I think that there is a lot of "the grass is always greener" type of feeling in Eastern Europe. The panel houses are not fundamentally bad places to live, but there is this default feeling, that it is somehow worse than the west. A lot of people in Prague have this feeling that the entire US looks like the New York that they know from the sitcoms.
Those panel houses which have been renovated and their elevators replaced are really nice. All of the buildings are painted different collors and the whole place looks prety idilic. Only real problem for the residents, is that it is hard to rase kids when you have one and a half bedrooms...
Now, Czech culture has become generational. For almost the majorty of my friends, the older generation lives in a panel house. Those are the grandmas and grandpas of my peers. The parents of my peers have bought a newer appartment somewhere else. And they have left the appartment in the panel house to their batchelor children, who like having cheep/free housing to live in till they get married.
However, there are also some massive developments at the edge of the city, where there are 20-30 panel houses, all huge, and no good public transport. The green areas have been replaced with parking lots and anyone who comes close wants to kill themselves.
It is shocking to me, how two buildings built from the same plans, 30 minutes appart, can give such a different impression. One seems like a dream and the other seems like dystopia.
Quick question: Is the New York of sitcoms supposed to present "good housing"? The two most famous New York sitcoms that come to mind (namely Seinfeld and Friends) present rather small and basic apartments, people using in-building shared washers and driers, doesn't look any better than the ridiculously small apartments we have in Paris.
"friends" were indeed huge for such young people...however Seinfeld in-show was supposedly successful enough to buy his father a cadillac as a birthday present, so I can more readily accept that he could afford a relatively spacious 1 bedroom apartment in 80's/90's NYC (remember that the city used to be a lot more affordable back then).
It should be pointed out that Friends was criticized a lot for showing larger apartments in NYC for what people like the protagonists could typically afford.
It's funny how many replies you're getting from new yorkers pointing out that seinfeld/friends actually had much larger than average apartments. The fact that all those years later you still think of them as "small" means the cinematic trick worked!
But why did Seinfeld/Friends engage in this trick?
My guess: Seinfeld/Friends was aimed to appeal to a mass american audience, which is why I imagine they had such large apartments -- they wanted something that still looked "small" to middle americans and outer suburban dwellers, but it still obviously had to be much larger than real manhattan apartment sizes, because filming in a realistic 350sqft apartment set (1) would have been awkward to even shoot (2) would have seemed so small as to be hard to believe or at least steal the scene focus when the apartment is supposed to just be a backdrop.
Yeah I think New York was a bad example, but as someone outside the US I have always been fascinated by the US concept of suburbs (showed in a lot of movies and series), big yards, green gardens, big trees, family friendly environments were kids can play outside without any major worry.
I agree - the panelaky seem to get a unfairly bad rep and I hope the guys here appreciate how good they are in the grand scheme of things. The Czech and Slovak panelaky seem to be better planned, designed and built than equivalent units in Scotland as far as I've seen, for example. Adam Curtis did a documentary on the UK mass-housing and how badly they were delivered (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4XgysYujXo) - as far as I know the CZ/SK units didn't have these sort of problems and as a bonus avoided the sort of planning problems we had in Scotland (where we built housing for 10,000s of people too far and too disconnected from retail/business/industry)
Having grown up in one of these myself in ex-Soviet country, I hate them with passion. The quality of utilities is awful: sewage pipes get clogged all the time and whole buildings smell like piss more often than not, thermal insulation was practically non-existent and tried to be compensated by extensive heating that had poor circulation and no way to be adjusted flat-by-flat basis, so if you live in bottom floors you would have to open windows in the middle of winter, and if you live in the upper floors, you have to sleep with your clothes on and few layers of blankets. Sound isolation was also so poor, you didn't even need to turn on TV or radio, because you could hear neighbor's clearly. The whole blocks of the same, bleak, monotonous houses are also very depressive place to live in.
Currently most of the remaining Khrushchyovkas are getting renovated (something like this: http://www.manostatyba.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/mazei...), but I shudder even to the idea living in any of them again.
Having grown up in one of these myself, never had a problem with utilities. Some problems with heating - yes. I don't remember piss smell - I remember smell of concrete and fresh paint, but never smell of piss.
I guess it depends on where exactly you lived and what neighbors you had.
