Making room for the future? Half-emptiness and the ordered demolition of Soviet housing in Estonia

This article investigates how demolition has been tested as a strategy to address the problem of half-emptiness in a post-industrial town. Focusing on a state-led pilot project in Kohtla-Järve, it examines how the removal of semi-vacant, privately-owned apartment buildings was framed as a tool for regeneration and governance reform. Through observant participation in the design and implementation of the project, the article analyzes how different stakeholders—state officials, municipal authorities, and residents—interpreted and negotiated its aims. Conceptually, it develops ‘half-emptiness’ as an analytical lens for understanding urban decline not as absolute collapse but as a condition of suspended partiality, where infrastructures, governance, and everyday life persist in incomplete and uncertain forms.