built fabric of that period under even more threat.

This paper asks several questions :

· Should more effort be made to understand and preserve the built heritage of socialism?
· In townscape preservation does visual amenity tend to trump significance as the key criterion for preservation?
· How does socialist heritage fit in the pantheon of 20th century architectural heritage?
· Is historic townscape preservation more about aesthetics, tourism and place marketing than about commemorating or understanding the past?
· Could a heritage praxis that deals maturely with socialist heritage be able to respond to the great challenges facing heritage in the 21st century?

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