I mean the US has much less soulless housing, and we have enough housing for everyone. The issue is we have a society that doesn’t care to house the homeless.
The issues with the brutalist blocs built in Eastern Europe is usually more about the soulessness and drearineess of the architecture.
People on the streets is far more soulless than gray concrete housing. Especially because concrete can at least be painted over to make it look better.
But look how colorful the tents are!
I mean, the people shitting on “commie blocks” usually don’t mind that homeless people are barely considered human by the law… so they’d probably be on board with the idea of sending the police to slash all these tents
no pedos in my memes pls
Kinda works for representing evil, repulsive people though.
The commie blocks also had smart city planning, like you had a supermarket and everything else in walking range, and no through traffic. I do think they could be designed and build a bit nicer with modern technology. Especially higher ceilings and thicker walls. And then put those blocks out into nature or agricultural land and connect them via high speed rail or a self driving shuttle bus.
No city folks want to live in agri land due to smell and sounds from agri works. I do agree with more green areas. Stockholm gets a lot of flak for its miljonprojekt but there are quite a lot of trees and green areas within walking distance from most places
Affordable housing doesnt need to be expensive. You can have pretty nice midrises for very cheap. Design like 20 different models, all of em in 5 different colours, thats 100 different styles of apartment buildings and you just dont put two of the same next to eachother and problem solved. Mass produced, colourful, nice, cheap, housing.
People shitting on commie blocks, but there’s millions who would love to have a roof and plumbing.
The more densely we live, the more land that can be left wild/rewilded. We’re not entitled to a tick tacky vinyl wrapped house surrounded by lawns and pavement. Our earth is fucked and getting more so by the day. It’s a problem that can only be solved by us all living smaller lives.
I always tell people to look to Hong Kong for housing practices. They don’t do everything right, but they’re definitely on the right track.
I demand my own little box on a hillside!
Support state owned apartments!
Are the people shitting on these in the room with us, now?
There’s one two comments down from you.
Yeah but not unprompted. The only people who regularly bring these up seem to be middle age assistant professors lecturing on civic planning, Tankies, and direct opposition to Tankies.
Oh there is a reason
These commies blocks don’t just look ugly, they tend to become a crime riddled dump
Then again, you can also build affordable housing that doesn’t look like a prison system?
All the Projects in major cities are an example. But it isn’t the buildings’ fault. It just putting a lot of poor people with lots of problems all in one place tends to concentrate all the ills that go along with poverty.
They are very common in Germany and are in general really safe, the only crime going on there was smoking pot (which is not a crime anymore). I myself did not grow up in one, but many friends have and I still frequently visit people there. Floors, stairs and elevators are clean, neighbours greet you, when someone new moves in its common to help them as a neighbour.
Recently one of these houses was in the news “weißer Riese” in Duisburg because of crime. Now Duisburg is basically Germanys Detroit, used to be a coal mining city and has nothing else going on for it (still the homicide rate for Duisburg is 20x lower than for Detroit lol). And this house is 55years old and has been neglected by the developers, so rent for an apartment there is basically the lowest of any German city and in Germanys most undesirable city and somehow people wonder why there is some crime and this becomes the stereotype for all “commie blocks”.
But for every commie block like that you get 1000 others that are really safe and clean, offer cheap rent, are energy efficient as fuck, some even have their own bus or train stations, big playground in the middle and usually more on the edge of the city so closer to nature.
This stereotype thing about commie blocks always reminds me of the american homeless people sleeping in tents in front of the “victims of communism” museum…
I lived in one for a year. It was rather depressing, but one could see the potential if they were better managed.
These commies blocks don’t just look ugly, they tend to become a crime riddled dump
It will surprise you, but this is other way around. Hruschevkas have less crime than modern humant colonies.
The alternative, tent cities like skid row, are pretty crime-heavy. I’ve never heard about commie blocks being especially crime ridden, but I guess you have good reason to say what you did and aren’t just pulling it straight out your ass.
Cabrini Green immediately comes to mind. The police used to get sniped in the parking lot.
The Bijlmer in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, exactly the same
I’m not sure about the point you’re trying to make but the bijlmer, while having had a tricky past, is now a perfectly safe neighborhood. You really can’t point at the Dutch to make this point (if I understood this thread correctly, it’s early). They work hard at making these areas mixed use, promote cultural mixing etc. Paris on the other hand not so much.
