Resource information
How do the spatial dynamics of the socialist city compare with those of the market city? What happens to a city when all investment decisions are made without land markets? What are the outcomes when the forces described by familiar urban models are not allowed to work?Bertaud and Renaud describe the structure of Russian cities after 70 years of Soviet development. This is the longest socialist experience on record and its results are of paramount interest to urban economists.In the absence of price signals and of economic incentives to recycle land over time, the administrative command process has led to a startling pattern of land use. Its central feature is a perverse population density gradient, which rises as one moves away from the center of the city. (Driving from the center of Moscow, one passes through rings of Stalinera, Khrushchevera, and then Brezhnevera flats.)The Soviet city is also characterized by rusting factories in prime locations and high density residential areas in distant suburbs. Such a structure tends to maximize the economic and social inefficiency of the socialist city as well as its environmental ill effects.With market oriented urban reform, real estate prices are now emerging. Their negative gradient signals again the massive scale of past land misallocation in the Soviet city.The experience of socialist cities is also a powerful warning about the ill effects of public ownership and the allocation of land to achieve the "socialization" of land rents.This paper a joint product of the Transport Division, Transportation, Water, and Urban Development Department and the Financial Sector Development Department are the result of a program of technical cooperation carried out between the Russian Federation and the World Bank. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Laura Lewis, room S6109, extension 30539 (15 pages)The full report is available on the World Bank FTP server
