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[THE FOUNDATION OF RUSSIAN TRANSPORT ENGINEERING] Gorodskiye ulitsy i mostovyye [i.e. City Streets and Pavements]

Dubelir, G.

Item #2864

Kyiv: tip. A.M. Ponomareva, 1912. VIII, 408 pp.: 368 black-and-white illustrations, maps, and charts. 27,3x18,2 cm. In original publisher’s printed wrappers. Professional restoration of the binding. Very light soiling of the covers, but otherwise very good.

Scarce. First edition. Text in Russian.

A monumental pre-revolutionary manual on urban planning and municipal engineering, written by the renowned road and transport engineering scholar Georgiy Dubelir (1874-1942) and published in Kyiv in 1912.

The author was a pre-eminent Russian and Soviet scientist, civil engineer, and pioneer of road construction, transport planning, and urban design. After graduating from the St. Petersburg Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication in 1898, he gained distinction for a graduation thesis proposing an early underground transit system for Moscow. Over his academic career, he taught at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineers, and the Moscow Automobile and Road Institute (MADI), where he later became prorector. A foundational figure in Russian transport engineering, Dubelir developed early standards for urban road surfaces, designed municipal traffic systems, and authored influential textbooks on city planning and roadway design.

As follows from the foreword, the book represents an expanded version of lectures read by the author at the engineering department of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute of Emperor Alexander II, covering the course of local transportation ways. The edition was intended primarily to assist students in mastering the course and compiling related projects. Our copy apparently belonged to one of those engineering students at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute who used it as a hands-on practical manual for municipal coursework.

The book comprises two main parts, the first devoted to city planning, including urban growth, the selection of new outskirts, street and square layouts, street networks, intersections, and block construction. Dubelir argues that street networks should satisfy not only practical but also “artistic” requirements and identifies general principles for avoiding visually disadvantageous arrangements. For example, he cautions against convex longitudinal profiles, which can appear unattractive from below, while wide, tree-lined streets with a concave profile (a sag ratio of 1/400) tend to create a picturesque effect. To illustrate these principles, Dubelir frequently draws on foreign examples, citing successful street layouts and architectural solutions in cities such as Innsbruck, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin as models for Russian urban planning.

The second part of the book is dedicated to the construction and maintenance of pavements, addressing general principles, stone materials, quarrying, and specific pavement types including stone, wood, asphalt, brick, and macadam, alongside sidewalks, utility integration, and cleaning methods. In this section, Dubelir names paving streets as one of the most neglected areas of municipal development in Russian cities compared to Western Europe and America. He breaks down pavement requirements into technical, sanitary, and economical categories, evaluating materials ranging from traditional stone blocks and mosaic pavements to wood blocks, brick, concrete, and cast or pressed asphalt.

The book contains 368 black-and-white illustrations, half-tone photographic plates, intricate street plans, and technical cross-sections that vividly document early 20th-century urbanism. The images feature historic street views from both the Russian Empire and abroad, including Innsbruck, Brussels, Berlin, Charlottenburg, Cologne, Harbin, Bakhchisarai, Earswick, Hampstead, Dayton, Antwerp, and London. The volume also provides numerous detailed maps and layouts of cities and parks, including Washington, Moscow, Novgorod, Mainz, and others, alongside specialized diagrams illustrating square geometries, pedestrian passages, snow-plow operations, and tramway placements. These include detailed layouts of urban greenery and park geometries like Tauentzien-Platz in Breslau and Steinplatz in Charlottenburg, suburban housing configurations in English garden suburbs like Earswick and Hampstead, American grid and suburban layouts near Dayton, Ohio, as well as complex engineering schematics like asphalt-pumping tools, snow-plow distribution models for varying street widths, and precise tramway clearance configurations.

Overall, a monumental pre-revolutionary manual on urban planning and municipal engineering, written by the renowned road and transport engineering scholar Georgiy Dubelir.

Worldcat shows 1 copy of the edition at the University of Michigan.

Price: $1,200.00