In December 1991 the Soviet Union was formally dissolved into fifteen independent republics, ending nearly seventy years of one-party rule and central planning. The collapse terminated the command economy and the state monopoly on land and housing across roughly one-sixth of the world's land surface. New governments inherited cities built to socialist norms — standardised mass housing blocks, subsidised rents and state-allocated flats.
It triggered widespread privatisation of housing and land and a sweeping post-socialist restructuring of cities, as markets, private property and speculative development reshaped urban form from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.