Monotown: Urban Dreams Brutal Imperatives examines the post-industrial transformation and transnational legacy of planned single-industry towns which emerged as a distinctive sociopolitical project of urbanization in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. Monotowns took form through the teleological establishment of industrial enterprises strewn across remote parts of the Siberian hinterland and entailed the relocation of vast populations requiring services, housing, and social and physical infrastructure, all linked to a given town’s productive apparatus. Today, having outlasted the political and economic systems which made them viable, many have become shrinking towns with graying populations and obsolete enterprises, even as they are subjected to considerable national investment and commanded to grow in order to catalyze their respective regions.