A lot of formerly bad neighborhoods are turning, and I think that’s mostly due to gentrification, not because the idea behind the neighborhood (in this case Bijlmer) was somehow belatedly good…
The idea of the Bijlmer and how it was presented sounded great on paper, but neighborhoods that are exclusively these cheap stacked blocks still mostly attract people on the bottom of the economic ladder and thusly also a relatively large amount of people that will misbehave in various ways. I don´t think culture is relevant here.
This status quo changes now because apartments evidently go for 300 to 400k “because Amsterdam” and the people they originally built those blocks for can´t afford that in a million years.
Right yeah the whole project was a total disaster, there’s lots of info about all the ways it was badly done. Similar bad ideas as the French basically just putting all the “undesirables” in a bucket on the side. My point is they corrected course about it same as they did in Osdorp, like sure these days gentrification and housing prices in the whole Randstad are just insane so the dynamics are different but I do think it also starts with an actual will to do good urban planning corrections originally. I’m just saying, the Dutch are a bad example because they’re some of the best in the world at this stuff.
As someone from a post-soviet country, and had to live in one of those… there’s plenty of reasons to shit on them.
Indeed. There is a hierarchy.
Commit blocks are better than tents.
But proper social housing is better than commie blocks.
And proper social housing mixed with middle class owner-occupied housing in the same neighborhoods and even within the same buildings is the best.
Honestly if I wasn’t busy at work I’d make a whole list of why commie blocks are bad, including why they hardly make good social housing
For anyone interested, there are multitudes of videos on YouTube showing commie blocks and why they are bad, so don’t feel bad for focusing on work.
Anyone interested can find the information with an easy search.
Are they better than nothing?
In the same way being shot in the liver is better than being shot in the back of the head, sure. But if I saw someone saying victims of shootings that got bodyshot are “shitting on it for no reason” and “they only hate that their bullet scar is ugly” I’d call them out too.
Just cause something is better than the absolute worst doesn’t mean it’s immune from all criticism. There’s probably a fallacy name for this, but I don’t know it off the top of my head… I shall call it “the starving kid fallacy” for now after the classic example of “there are starving kids in africa so you should eat your vegetables” that parents do… and it the same way OP is doing by saying “there are homeless people, so you should be content with living in a commie block”. It’s just guilt tripping people for being dissatisfied with their situation for no particular gain other than a perceived moral high ground
Who is saying its immune from criticism?
Privileged people that have never known suffering should not be allowed to have an opinion on this.
there was a project to move people from favellas to social housing. Didn’t work for a few reasons, including long commute time to and from work and no infrastructure. People in the streets have a working community that helps them survive, simply moving them to hellscrapers destroys it.
Ok im gonna try typing out some of the observations of living in commie blocks from personal experience as well as some stories from my friends. Im also spoilering it for anyone who doesn’t want to read the list… also also… not a comprehensive list of everything, just what I can think of on my lunch break
here goes
- The first thing to point out in my opinion is the construction: The construction of these were often rushed so at best they require expensive renovations and at worst they collapse, see tofu dreg in china
- Safety: This is something I remember from my safety classes back in school. We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits… which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1. So the commie apartments don’t meet our modern safety standards
- Location: A lot of this down to the economic collapse of various commusist countries, but many of them are quite literally in a middle of nowhere, in terms of finding a job. This is something I struggled with a lot, cause any job I could find would require a car to commute
- Parking space: The commie blocks were often designed with green space in mind which would be nice, if they weren’t also not designed with the idea of every household having a car, so when you have 16 parking spaces and the rest of the 40 cars in the mud that was once grass they start to look a lot more depressing
- Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones. And even then the elevator usually started at the first floor rather than ground floor. This means if you’re disabled and the only available social housing is commie blocks… tough shit cause you’re not getting in. I know someone who’s a single mother with a disabled adult daughter who’s she the primary caretaker off. She would have to carry her daugher up and down a flight of stairs everyday, and then also drag the electric wheelchair up
- Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
- Utilities/equipment: Many of the commie blocks in my area didn’t have city gas, that means for cooking anything you either had to have an electric stove, or more commonly from what I’ve seen buy big gas tanks and lug them up to your floor. They also lacked extractor fans, so I hope you like greasy walls
- Insulation: Have you seen soviet wall carpets? It’s cause even with the windows closed you could feel the breeze through the walls. The winters there meant multiple jackets indoors, and the summers were unbearably hot too
- Insulation pt 2: With high humidity it also meant mold. Fun right?
