Here There Be Dragons

We're very excited to bring you this new episode after a bit of a break. While the first half the of the season was very focused the built environment, the second will focus on urban intangibles in Odes[s]a. The vibe, if you will. And what better way to start off than taking a walk?

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To return from a bit of a hiatus, let's take a walk with Boris through Gorky Park in the south of the city by Cheremuski District. Here surrounded by peaceful family moments, Boris reflects on the war's lack of trace on the park even as it deeply impacts his orientation towards public space.

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Although much of the conflict of urban life is focused on public space there’s a lot to be said for the negotiations we all maintain indoors. Through the restaurant kitchen downstairs or the noisy neighbor next door the city tends to extend inside. This episode is sort of an audio gatecrashing, I’m inviting myself into a few Odes[s]an interiors, and you listeners are welcome to join me. 

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Every so often we’re going to bring you something we’ve been calling off-cuts and footnotes. These are extended scenes and deep dives that didn’t make the final cut of the main episodes. This is also a place where we can talk about your questions and comments. So feel free to send your thoughts to [email protected] in a voice note or a quick message.

In this off-cut we're taking a walk with Boris through the repetitive courtyards of Tairova. Here we move beyond critiques of Soviet sameness to enter an almost hallucinogenic wormhole of yard after yard after yard. Right when you're certain you've been here before or seen this before, it occurs to you that maybe you're in the same place or every place all at once. Either way it's a perfect place to reflect on the future lives of Odes[s]a.

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This episode lets catch the 145 bus to Kotovsky or the 149 to Tairova and end up in the Sleeping Districts, where most Odesiti live. We'll discover the pains and strange pleasures of concrete panel houses and enter the Soviet housing worm hole, where Odes[s]a's shifting demographics meet a repetitive urban landscape that some residents prefer to overlook.

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Every so often we’re going to bring you something we’ve been calling off-cuts and footnotes. These are extended scenes and deep dives that didn’t make the final cut of the main episodes. This is also a place where we can talk about your questions and comments. So feel free to send your thoughts to [email protected] in a voice note or a quick message.

This episode is a footnote. We’re going to take a deeper dive into housing in the context of the Soviet Union. In the USSR and generally in the post-World War II city planning regimes, housing and new construction technologies played a major role in urban development booms. We’re still feeling the impact of it to this day. The Soviet Union is a major contributor to this moment because it planned standardized residential developments to be deployed around its territories and spheres of influence. These designs were replicated so extensively that you can find them all over the world, from Poland to Iran from Estonia to Vietnam and of course in Odes[s]a.

In this footnote, we’ll hear from Kate Malaia, the author of Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room, about the development of these residential blocks. We’ll also hear from Odesiti who lived in the Soviet Union’s first housing experiment, the communalki or communal apartments and later transitioned to different types of residential housing in Soviet Odes[s]a.

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In this episode we’re wandering west of the city center to a neighborhood made famous by writers, TV shows, and movies; Moldavanka. However the neighborhood’s story is told and whatever is understood of its reputation, there have always been working people making a life there somewhere in between the myths of legendary criminals and shared toilets.

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Every so often we’re going to bring you something we’ve been calling off-cuts and footnotes. These are extended scenes and deep dives that didn’t make the final cut of the main episodes. This is also a place where we can talk about your questions and comments. So feel free to send your thoughts to [email protected] in a voice note or a quick message.

In the changing neighborhood of Moldavanka one space seems ungentrifiable, Starokonnyi Market or the Old Horse Market. Let’s take another walk with Boris through this kaleidoscopic flea market, where people come for the conversation as much as the deals. We'll be spending more time in Moldavanka in our next episode, Off-Center.

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Every so often we’re going to bring you something we’ve been calling off-cuts and footnotes. These are extended scenes and deep dives that didn’t make the final cut of the main episodes. This is also a place where we can talk about your questions and comments. So feel free to send your thoughts to [email protected] in a voice note or a quick message.

It was an enormous pleasure to receive field recordings from Boris. In this scene he surveys the cathedral in Soborna Square after it was damaged by Russian rockets. You'll hear more from him through out the season. To spend more time with the cathedral and questions of identity in Odes[s]a's city center, check out Odes[s]a: Origins [Витоки].

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In the second part of our exploration of Odes[s]a's city center, we move through the streets on City Day. From the bars by Cathedral Square to the McDonald's on Derybasivska Street to the street art gallery on Kuznechna Street, residents are thinking about the urban histories that describe or disrupt their understanding of Odes[s]a's identity.

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