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.)
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.
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?
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.
The one time copypasting a bunch of buildings was actually a good idea
Same development firm got the contract?
Rather there was just one development firm, run by the state, mass producing the walls for these buildings to be assembled on site
Pretty much that happened.
The best fucking joke is that those buildings and neighborhoods despite being absolute piss poor quality are waaay nicer, roomier and greener than what capitalist development corpos build these days. So yeah, free market for the win i guess.
Seconded. When walking around my 60s neighbourhood in Poland I can clearly see that someone sat down and planned how the neighbourhood is going to look, i.e. where there will be a store, where a kindergarten and where a school. Not to mention a huge swath of lawn with playgrounds in the middle of the buildings for the ultimate flex.
Opposite of “ok we’ll sell the land and the free market will figure it out”.
Quality is actually not bad. Like yea, they usually don’t have modern wiring but since the construction materials used are insanely durable and thick renovating those buildings with new windows, heating, pipes and wires gets you like the best possible apartment. You will never hear your neighbours, winters are warm with minimal heating and that building will last for like centuries with minimal maintenance.
Source: Lived in one and renovated it too.
