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Evan DeaKyne
Evan DeaKyne
"Every citizen shall be guaranteed the necessities to live a dignified life in private accommodations.” - 1957 Soviet Housing Decree
Housing Instability in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a city that has faced severe housing shortfalls for well over a century now. As of 2020, there were over 66,000 people without a home in the entire county, an increase of 16% from the previous year. In addition to the immediate need to house those 66,000 people, there is also a need to provide additional capacity for the housing insecure, address issues related to racial and class tensions, reduce and eliminate poverty, address spatial mismatch with regard to residential districts and access to labor, and finally to increase the capacity of the city to absorb future shocks like the 2008 global recession and historic levels of migration due to climate change.
It is clear that the free market is no longer sufficient for the adequate distribution of housing, and in fact, is likely responsible for the current trends of accelerating dispossession. So to contend with this complex web of societal tensions, I looked to the Soviet Union.
In the years following the immense destruction of World War 2, the Soviet Union was in dire straits. They faced a severe housing shortfall that numbered in the millions while also contending with an administrative territory that spanned 11 time zones and played host to a population consisting of hundreds of ethnicities speaking over 100 distinct languages. The Soviet government was facing severe economic hardship and possible collapse if they could not house their workforce, and so in 1957 Krushchev signed the Soviet Housing Decree which guaranteed a private dwelling fully equipped with modern amenities to every citizen.
From 1957 to 1990, utilizing industrial processes and prefabricated materials, the Soviet Union managed to provide
70 million Single Family Occupancy units to over 300 million citizens
the vast majority of which were allocated within Soviet Microdistricts
Soviet Microdistricts
Kyiv, Ukraine
Typical Soviet Apartment, 750sqft
The Microdistrict represented the smallest form of government within the Soviet Union and served as the "foundation of life for every citizen". Architects and Planners strived to "embody the mutual relationship of dwelling and nature", incorporating vast stretches of green space and radial courtyards between tall housing blocks. The relatively small size and sparse accommodations of the apartments were made bearable by an almost complete uninhibited access to the city.
Microdistricts were also designed around the principles of the 5-minute city. All essential services (including medical facilities and groceries) are accessible within 1500 meters of one’s home while the things that one needs on a daily basis, like schools, senior facilities, childcare, shops, parks and restaurants; were accessible within 500 meters of one’s home. They were typically surrounded by arterial streets designed so that everyone could access everything within the microdistrict on foot and these streets carried car, bus, and tram traffic to major transit hubs that filtered into higher frequency and capacity options like subways, which really streamlined the average commute.
Nowa Huta, Krakow, Poland
In contrast with the Western city, which was designed around the principles of getting the population from the suburbs to the city center and back in order to facilitate economic efficiency, Soviet cities were designed around the principle of making any single point within the city completely accessible from any other point in the city when utilizing multimodal transit options. Microdistricts are relatively modular in nature and can be tacked onto parts of the city in a honeycomb style to accommodate growing populations, and they have largely stood the test of time, enduring every imaginable ecosystem, climate, and terrain over the decades.
The uniformity of their design presents an advantage with regard to tensions extant within US society since no microdistrict is designed to be better than any other. They represent a commitment to equity and mutual respect regardless of class or race. The bland design of the building facades were originally intended to act as a blank slate for aesthetic customization so that they could be placed into a specific context or location without clashing with existing architectures or cultures.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the neoliberal reforms that followed, which exposed housing and property to the free market for the first time, microdistricts retained their administrative power and communalist principles. Microdistricts consistently report higher rates of housing retention, higher quality of life assessments, higher average wages, higher diversity, and are typically much greener relative to surrounding neighborhoods.
What makes Soviet Microdistricts a crucial option for Los Angeles to consider, however, is the level of density they allow, especially considering the high value of land within Los Angeles. The highest possible theoretical density achievable through this design is about 20,000 residents per 25 acres.
Location
Considering the dearth of available developable land within Los Angeles, I opted to look toward dead space, or space that was otherwise exclusionary when selecting a location. The area encompassing Chavez Ravine was appealing because of its historical context: in 1958 it had been seized through Eminent Domain from 1800 Mexican-American families for the purposes of constructing over 1000 units of public housing. Instead, that land was sold to the Dodgers, who turned much of that space into a parking lot that lies empty a majority of the time. Upon analyzing the available land, I found that there were about 205 developable acres, meaning that the area encompassing the Dodgers Stadium could theoretically host a population of 166,000 people.
Adhering to principles of justice and reparation, we would re-seize Dodgers Stadium through Eminent Domain and use that land for its original intended purpose: public housing.
Dodgers Stadium & Downtown Los Angeles
Dodgers Microdistrict
To take advantage of the central point where the stadium is located, and working around the topography, I designed this district in line with the unique design of Estonia’s Väike-Õismäe district. The outer parts of the radial arterial road comprise mostly of 5-storey buildings with occasional accenting of 12- and 16-story high-rises, and the inner part is mostly 5-story buildings along with an administrative building and a lake. Additionally, there are 4 schools, 2 hospitals, 4 daycares, 3 groceries, and uninhibited access to the abundant greenery of Elysian Park.
The maximum walking distance to amenities that any resident could expect is 400 meters.
The total population of this microdistrict would be 95,000 people.
Conclusion
Past efforts to address the housing crisis in Los Angeles have been stochastic, proceeding incrementally in fits and starts. At every juncture, these efforts have been insufficient to close the rapidly growing chasm between the unhoused and available housing while also ensuring an equitable distribution of necessary resources and services. It is unlikely that Dodgers Stadium will ever be seized and repurposed for the allocation of public housing, but there are boundless opportunities wrapped up in other exclusionary or dead spaces, such as parking lots and golf courses, and the density ratio and adaptability that Soviet Microdistricts offer is very generous.
This has been a thought experiment on what is possible when one discards allegiance to neoliberalism or the free market and instead opts to embrace communalism and mutual aid, which are necessary preconditions to adequately address existential crises like climate change. When communities were arranged this way within the Soviet context, the untapped latent demand for truly meaningful and communal work activated immediately, rendering monumental challenges very feasible. The same can be true for the people of Los Angeles.
References
References
Varga-Harris, C. (2015) Stories of House and Home: Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years, Cornell University Press.
Ellman, M. (2014) Socialist Planning. Cambridge University Press.
Metspalu, P., Hess, D. (2018) Revisiting the Role of Architects in Planning Large-Scale Housing in the USSR: the Birth of Socialist Residential Districts in Tallinn, Estonia, 1957–1979. Planning Perspectives, VOL. 33, NO. 3, 335–361
Andrianova, G. (2015) Architecture of Soviet Housing and Main Soviet Urban Planning Concepts [Published Thesis]. Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Department of Architecture, Suzhou, China. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.5147.5366.
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