no matter how much you hate commie blocks, you’re an idiot if you think homelessness is an acceptable alternative.
I love those buildings and live in one, couldn’t be happier. Super nice view of the city, and very affordable since where I live many of those buildings still belong to the state.
One advantage many overlook is the amount of natural light, what a.o.t. has important benefits to the mental and physical health of the population. According to Wilfried Stallknecht (an architekt behind many projects in the GDR), the buldings should keep a distance that guaranteed that every appartment had, on the 22. February of the year, at least a room with 2 hours of sunlight. If you walk in those planned areas you see the huge space surrounding the buildings, with lots of green areas, parks, playgrounds and so on.
I’ve noticed that a lot of complaints about the people’s republics is that their stuff isn’t fancy enough. Only one kind of soap, only one kind of apartment, only a handful of cars and they were all unimpressive. Antisocialists either never notice or never care that they have the privilege to be picky.
They’ll critisize the housing in the former USSR and ignore the tent cities in the USA.
Worse yet, they not only criticize the “went from peasant agrarian to industrial powerhouse in around 30 years” they also fail to address that the VAST majority of the “choice” they have is actually just the same 3 international megacorps in a trenchcoat posing as hundreds of brands.
Not just any industrial powerhouse. Germany is an industrial powerhouse. Italy is an industrial powerhouse.
Socialism produces industrial powerhouses that are putting people into space, building nuclear reactors and inventing revolutionary technologies.
Germany is an industrial powerhouse.
Not for much longer the way things are going.
i mean, their “argument” is:
one useful version of something
i sleep
lots of crappy but colorful versions of the same thing with different names
good stuff
tbf, sometimes it was just one crappy version.
They’re very superficial people who judge people and their worth on appearances all the time. Also a very wasteful culture that has led us into the environmental mess we’re continuing to face
That is the indoctrination from Western children’s cartoons to differentiate good guys and bad guys according to theor appearance, first impression and surface mannerism. Although there are parodies that points to the misleading indication by appearance and stereotypes, this indoctrination had perpetrated racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ablism, and Islamophobia. They also led to the fear of hard working innovative scary red masterminds who gain the authority from the invisible hand to manage lazy Capitalists.
Rip and tear every billboard until we have the mirrors edge city
Mirror’s Edge is fucking awesome. I prefer the 2016 version’s city than the 2008 game’s, though
If they were limited to 8 floors and had diverse shapes (not just a prism of the footprint), they’d be abundantly exciting to live in.
I don’t think the shape matters that much, so long as it’s some kind of rectangle. Because sure, odd angles and curves may look fancy from the outside, but they are a nightmare to actually furnish since most furniture relies on straight lines and 90° angles.
Also the problem with commie blocks with less than 8 floors is that, at least in older apartment buildings, sometimes they wouldn’t build an elevator unless there were 8 or more floors. Regulations are different now in most countries what with accessibility requirements, but that’s only for newly built ones.
At the end of the day it depends on the density of the urban space that you’re trying to provide housing for. If it’s very dense you may have no choice but to build very tall.
For me i’d say the most important criteria are what the neighborhood is like and how big the apartments are. If you have everything you need on a daily basis within walking distance, good public transport, and the apartments are not too cramped (2-3 rooms), then i don’t care too much about the rest.
You can easily achieve population densities of 10k/km2 (25k/mi2) with townhouses up to 4 floors, each with a backyard, and a couple parks and plenty of public spaces and ample public transit as well. This density will fit 1 million people in a radius of 6 km. Add in some apartments and you’ll boost it even more. For this, in most cases you don’t need an elevator, and you don’t even need reinforced concrete. In fact the goal is to be less dependent on fosail fuels or the grid, not just for getting around town, but for entering and leaving your residence, and maybe even in the construction of it.
In terms of shapes I’m mostly talking about the footprint not being just a simple rectangle with each floor congruent to the ones above and below it. Much of it would still be close to rectilinear, but there’s a lot you can do with that. Smaller floors toward the top open up the possibility for green roof balconies. Overhangs are broadly used in German timber-based vernacular architecture. Archways and courtyards are everywhere in planned units.
Were/are they pet friendly 👀
Yes. In Poland i only seen pet unfriendlyness move in from the west with the idea of landlord.
Though of course loud and long barking dogs in commieblocks are fucking nightmare.
Oh wow, it’s actually super interesting to know that being pet unfriendly is a western thing. I know when my mom went to Europe (she visited multiple countries, none in the east unfortunately) she told me that she saw dogs pretty much everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to find housing in Canada that is both affordable and medium to large dog friendly.