Ultramagnetic

While I failed to mention it last post, Gazprom City reminded me of Magnitogorsk (which means Magic Mountain City in Russian), the city that Stalin ordered to be built from scratch during one of his 5 year plans. The idea was to take an area rich in iron ore, build a city full of processing plants and factories right on top of it and *presto!* -- instant marvel of socialism. They even brought in Ernst May to head up a team of foreign architects to design a linear city in which the factories and housing units would run in two parallel strips, with a greensward between them. The idea is that just like Stalin built the factories near the iron, all the workers would be assigned a living space near the place they where they were to work.

Whatever picture you have in your head right now about how this turned out, the reality was much worse. Stalin was in such a hurry that construction began on the city before May really got out there, so he had to really massacre his plans to conform to the situation as he found it. The result was a really contorted city that was a "rationally designed" city that didn't make any sense. And of course all the people brought in to work were just agrarian peasants who knew nothing about manufacturing. Because the city didn't grow naturally, there were all sorts of infrastructure problems that weren't anticipated, like noxious fumes from factories that always blew right into residential areas. The whole debacle is laid out really well in a book by Stephen Kotkin called "Magnetic Mountain."

Wikipedia says that May built 20 cities for Stalin in 3 years, which, even considering the disasters, seems breathtaking when you consider that it's taken 5 years to even begin building the replacement for the World Trade Center. But I guess that's the bright side of totalitarianism.

P.S. The subject line is a reference to the Ultramagnetic MCs (featuring the inimitable Kool Keith, aka Dr. Octagon), who have a reunion record coming out soon. I'm quite excited.