Yes, there has been a long discussion on what to do with these buildings. Some experts wanted to raze them to the ground and build new ones, but the easier (temporary) solution of renovation was chosen, because it would require too much of government funds and there are also law issues as there isn't many legal means to move stubborn flat owners from their property if they don't do want to and as mostly elders live in these places now (many of them even since it was built), this is a big issue.
It's a natural reaction, avoid the hugh and costly efforts. But, at least in France, the impact of these buildings, in none wealthy [1] places, led to very deep social problems. Racism, poverty, insalubrity..
Destroying them seems the most effective solution as of now. It changes people living there mindset, it removes the memories of the issues attached to the architecture.
for the curious, that theory is quite possible, I don't have data on who was displaced by the "rework". That said the population didn't change much, still cosmopolitan, 3rd gen of immigrants from Africa (north or west).
In the 90s I had a girlfriend from Moscow and very early on she played the film Irony of Fate[1] for me, to help explain Russian culture. It is a classic comedy based on how identical the housing blocks were at the time. A man gets drunk, gets on a plane, forgets which city he is in (Moscow or Leningrad/St. Petersburg), and goes to an identical street in the wrong city, opening an identical door with the same key. Hilarity ensues.
My wife and I had an interesting observation about these apartment blocks.
They were built really quickly, often on the outskirts of cities, where there was plenty of undeveloped land. They were often placed in large groups. The landscape was bleak at the beginning. Huge gray apartment blocks spaced in a random fashion.
There was a lot of space between them. Large empty spaces. Sure, footpaths were set down, grass was sown, and small trees were planted. But in the beginning, they looked bleak.
Fast forward thirty or forty years. The trees have grown huge. The playgrounds are no longer depressing. On the outside, they are actually very nice. They were insulated and painted and are no longer drab. These developments have a park vibe to the, with the large trees, asymmetric building placement, and large open spaces.
This is not taking into account the conditions inside, as those varied from country to country, city to city, and development to development. Many have been modernized, but some still have the fundamental problems mentioned by others.
The moral of the story is that large trees and open spaces make for pleasant living.
In France the melody played backwards. Housing blocks, which I've read were also praised by communists there, started as little paradises. Not too disconnected, out of the box parks, daily shops (groceries, hair, ..), some tiny lakes, sport fields even some times.
Fast forward decades, many of them became ruins and barely liveable places (for tons of different factors).
Now they've been a thorn in France's shoe, some neighborhood have been recently deeply remodeled. A good 50% of blocks, towers and bars have been destroyed and replaced by smaller blocks. The difference in scale makes the place liveable. I couldn't believe the impact on the city.. Having smaller heights and tinier blocks instead of prison like huge and dense structures brings back life and peace.
Previously there were renovation plans but they just fixed breakage and applied a new layer of paint. These would quickly become dirty, with graffitis back soon too. But the new blocks are still clean after 2 years.
My feeling is now that housing projects were a necessary error of the post war era; but they're far from optimal for a sense of good life.
Meaning the poorest just ran away from the place, and a new wealthier population is now living here, explaining why the new buildings are still "clean" ?
Well, something had to change, and I doubt it was the effect delta from high rise aesthetic. We all probably seen plenty of run down, broken glass and graffiti yet low-rise neighbourhoods.
What often happens with projects in Europe is as metropolitan areas expand, the then-outskirts where the blocks originally were become attractive located land. Not sure the mechanics of this in France though, but could be the same dynamics.
> That said the population didn't change much, still cosmopolitan, 3rd gen of immigrants from Africa (north or west).
I don't think ethnic composition matters as much as income bracket. Middle class people tend to have both means and priority to care after their property.
Grew up in one of those. Then moved "up" from a 5 story to a 9 story building but same idea.
Many downsides to those indeed, but that feeling of moving to an new apartment after waiting in line for years and years. I still remember it to this day. I even had my very own tiny room.
Interestingly even though those houses were old they were pretty solid, and isolated noise better than a few American apartment building I've lived in, with walls made from drywall and wood.
Some of them were designed with pretty external tile detailing. But it typically got trashed in transport. Overall, interior finishing was better than early Holiday Inns.
There are a lot of housing blocks just like this across the USSR. I've visited a number of them in former East Berlin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau). They aren't pretty on the outside, but some have been modernized into higher-end apartments on the inside.
