Taillin, Estonia, summer 2016,

we arrived to the city and did the traditional tourism walk in the historical center. Taking some information and reading about what our book say about the city, it was clear the URSS influence on the city in their history.

After that we went to the appartment we were going to stay. This was inside of a major district built during the URSS period. They are called micro-districs.

How does micro-districts work?

The person hosting in his home was a Russian citizen, he explained to us that the round shape of the district tried to influss the sense of community into the people living there.

All services where inside: stores, school, police station, a small health office… in your day to day you could spend the whole day there. As a child, to stay in the distric was very common.

For instance, in a building of flats, the older children had to pick-up the younger ones, so they would go with them to the school; in this way the mothers could work at home. There were other rules like that to reinforce the sense of belonging to the district. This small gesture was to promote the continuous collaboration between people.

Cupertino

Today I have seen a picture in the news about the evolution of the new Apple headquarters office. When I saw the picture I could not resist the comparisson to the URSS microdistricts.

What do you think?