Soviet urban transit planning was greatly influenced by the official Soviet ideology and worldview espoused by the Party. Rational, scientific, and detailed planning became the norm, as Soviet planners sought to rationalize and modernize urban transit. As elsewhere in the Soviet system, heavy central management was desired and present, coordinating urban transit policy with national and all-Union transport plans, urban development plans, economic development plans, resource allotment plans, and so on. This process was facilitated by the state ownership and control of the relevant firms, allowing detailed quotas and rationing to be put in place. (Hirt 32–33)
Nevertheless, as elsewhere in the Soviet economic sphere, the unrealistic goals and quotas led to widespread ignoring of these official goals, abetted by the poor oversight within the Soviet bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the plans were still driven from the top, giving little chance for average citizens to participate in or provide feedback on projects, and many projects demonstrated an abject lack of understanding of local conditions (Hirt 34)
But the impact of ideology was not limited to the way in which projects were run. The very nature of which projects were chosen, and which goals were established for such projects was very much a product of Soviet ideology. The 1920s saw various attempts to transform cities, such as the introduction of communal living arrangements; due to a lack of funding available, however, few substantial projects were completed. However, starting in 1931, a project of creating “socialist” cities was undertaken, mostly striving to improve the aesthetics encountered by the average urban dweller: large boulevards were constructed, and the Moscow Metro was begun, with its large and ornamental stations. (Morton 15–18).
In 1935, Moscow established a long-range plan for the future of the city; this was to be a pattern repeated elsewhere in the Soviet Union. However, the implementation of this plan was problematic at best, owing to the rapid and continuous growth of the city, combined with ambiguities in ministerial structure: it was often unclear which government agency ought to be responsible for a given project, leading to infighting and a lack of progress. Therefore, as of the late 1950s, the Soviet Union adopted a more centrally-organized approach to the organization of urban development projects, though this seems to have done relatively little to alleviate the problems previously encountered. Accordingly, despite the near-exclusive focus given to infrastructure since 1971, relatively little progress was made from then until the fall of the Soviet Union towards improving urban life. (Morton 15–18) This was somewhat compounded by the focus on large-scale projects (often termed “big is beautiful”), even which smaller projects might have been more appropriate (Hirt 34–35)