Name
Social city "New Kharkiv"
Years of construction
1929-1933
Architect
Address
Industrial district of Kharkiv
Social city "New Kharkiv"
In the USSR, in the years of the first five-year plan (1928-1933), one of the main tasks for architects was a socialist settlement. As a result of many debates, three main concepts were formed. The first one includes the ideas of urbanists (for example, L. Sabsovych), who had seen social cities as giant industrial and residential complexes at enterprises. The second group - so-called desurbanists, in particular, M. Okhitovich and M. Ginzburg proposed to replace the cities with string-typed settlements - with individual residential houses along highways. The third group was influenced by M. Ladovsky's theory and determined to find out such a scheme of urban planning that allows developing the city in the process of its expansion, without harm to its major functional areas. A social city was born from a combination of the best ideas of these concepts. In 1930, M. Milutin published a book titled Social City. And this publication largely influenced urban planning in Ukraine, with its task of creating a "new settlement of mankind on the basis of socialist production." Since the core of the socialist economic system was industrial production and the planned economy, according to the author of the book, the settlements had to be located near industrial and strategically important enterprises. Each settlement should be considered as a whole complex with the most reasonable, rational, appropriate, and interconnected main parts - industrial and agricultural enterprises, transport, energy supply, management, education, and housing. Expansion of existing settlements was supposed to be done either by creating satellite settlements or by re-planning these settlements, or their parts in the case of large cities. A textbook example of the implementation of the concept of a social city is the village of Kharkiv Tractor Plant, called Novy Kharkiv (New Kharkiv). Architects designed a satellite city for 100-120 thousand inhabitants that could exist separately from the capital. The main reason for its construction was the need to provide housing, cultural and social services for workers and employees of the tractor plant that was to be built on the so-called Losiv site, 7 kilometers southeast of the first capital of Soviet Ukraine. In the northern part of this area, there were planned to build 14 different industrial enterprises, and in the south - a social city. In December 1929, the architectural bureau of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (abbreviated NKVD), received an order to design the social city "New Kharkiv". In March 1930, a bureau presented a sketch project of the village of tractor plant "Traktorobud" for 113 thousand inhabitants. In April of the same year, all design work was transferred to the newly founded Kharkiv branch of Dipromist (State Institute of Urban Design of Ukraine). The settlement was founded in May 1930. The planning scheme of it was a rigid rectangular grid of streets, leading to Chuguiv highway - the main transport connection line of the industrial district and the social city and Kharkiv. There were constructed five quarters, which were originally built up with four- and five-story apartment-type residential buildings. These buildings were to be connected with each other and with clinics, canteens, schools and kindergartens. About 30 % of the territory was set aside for greenery. The construction of the settlement was carried out during 1930-1932. But the project ideas were not fully implemented. In 1932, the Kharkiv Tractor Plant began to participate in the implementation of the project, investing big money in it. This investment provided improvement of residential quarters, construction of sidewalks, kindergartens and nurseries, scientific and technical stations of the plant, canteens, restaurants, and a dwelling with 300 apartments and shops on the ground floor, etc. During the Second World War, most of 97 buildings of the social city "New Kharkiv" were destroyed. Only the planning structure and a few buildings of the first stage of construction have survived. "New Kharkiv" was considered to be a satellite city of the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Within the framework of this project, the idea of a social city as a functionally organized, constructed in line with the ideas of a new socialist way of life settlement, was fully realized. As for the urban structure of the new settlement, this is one of the most famous versions of the so-called linear city. Olena Gella, Liubov Kachemtseva
Social city "New Kharkiv" / Sputnik city / Quarters of the industrial district of Kharkiv
Alyoshin P. / 1929 -1933
Residential neighborhoods / Constructivism, Influence of Ukrainian folk architecture, Influence of classical art
No status / Preserved
Romanticism of Industrial Revolution
Influence of classical art
Constructivism
Art Deco
Influence of Ukrainian folk architecture
Influence of European Modern architecture