- Insulation pt 3: No noise insulation either. At least meant the cops got called a lot for all the spousal abuse
Just to name a few :3… im gonna go eat now
Hey there, also lived in commie block (ground floor of the 10 level (+ground) one), wanna add few things!
- Ants and cockroaches. Always found they way in, even on higher levels! And once they are in, done, they ain’t going out.
- Outside look. Dunno how yours looked, but mine were all gray with corrugated steel at sides and a few stripes top-bottom of paint that was of unsaturated yellow, red or blue.
- But also good sides. We had pre-school, primary and middle school pretty much encircled with our commie blocks (lucky to be in town). Also a trading centre with bunch of small shops, one market, few services and post office. And a lot of small local shops.
- A lot of green and playgrounds. ^^
- Spoopy windows. I believe I lived with the original windows, when it was windy, they tried to be spoopy (oooooOoooOooooo). Good luck sleepin during thunderstorm.
Also, bonus point for specifically my neighbourhood - it was built on cementary. We had a lot of weird phenomena, I learnt where it was built much later after moving out.
Now, miracle happened as they renovated these! Got proper insulation and paint, and they look nice now. They also moved down some green space outside the circle and made more parking, leaving inner greenery intact.
The ants one is real x3… they were all over the place even on the 4th floor. No cockroaches where I lived but a ton of wasps… I think the wasps were nesting in the walls
And the whistling windows too hah
We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits… which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1.
The roof. If yours flat. And even modern housing doesn’t have two sets of stairs per entrance(?).
- Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones.
Got it. You are talking about very old 4-5 story buildings.
EDIT:
- Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
Wierd. It is much easier to get 50%+1 in “small” 60-appartments building, than in same in new housing with over 10k people living in 3708 flats.
Got it. You are talking about very old 4-5 story buildings.
Yes. Im talking about commie blocks, glad you noticed :p
9 story and 16 story brezhnevkas are commie blocks too.
Woah! Thanks for this, interesting hearing a firsthand account. Very similar to trailer park life in the US, in my experience. Public housing/the projects are also similar but I never spent much time in them, strong racial divide in most of the US between trailer parks and projects.
I’m assuming a fair amount of drugs/addiction, small scale petty crime, and domestic violence? Cookouts and parties? Is there pride in being from a commie block? Is there a culture and music? Also, while I’m blasting you with questions, any chance you know a good documentary or book/article?
Drugs I didn’t see much of in my town, alcoholism definitely… though I know that in other areas there are drugs as well… in terms of crime we mostly got general hooliganism, like throwing firecrackers or graffiti, as well as public drinking, not much theft and the like… domestic violence was definitely something that happened a fair bit
Not much cookouts and parties in the commie blocks themsleves other than occasional family get togethers for the holidays that get out of hand. Generally in my country we were big on going to the countryside, so over the summer up until night the area would be quiet as everyone would go off to the lakeside to grill
In terms of pride, I wouldn’t necessarily say anyone saw anyone any different depending on the housing they were from… knew lots of people from all walks of life, and in general I don’t think there was a major socioeconomic division in that regard :3… the closest to a commie block culture you could define would be marozai as we called them, more commonly known as gopniks elsewhere - generally people who were low class workers skimming by in the soviet union, mostly categorized now as wearing tracksuits, public drinking and eating sunflower seeds, and usually working some under the table job like refurbishing cars bought from auctions and selling them as new, or working in unlicensed construction, though the majority of people living in commie blocks were just standard families you’d find anywhere. In terms of music around holidays when people would stay out late you’d mostly hear rap… a lot of russian music too
And no particular documentaries im awere of that specifically talks about life in one of these areas heh
Although it does appear that living in them was better than living in a tent and perhaps led to living in a better housing situation? Unless the place was demolished after you moved out, it would be better than a tent for someone else.
Bad housing is better than no housing, largely in part that it helps people get out of the inertia and deathspiral of homelessness.
There’s a minimum a society should provide, and public housing at least can satisfy that.
We should absolutely provide public housing and hopefully it’s nicer than commie blocks lmao.
The point is people were removed from their homes and placed in commie blocks. The conditions were horrible and it’s all well documented since the wall fell. People shit on commie blocks because of the authoritarian history and not the fact that it’s a way to house homeless people. I’m not sure if I would prefer a communist block over a tent on a California beach to be honest I’ve only done one though.
