Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather.
The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).
Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they’d look nice.
Dumb question, I know some places where they build quick and ugly and a few decades later they just remodelled the façade to make it pretty an modern. but those are small residential buildings in places where I lived. do you know of places where that happened in large projects like the picture?
Our commie blocks in East Europe tend to get colorful when their owners (either the city or the dwelers) decide to insulate the facade, which often happens across a whole district in a short time.
Random image to ilustrate.
And that is just the façade, some places renew the façade every few decades to keep the place fresh and desirable.
the benefits of high density urban design are also amazing and I assume I do not need to list them here. this is lemmy and I just need to wait for the appropriate autist to list them all.
And how is it controversial to build housing for everyone, instead of some pretty houses for those who can afford it.
Nah man. I lived in Russia most of my life and commie blocks are as depressing as they look on those pictures. You have a point that some are poorly maintained, but that’s not some, that’s most of the country. Just a mass of featureless grey blocks. Dirty, ugly and inescapable. About them being good quality on the inside is debatable. The flats are small and I could hear my neighbors all the time. Some of them used to be painted, but the paint is peeling off, only hylighting the ugliness. There’s very little upside to them in the modern world.
I live in Russia nearly all my life, and I can tell it really is a matter of proper maintancnce. Many cities do a very poor job keeping these buildings in a good shape, but when they do, it looks fairly good. Look through the comment section for examples, they are real, I’ve seen quite a few.
Not to mention European neighbors where they are still common, but due maintenance makes them look actually good.
The sound issues are fair, but there are ways to limit them.
is a matter of proper maintenance to an extend. You can paint a box, it’ll still be a box, just not as grey. And let’s not pretend Russia maintains anything. In Moscow maybe, but most of the country looks just as depressing as shown on the picture in OP. Our government never has money for fixing old infrastructure, only for war.
My point is, panel houses don’t have to look so ugly anymore. But people here are arguing like it’s the only alternative to homelessness. Live in ugly, cramped panel houses or nowhere at all.
More like, “back when these things were built, government had to build the most resource-efficient and mass-constructed housing, responding to a surge in demand for urban living due to industrialization”
It was either this or leaving people without any place to live.
Sure, modern situation is different, and we can have nicer homes.
Copying and pasting an old comment i made:
Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather. The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).
Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they’d look nice.
Toss some rooftop park/garden/green spaces up there as well and they’d be pretty damn great, as far as skyscrapers go.
The blocks usually have a lot of green areas (that’s why most of the pictures are from winter, they look gloomier). They were designed to be lived in.
Looks like the ones in the picture are already surrounded by green spaces - they’re probably already pretty great as far as skyscrapers go.
Dumb question, I know some places where they build quick and ugly and a few decades later they just remodelled the façade to make it pretty an modern. but those are small residential buildings in places where I lived. do you know of places where that happened in large projects like the picture?
Our commie blocks in East Europe tend to get colorful when their owners (either the city or the dwelers) decide to insulate the facade, which often happens across a whole district in a short time. Random image to ilustrate.
Such a lovely place to live, a bit of green, colourful housing, and I will assume it is a walkable place
And that is just the façade, some places renew the façade every few decades to keep the place fresh and desirable.
the benefits of high density urban design are also amazing and I assume I do not need to list them here. this is lemmy and I just need to wait for the appropriate autist to list them all.
And how is it controversial to build housing for everyone, instead of some pretty houses for those who can afford it.
These blocks look very different as a person on the street. They mostly only look bad from above where you can see all of them together
We have some burtalist apartment buildings in Minneapolis. They’re generally desirable apartments
Nah man. I lived in Russia most of my life and commie blocks are as depressing as they look on those pictures. You have a point that some are poorly maintained, but that’s not some, that’s most of the country. Just a mass of featureless grey blocks. Dirty, ugly and inescapable. About them being good quality on the inside is debatable. The flats are small and I could hear my neighbors all the time. Some of them used to be painted, but the paint is peeling off, only hylighting the ugliness. There’s very little upside to them in the modern world.
I live in Russia nearly all my life, and I can tell it really is a matter of proper maintancnce. Many cities do a very poor job keeping these buildings in a good shape, but when they do, it looks fairly good. Look through the comment section for examples, they are real, I’ve seen quite a few.
Not to mention European neighbors where they are still common, but due maintenance makes them look actually good.
The sound issues are fair, but there are ways to limit them.
is a matter of proper maintenance to an extend. You can paint a box, it’ll still be a box, just not as grey. And let’s not pretend Russia maintains anything. In Moscow maybe, but most of the country looks just as depressing as shown on the picture in OP. Our government never has money for fixing old infrastructure, only for war. My point is, panel houses don’t have to look so ugly anymore. But people here are arguing like it’s the only alternative to homelessness. Live in ugly, cramped panel houses or nowhere at all.
I don’t think the point is about present.
More like, “back when these things were built, government had to build the most resource-efficient and mass-constructed housing, responding to a surge in demand for urban living due to industrialization”
It was either this or leaving people without any place to live.
Sure, modern situation is different, and we can have nicer homes.