Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries

This open access book focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It also explores claims that a distinctly “westward-looking orientation” in their design produced housing estates that were superior in design to those produced elsewhere in the Soviet Union (between 1944 and 1991, Estonia was a member republic of the USSR).  The first two parts of the book provide contextual material to help readers understand the vision behind housing estates in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These sections present the background of housing estates in the Baltic Republics as well as challenges and debates concerning their formation, evolution, and present condition and importance. Subsequent parts of the book consist of:

• demographic analyses of the socioeconomic characteristics and ethnicity of housing estate residents (past and present) in the three Baltic capital cities, 
• case studies of people and places related to housing estates in the Baltic countries, and 
• chapters exploring relevant special topics and themes.

Daniel Baldwin Hess is a Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is a former Visiting Scholar and Director of the Centre for Migration and Urban Studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia, where he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Fellow funded by the European Commission. His research develops new pathways for understanding the complex socio-economic and ethnic landscapes of cities and related spatial inequalities. He is co-editor of the journal Town Planning Review (Liverpool University Press) and co-editor of the book Housing Estates in Europe: Poverty, Ethnic Segregation, and Policy Challenges (Springer Publishing 2018).

Tiit Tammaru is a Professor at the Centre for Migration and Studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Tammaru is also the Head of the Centre for Estonian Diaspora Studies and has received both the Estonian Science Award in the Social Sciences (2010) and the Natural Sciences Award (2011). His fields of interest include socio-spatial inequalities, geographical changes in urban regions, governing urban diversity, and social mobility.

“This much-needed book pays great attention to explaining the historical context of the birth of this sort of housing, the use of standardized types and projects versus innovative planning principles … and the architect’s aspiration towards novelty and original solutions in developing housing estates for the Soviet man.” (Triin Ojari, European Planning Studies, Vol. 28 (6), 2020)
“I strongly recommend [this book] to housing scholars and practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic. The editors and the pub­lisher, Springer Open, deserve credit for publishing two attractive and useful books that address the breadth and depth of issues related to housing estate revitalization across Europe. The numerous photographs (color as well as black-white) throughout the book helped me to understand changes in the design of European housing estates—the good as well as the bad.” (David P. Varady, Geography Research Forum, Vol. 39, 2019)