{"podcast":{"title":"New Books Network","slug":"new-books-network-529292","podcast_index_feed_id":529292,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LIT4543917034","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/c7b83ac8-f29a-11e8-95f0-b7d36d8f3036/image/Main_Channelpage.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":500,"summary":"Interviews with Authors about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network","last_synced_at":"2026-07-13T16:21:50.993700+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292"},"episode":{"title":"David Leupold, \"The Death and Life of Southern Soviet Cities: Urban Futures and Their Afterlives\" (Routledge, 2026)","slug":"david-leupold-the-death-and-life-of-southern-soviet-cities-urban-futures-and-their-afterlives-routledge-2026","published_at":"2026-06-15T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292/david-leupold-the-death-and-life-of-southern-soviet-cities-urban-futures-and-their-afterlives-routledge-2026","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK7634520269.mp3","audio_url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK7634520269.mp3","summary":"What does it mean, three decades after the demise of the USSR, to inhabit cities built for a future that has never arrived? In pursuit of the question—what is left of the socialist city?—this book aims not only to trace the material and mnemonic remains of the socialist city, but to show how the Soviet discourse of the city at times engendered radical ideas that challenged the narrow confines of state socialism itself. These ideas are, for instance, the efforts of Esperanto-speaking internationalists from Czechoslovakia to build the internationalist city from below in the Central Asian steppe, the quest of Armenian Futurists to root the architectural style of Soviet Armenia in the country’s Persianate heritage, or a Jewish-Kyrgyz philosopher's vision of turning a science town in the hinterland of Moscow into the first ecopolis of the USSR. In an effort to rethink the life and afterlife of the Soviet city from its geographical South, The Death and Life of Southern Soviet Cities: Urban Futures and Their Afterlives (Routledge, 2026) explores the material and immaterial legacies of socialist-era urbanization in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. To this end, it embarks on a historical and ethnographic journey to urban sites in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. In a quest to reconstruct competing visions of urbanity that emerged from within the Soviet South, using varied empirical sources in Armenian, Czech, Kyrgyz, and Russian, the book outlines four urban visions: bottom-up urbanity, rooted urbanity, polycentric urbanity, and ecocentric urbanity. By understanding the social vision of a \"socialist city of the future\" beyond the political center in its trans-local independence, the book highlights the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Soviet South and its historical embe…","meta_description":"What does it mean, three decades after the demise of the USSR, to inhabit cities built for a future that has never arrived? In pursuit of the question—wh…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3056,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-network-529292/episodes/david-leupold-the-death-and-life-of-southern-soviet-cities-urban-futures-and-their-afterlives-routledge-2026/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292/david-leupold-the-death-and-life-of-southern-soviet-cities-urban-futures-and-their-afterlives-routledge-2026.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}