Y’all be making fun of this, not realizing that you don’t hear about a housing crisis in Eastern Europe
And yet there definitely is one. These are still capitalist economies after all.
Maybe once they run out of apartment buildings, but that’s not gonna happen any time soon.
They already have. Here in poland the commie-block apartments are bought and sold on the free market and a lot of them are kept empty as an investment while people have nowhere to live.
These problems exist everywhere where there is capitalism, no matter what infrastructure was already built there before.
The crisis is having to live in these rabbit hutches for humans.
Factory farming human misery and suffering is what these are.
Eh, they’re okay
Much better than being on the street and you’re kinda exaggerating how shitty they are.
I lived in one long enough.
You’re underestimating how shitty living in one of those feels.
And how exactly is that different than one of the same 5 apartment buildings that are being built in every single city in the US?
I’d stay in a kruschevski tbh but I’m also weird and find them fascinating
They are a great affordable housing and the blocks are designed for people to have everything close buy. Beats American style suburb 8/10 times IMHO
They are actually based on some Danish designs adapted to USSRs standards.
Beats American style suburb 8/10 times IMHO
Only if you’re lucky enough to live in one of the few well-maintained ones. At least in Russia, many are falling apart with loose handrails, water damage, sketchy elevators and mold.
That’s because Russian regime is even more retarded then what we got in the US…
Although looking at Florida condos… Maybe not lol
Snark a side… the issue is maintenance not the design
At least in Russia, many are falling apart with loose handrails, water damage, sketchy elevators and mold.
Handrails and elevators can be replaced during building repair. In mine and my grandma’s homes elevators were replaced somewhere in 2008-2015. Not so sure about water damage and mold.
There was an architect, Le Corbusier. He was a socialist, so his projects of future cities involved a lot of public spaces where people spend their free and working time, while a person’s home was just a small area for sleeping and eating breakfast. The Soviets took the idea of small personal homes, and dropped the “nice public areas” part.
- It’s cold in the winter because the walls are quite thin
- You can hear your neighbours loudly speaking
- I was lucky to have a normal-sized room in a later “Brezhnevka” house, but many of my classmates had rooms (if they had a separate room at all) where you had a bed, a cupboard+desk combo, and a chair in the middle, that you have to remove to get to the window. Japan-sized stuff.
Speaking of Le Corbusier, as his main (I know, that’s subjective) achievement was a technical approach to ergonomics - all sizes in his projects were based on human sizes and proportions. Meaning that a height of a ceiling is a height of an average adult man raising his hands, + some space. It worked, and it’s cost-effective, but you really like some extra space, and have more than 3 sq.m. toilet.
All fair criticism and that’s why I prefer to have 600k visiable homeless in the US with likely another 1 million living in their cars.
SInce you knew all of this would also know All of this is fixable with modern technique and extra investment.
You would also know that north American style construction with shiti wood frame for both houses and apts are a lot worse for noise . Furthermore they only gotten properly insulated for in the 1990s so all the stock prior to that is beyond inefficient.
Literally boomer 2mmilion mcmension and you still hear guy walking upstairs…
Like wtf y’all paying for
Oh god I already feel claustrophobic knowing everything in that tiny space would be made for people half a foot shorter than me, it’d be living in that fucking RV all over again
The one time copypasting a bunch of buildings was actually a good idea
I recently moved to a German city that, whenever I mention it, is described as “ooh it’s such a beautiful city!” because it wasn’t bombed to shreds in the war and a lot of buildings are from 1900ish and older.
Honestly I would rather prefer to live in a building like the post. The apartments often are cut more efficiently and fit better for a family. Yeah, the outside isn’t as appealing as around here but I don’t live on the outside of my house, I live inside of it, so I barely care about its outsides. The other side effect of eastern blocks is that the density per square km is amazingly high. This also leads to supermarkets etc being everywhere. (I am, of course, making generalizations here.)
Of course I need to say that the energy efficiency in old eastern block houses is also awful.
But I don’t want to bash the 1900s houses too much. At least they have 4-5 levels. That’s still better than single family homes in the middle of a city (talking about you, pipe smoking guy in the middle of Sendling).
Painting the outside different colors would help the appeal of the buildings, at the cost of whatever thermal efficiency the color white provides
Of course I need to say that the energy efficiency in old eastern block houses is also awful.
It usually can be improved with additional insulation.
We live in a house from 1900 and thanks to a lot of work our apartment has the energy efficiency grade A to B. We will also get a heat pump in the next few years. We have PV on the roof (I’m not sure what for right now), our windows are triple glassed and we have two heat exchangers thingy that sucks air from the outside and pushes inside air out. A couple of months ago they also insulated the roof of the basement better.
We are very lucky that the owner is behind all these works. Most aren’t, but it is to show that you’re absolutely right and how much can be done and improved. (However, I still don’t like the cut of the apartment or not having an elevator/barrier free access to the basement. And the bugs.)
