This dissertation examines the Soviet project of transforming a predominantly rural and agricultural population into an overwhelmingly urban citizenry. Between 1957-1991, about 90 million people became city dwellers, constituting a third of the total population. Along with this statistical growth, “living envelopes” of personal residential space doubled on average. Accomplishing this required a massive effort, a campaign that was centrally coordinated, but relied on the input and mobilization of millions of Soviet subjects. The dissertation focuses on city planning and design professionals, tracing the evolution of the city planning system in the 1960s, 70s, and early 1980s, and the contestation and experimentation around ideas about living environments, personality formation, and human flourishing. The dissertation participates in a growing body of historical scholarship that takes the late Soviet period on its own terms, recognizing the quantitative and qualitative shifts that made the pre-war past a "foreign country" to many Soviet citizens. It seeks to revive an interest in late Soviet political life by speaking to the discourse on democracy and participatory politics in urban studies. My dissertation tracks the transformation of political interest groups at the local and regional level from a sectoral and industrial principle to the territorial principle (an agenda widely characterized as “place-making” in the Western world) and demonstrates the essential role played by city planning administrations, led by chief architects, in quantifying, cultivating, and representing these interest groups in political life. Finally, the dissertation engages with a revisionist conversation on the fortunes of the administrative state and planning in the global 1960s and 1970s. By emphasizing the political implications of the Soviet leaders' commitment to the "scientific-technical revolution" and the contention that technical experts could resolve the contradictions and increasingly prominent negative effects of rapid industrial growth, the study sheds light on a uniquely Soviet critique of the administrative state that emerged from within the system and was tolerated and empowered to make policy well before Gorbachev's reforms.