Living in Soviet Housing Estates: Urban Space, Transformation and Multiple Narratives

Soviet mass housing estates, where most of the urban population still reside, are among the significant inherited legacies of the Soviet past in Russia. Although the post-Soviet era has witnessed various spatial transformations in these areas, little is known about how these living environments have changed across the country and beyond the largest cities since the end of communism. The case of one of the mikroraiony in the East Siberian city of Irkutsk illustrates how the narrative of experimental and unique architecture from the 1960s and 1970s has become spatially influential starting from the 2010s. A qualitative analysis of data from multiple sources reveals multilayered social relationships, confrontations and attachments.