ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the specifics of the local urban-industrial and ecological planning strategies embraced in the late Soviet period in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in order to respond to increasing environmental decline of the city caused by its rapid industrialisation. It demonstrates how temporary and ad hoc construction of urban-industrial infrastructure interrupted and diverged the realisation of state-approved masterplans and how the opportunistic placement of production enterprises created multiple functional and ecological problems within the city fabric.
In the period between 1960s and 80s, the architects and city planners in Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk) set the goal to systematise and include previously unrestricted and largely independent development of industrial enterprises under the general control of the city planning process. They were able to survey earlier inaccessible industrial areas and for the first time produced actual plans of rapidly growing industrial sites in the context of the city. The main purpose of such initiative was to ensure a more sustainable development of the industrial zones while reducing their negative environmental impact on the city. Additionally, the new approach in spatial organisation of residential infrastructure was proposed with the purpose to mitigate high levels of industrial pollution, including transportation noise, light and air pollution.
