Lasnamäe is the largest district in Tallinn and was planned in the 1970s for a population far greater than the city then had. Its spine is the Laagna road — a dual carriageway running in a trench blasted straight through the limestone, with the housing standing on the plateau either side and footbridges crossing above it.
The trench is the thing that makes this district unlike any other Soviet housing estate. It was meant to carry a tramline that was never built. What was built is a canyon of raw rock with panel blocks along the rim, and it remains one of the most striking pieces of urban planning anywhere in the former Soviet Union.