Street network in Rakvere in the 17th century. Compiled by Lilian Hansar
Plan of Rakvere in 1683. Compiled by S. Waxelberg. The Military Archives of Sweden
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During the Republic of Estonia, in the 1920s and 1930s, most old towns did not undergo any rapid development that would have considerably altered them. Although in several towns it was planned to replace the historical set of buildings with something new, nothing much ever happened; the few clearly higher stone houses in streets with historical buildings are signs of unfinished urban construction plans. The Republic of Estonia did not last long enough to realise all the planned innovations in towns. When the Soviet Union gained control of Estonia, it initiated truly radical changes in urban planning and construction. The general plans of post-war large towns mainly involved preserving historical structures, whereas in smaller towns it was decided to replace the old buildings with new ones. The claims that the first post-war years spared our historical heritage and old towns are thus somewhat inaccurate: the majority of plans involved changing the network of streets and buildings in historical centres. Until the mid1950s, all plans relied on traditional plan-
ning principles. Symmetrical compositions were designed where central squares formed grandiose ensembles – towns were planned as large sculptural works of art. In the 1960s, the new residential districts and their service centres were designed further away from old centres, but the reconstruction of historical towns and the addition of new buildings continued. The Soviet power structure provided a favourable social background for planning: all land belonged to the state, which enabled some utopian urban plans to emerge. An overview of the development of old towns leads to the conclusion that the radical changes in their evolution can be associated with totalitarian ideologies of the ruling empires in Estonia and utopian ideas of urban construction, accompanied by aspirations of order and rationality which are typical of utopias. Good examples are provided by medieval colonial towns, with their fixed plans, the Swedish-era regular plans of the ideal town and fortifications, tsarist urban construction regulations, standard facades and tessellation plans, ideas of great cities of the Republic
FROM TOW N TO H E R I TAG E CON S E RVATIO N AR EA