As for the units that haven't been modernized, they're still better quality housing than what you find in lower income neighborhoods in the United States. I wouldn't be thrilled to live in one, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
The embedded street view of a five-story "Khrushchyovka" actually looks pretty nice. Very green, narrow streets, and car-free passages between buildings.
My mom lived in a similar style building in Poland. The quality wasn't great, but my cousins have renovated some of their units to really nice sleek modern apartments.
I lived in a post-Soviet country for a year several years ago. The neighborhood I lived in had this kind of block layout, and I agree, I much preferred it to anything I've ever seen in America.
You could walk on footpaths to the open-air market, to the kiosks, even to restaurants, didn't have to worry about traffic or road noise, it felt just like a very natural, easy place to live.
Contrast that with living in Seattle, where even where it's walkable, so much of the public space is given up to cars.
As a westerner that spent time in Poland and lived in one of these buildings (in a renovated unit), I can say there were things to like. The best part is like you say, the green spaces between the buildings, particularly when you had a view on them from one of the upper floors. Very peaceful on the balcony. Plus the stairs were good exercise :)
- I don't think they're actually going to demolish those. Where are the money for that? They didn't even begin to explain how whis is going to work economy-wise.
- Now is precisely the worst time for projects of that scale. The only mass housing the modern Russia can build is 25-story ugly buildings without parking, trees, roads, schools but with chilling winds between the apartment towers. Urban planning and landscape design are completely nonexistent.
- Compared to US or Western Europe, people are cramped into tiny apartments. No suburbia. No gardens. No neigbours. No roads. No backyard, no place to play. Walkable tho, if you are lucky.
- The quality of urban layout was actually dwindling all the time. Stalinist 5-storeys were okay (green, near to public transportation, with shops), 5-storey block khruschevki were worse (no more shops, worse apartments), 9- to 17- block brezhnevki were even worse (further from city centers and public transit, snow hurricanes between tall towers, no infrastructure, no trees), and what gets built today is abysmal.
- So are they going to replace okay-ish 5-storeys with this:
- For some reason, people still buy those apartments. Even given choice. It's a complete mystery to me. If you ask a Russian which car he wants, he'd probably go for a sport BMW. But ask the same about apartments, and he'll promptly point to concrete coffin on the outskirts.
Disclaimer: happy resident of an apartment in 1901 built house in SPb.
Exactly. Myself spend 25+ years in 12-storey brezhnevka. Done massive renovation inside. Outside of building even after 25 years, don't change much in better way, only previously empty place is now occupied by somewhat same ~12 brezhnevka.
Most of the Russian economy is based on exploiting (Gas, Oil, Steel etc.) and/or reliance (Metro, Railways, Housing, Water Treatment, Powerplants) on Soviet era infrastructure. The high levels of corruption in government and instability of investments has made the primary goal of owners and investors to gain as much profit as possible and get it out of the country - I don't expect any really positive developments for decades.
I haven't lived in one nearly as long, but I find them okay for the most part. I'm a US expat so it took me a bit to get used to the rather compact nature of the apartments in St. Petersburg, but while the outsides of these buildings look like they're begging to be torn down, most people have done some amazing modern renovations with the actual apartments themselves. My partner's mother has a very lovely multi-room apartment, and my only complaint with it is just that the shower room is far smaller than I'm used to.
In SPB at least, new construction is going up as fast as they can do it, and while a lot of it is done in more remote areas (end of Metro lines), there is plenty to support people who live in those areas. Dozens of full grocery stores within walking distance at the base of every complex, bus transit is plentiful and relatively frequent (compared to US bus schedules anyways), and the developers/city do seem to try to create good public places for families, such as playgrounds and parks. I have to echo what a lot of others have said, it's nice to be able to walk through the complexes and not have to worry too much about cars. The complexes closer to the city proper have some difficulty though with cleanliness just because a lot of the gardens and embankments aren't well tended to or the infrastructure built to contain the dirt has finally given out after 60 some years, and no one has bothered to fix it. The city tearing up roads and grass embankments to replace ancient plumbing doesn't help much either.
It's not perfect, obviously - the newer buildings are mostly small one or two room apartments, but they have modern amenities, are wired up with modern network and electrical, and overall look nice.
Don't think they'd ever fly in the US though...just not "personal" enough.
> Don't think they'd ever fly in the US though...just not "personal" enough.
