From the late 1940s to 1991 the international system was organised around rivalry between a US-led capitalist bloc and a Soviet-led communist bloc, expressed through alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, a nuclear arms race, espionage, and proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The two superpowers avoided direct war but competed for influence across the decolonising world and in technology and ideology. The confrontation ended with the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. It defined global alignment for over four decades.
The Cold War structured world politics, economics and decolonisation, and left a deep urban imprint — divided cities such as Berlin, civil-defence and dispersal planning, sprawling military-industrial complexes and two rival models of how cities should be built and housed.
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