Not disagreeing there. My one and only argument to make here is literally “I disagree with the statement that people shit on commie blocks for no reason, as they aren’t nice places to live”. Obviously I have lived in one, and it’s definitely preferable to nothing, so… it’s not like im saying “demolish commie blocks, and discontinue social housing” (the ones that do get major renovations are even quite nice :3… definitely think there should still be more accessible options for social housing needs tho) just saying that the situation of living in one, as portrayed in the meme isn’t ideal
The issue is that you presume the options are either public housing or a tent. You are missing the other option, which is simply allowing developers to build more housing on their own and removing the ability to speculate on land value, forcing land owners to earn an income only by the benefit their land provides to others. Zoning reform, good urban infrastructure, and Georgist tax policy do this without necessitating terrible concrete commie blocks everywhere
That has failed everywhere it’s been tried. Capitalists will never intentionally make less money. They don’t have souls.
They will always just build cheaply built ‘luxury’ apartments/condos destined to be demolished in 20 years so another developer can do the same thing.
Please tell me where this has been tried. I know of no major government entity which has enacted Georgist tax policy.
If you hate capitalism, you are missing the big picture - the enemy of the average person isn’t the accumulation of money and respurces, but the accumulation of power - money and resources being but one aspect of this. Capitalism is good because it mostly occupies the psychopaths with becoming rich, rather than seeking seats of power in government. Capitalism is the best form of innovation and resource distribution we have yet devised, and works well for people with proper safeguards in place preventing accumulation of too much wealth and ensuring the welfare of the average citizen.
You’re partially right, dengism has caused the single largest improvement to the quality of life for its adherents in history compared to all other economic ideologies, and part of dengism is capitalism exclusively for luxury items. But all other forms of capitalism have objectively failed society. Capitalism itself is the evil factor, it is a poison.
Poisons can be used as medicine when you’re sick, but taking that moderate amount of poison too long will kill you the same as an acute dose.
You cannot easily fight back against those with capital, so the accumulation of capital will always result in the accumulation of power. There is not amount of guardrails that help forever. The goal must always be to eliminate capitalism and the private ownership of capital entirely.
I can assure you that living in my house is a lot better than living in a tent as well
The history of these countries cannot be seen in a vacuum. Socialist countries were historically enemies of the United States. The U.S. did everything in its power to weaken them (including economic policy and assassinations) in the USSR, South America, and Asia. And then people knowingly proclaim that socialism can never work.
Yes there was corruption, bureaucracy, oversight, and abuse. Of course, there were missteps and injustices. The same can be said, however, for the U.S. today. At least the communist countries have the excuse of having to stand against the richest and most powerful country in the history of the earth. They did not have the luxury of developing an alternative system in peace.
If history were different, we would still live under the “divine right of kings” and people would argue that parliamentarianism is an untenable mob rule. So we surfs should just continue to work the land and suffer the abuses of the king and his vassals. But our course of history has proven this a lie; we know that the status quo only serves the interests of those who exploit the labor of others.
Don’t see where I said socialism can’t work. I said that after living in a commie block for around 15 years I know that they aren’t good housing :p…
Fair enough, I read too much into your comment
You know Stalin’s dead and he can’t actually give you a head pat for being a really good boy, right
Ah yes if only the Americans weren’t checks notes feeding starving soviets the USSR would have won. Laughs in Berlin airlift.
Well, this picture is just poor city development. Living in appartement buildings 3-5-7-9 floors high is all very fine, IF
- The neighbourhood is (pedestrian) permeable enough. The space around it must be pedestrian/cycle friendly and green. The blocks in this picture are way to wide, forming too big barriers for local slow traffic
- there is a bit of variation in colour, size, shape. A neighbourhood with such blocks can surely have 4 identical buildings, but not 30… It feels uneasy to humans this way. We need a taller or oddly shaped or nicely coloured one once in a while, as a reference point, as things that give the neighbourhood a bit of an identity
- The buildings themselves are high enough quality (well insulated, every appartement has 1 or 2 real balconies, …)
- there are plenty of playgrounds and sports facilities and cars are in general carparks in garages at the edge of the neighbourhood, not on the streets
- neighbourhood is well connected to the rest of the city
- there are plenty of jobs in the area. Probably the hardest part.
