30 years of depression and “injustice”. However, in most cases, the need for a new CI
decreased simultaneously with a population decrease in rural areas (Tammaru 2001).
According to observations, ambitious local politicians create overcapacity when developing
new CI, increasing operation costs per inhabitant and wasting in that way public resources.
Besides, because the conflicting interests between small towns and surrounding rural
communities in that respect, there is a lack of cooperation in using existing CI.
Two main hypothetical solutions can be given. First, central place oriented
approach recommends to close down or to put into different use existing CI located in
small centres and to build new relevant CI facilities in larger centres. This is a rather
expensive way to behave and may rise up protests from localities where CI is currently in
operation and where people will lose their close by opportunities.
The second solution, applying the network paradigm, is to renovate existing
infrastructure located more dispersedly and to use it more intensively guaranteeing access
through improved public transport. This approach, however, would need very good co-
operation of local communities and organisations as well as the application of new
simultaneously better organisational structures like joint community owned enterprises.
Both approaches are hardly put into the practice, because of the high requirement for social
capital and trust.
Considering the increased physical mobility of the population and improved civic
structures in the future, we may assume that central place theory and normative/positivist
planning of the CI can and will be gradually replaced with a network oriented model since
it fits better with concurrent CI location and consumption of particular services and
facilities.
However, this assumption is somehow quite contradictory with current CI planning
practices in Estonia, a peculiar combination of traditional mechanical top-down Soviet
planning regime and ultra-liberal laissez faire capitalism.
Assuming, that collective farm practices are unique in post-soviet countries, we try
to elucidate this phenomenon more deeply and figure out special features of command
economy and its CI planning practices by comparing it with Western planning theory.