Never meant to be

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I ran across this a while back: Stalinist plan for the development of Moscow. (Via Design Observer)

Among the far-reaching projections of the first stalinist "five year plans", the 1935 General plan for the reconstruction of Moscow overshadowed all others. According to this plan, Moscow was to become, in the shortest possible time, the showpiece capital of the world's first socialist state. The General plan envisaged the development of the city as a unified system of highways, squares and embankments with unique buildings, embodying the ideas and achievements of socialism.

Most of the building designs are straight out of science fiction storyboards, although perhaps the arrow of causality goes in the other direction. I would say that the architecture is garish, but after watching the Donald Trump biopic last night, all of my frames of reference are in the dust.