May I introduce you to the concept of microdistrict. That’s how the original soviet developments were planned out - every house is guaranteed to have necessities like stores, a polyclinic, a school, a kindergarden, or a fire department within reasonable distance. Usually, walking distance. Everything is pedestrian permeable, there’s public transport connecting the “sleeping districts” where there were mostly apartments to the industrial areas where the jobs were. And yeah, playgrounds in or near every building.
Jobs in the same area as apartments isn’t really happening though, office buildings and industry tends to be away.
Good on paper, terrible when commuting to work 2 hours one way in a packed train.
The original commieblocks were fairly walkable, with parks, schools, grocery stores, and so on nearby. I’m personally a fan of making all the buildings concrete blocks and then getting a bunch of local mural artists to paint them for visual distinction.
It’s not rocket science. Vienna did this once. Also you don’t need car parks if a city is well designed. Public Transport and Carsharing is enough
And most of Japan/Korea as well. Most people here prefer living in housing blocks
I would add to this list, buildings and units that encourage resident diversity. As in, a diversity of ages, household size, economic class (and ideally also race/ethnicity/country of origin). Organically this means a mix of “luxury” and “budget” housing, unit sizes (studio through three bedroom at minimum), building ages and designs, target demographics for shops (e.g. upscale shopping alongside budget grocers), and community amenities (e.g. schools and senior centers). In a pinch subsidized housing can help with integration, but it’s a limited and costly solution.
Don’t forget access to businesses - I don’t know the stats for 3 floor developments but 5 is already plenty to support nearly all your needs within at most a 15 minute walk.
“I have never lived in, occupied, or been near anywhere that employs this type of housing. But, here’s a list of stipulations I have decided are absolutely necessary based on nothing other than what I feel former soviet satellite states are like.”
-This Dude
I live in appartement building that is 5 floors high, 4 appartements wide, and almost all of the points I mentioned are satisfied in this location.
It’s a common mistake to confuse “commieblocks suck” (they do, I agree) with “living in appartementbuildings sucks” (it doesn’t, can confirm.)
No, they don’t actually they are HUGE. A lot quite ornate. They’re great places to live, I know. I have.
The projects were a flawed concept not least because it concentrates inequality leading to the obvious results.
So instead we have a morass of inscrutable regulations on 3-4 levels (federal, state, county, city) with wildly complex funding schemes making the few expert developers wildly wealthy while building tragically few affordable units.
Not just the concentration of inequality. Also there was often no infrastructure, no shops, no pubs, no nothing, super thin walls, so you could hear all your neighbours, terrible heat isolation… not so different from the tents but higher concentration of people, which made it worse. In many post-communist countries those were later remade into livable places, but it took lots of time and money to do so. Totalitarian regimes suck.
all I see are 2 examples of brutalism
Nah. Both are brutal, but only one is brutalist.
I’ll take “How the government can’t solve your problems with unlimited money” for a preferential bread line or $1000 Alex.
You’re pretending that the blocks were built to house the homeless, when it was well to do families being forced into them. They lacked just about everything one can desire. So ya I don’t think the inhabitants of these places remember them fondly.
I am happy my grandparents can’t read your comment. And neither can my great grandfather.
I would be happy to learn about your family’s experience in a commie block. Which country were you guys from? What did your grandparents do for a living? Were they living in the country before Soviet occupation or after? High ranking party officials didn’t stay in commie blocks that’s all I meant.
Russia. Great grandfather was woodworker(lost finger on job), grandma was language teacher(and worked in kidergarden for some time), other was computer operator back when it was specialized job(and I think programmer too? Not sure.), grandpa served in military until retirement, other died before I was born, so I don’t know much. And great grandfather’s family was basically serfs in the middle of nowhere without sewers, running water, central heating, roads, electricity
and soviet goverment.High ranking party officials didn’t stay in commie blocks that’s all I meant.
Yeah… Every time someone says how much better stalinkas were than hurchevkas and brezhnevkas, they tend to ignore that mostly party elite lived there. Unless city had no stalinkas, then party elite had nowhere else to live other than commie blocks.
Thank you for sharing. A computer operator back then could have been working with the space program, either way thats a pretty cool and important job. So to understand correctly, your family was swept out of a tough rural life and lived a better life with more opportunities within the block? They did not resent the living conditions? Was there ever a time where they wanted more, and did any of them live to see the wall collapse?
My statement more aimed at satalite nations of the USSR and not russia itself, but I love history, and personal lived history is my favorite, so really appreciate you sharing yours!
I try to understand just because I’d have no problem living in a shoe doesn’t mean everyone should.