I wonder if that's really true. Personally I hate paying rent ... absolutely hate it. Most of my day is spent either at office or at coffeeshops/bars for work and again in gym/bars/coffeeshops/traveling after work/on the weekends. A house is just a place to sleep and cook when I have some time. I absolutely hate paying ~10% of my paycheck for rent; so if we had such "impersonal" but functional residences, I would gladly live in them.
I think this has been tried a few times in multiple cities. Seattle had a thing where people lived in really tiny aparmtents (like one room with shared amenities in a public area), and there was some conflict over it but I can't recall what it was. The residents were happy, but for some reason the city and neighbors weren't.
And my personal experience is that people would in general dislike it, with a preference for a private space. I remember comments about the apartments I had when I lived in the US being "small"; I'm of the same opinion as you that a home is pretty much just a place to rest, cook, and clean up, and if I could find a smaller place with the few amenities I wanted, I would.
But that doesn't really seem to be what people are interested in, and the few smaller living spaces available are usually inflated in price due to them having been a fad at one point.
The idea of apartment ownership is also a bit different in the US versus abroad, as my partner's family owns their apartment - they can do the floors, drill into walls, remodel the bathroom, all without anyone else's approval. Such renovations are considered pretty standard and from what I'm told they're considered already as part of the cost of purchasing an apartment. The location and the space is more important than what it looks like.
Compared to apartments in the US that are pretty clear about what sort of decorating and remodeling is and isn't allowed, and the sense of home is much different.
That's true. I bought my first house (I'm in the US) because I wanted to be able to alter my living space - plant a garden, turn a bath into a shower, upgrade a circuit from 15 amps to 30. Even when there's no disputing the change is an improvement, landlords don't like it when you modify their property, and I don't really blame them.
"What we find in Western societies is that even if you’re the owner of your own apartment, there’s still an understanding of community ownership. It wouldn’t be possible just to demolish these buildings and replace them today."
Pretty frustrating sentiment. This is why we have a housing crisis in the bay area, NIMBYism.
> Pretty frustrating sentiment. This is why we have a housing crisis in the bay area, NIMBYism.
It's very frustrating indeed when you lived all our life in that apartment, your pension is minimal just enough to scrape by, and some developer (probably corrupt, in bed with the city mayor) comes and kicks you out so they can build a fancy apartment building to sell it to some multi-millionaire.
In theory, if the owner wants to expand their building, there are schemes where the developer will compensate the tenants by offering them units in the new building at the old prices, or sometimes units elsewhere. San Francisco could potentially implement this by making it possible for the owner of a building to voluntarily convert a non-rent-controlled unit to a rent-controlled unit, allowing old buildings to be replaced by offering the tenants converted units in other buildings (the total # of units on the market still increases). Of course nobody likes to be asked to move, but with guarantees on the price and a reasonable definition of "equivalent unit" it's a whole lot better than the Ellis Act conversions we're used to seeing.
No, you couldn't buy anything really. There was tremendous housing shortage throughout all USSR existence, and the apartments were distributed. There were some building "cooperatives", but they were massively subsidized too, with the spots rationed and queued for many years ahead.
More like you could get on a list that would have you in another apartment eventually (if you lived that long). In practical terms it's no different from "affordable housing" in the US.
The article is referring mainly to people who have no choice but to have their own home/apartment demolished. I doubt most people, even YIMBYs, would argue for that. The real issue with NIMBYs is that they want to abridge the property rights of others in their community, by restricting development.
I read an interesting article about Singapore, that claimed that was their approach. Lots of people live in social housing blocks, and as time moves on entire blocks are demolished and rebuilt to better suit the needs of the city. They appeared to consider the human side very well, by guaranteeing that people would remain in the same area as friends and family as they moved to newer housing stock, but I did wonder how the actual people felt about this. I've heard good and bad stories of similar things in my own country.
In Indian cities, they have got around this problem by demolishing existing apt. complexes but building even taller towers in their place, giving existing apt owners an apt in the new tower for free.
These buildings were built with many intentional shortcuts (by design). The real tragedy however was to allow their construction in seismic zones. One of the reasons why so many people died in the Spitak earthquake is that many of these Khrushevkas collapsed like a house of cards.
If by slop he basically means stew, that certainly beats food stamps used at typical american "fast food" and other diabetes-causing sodas, twinkies, etc.
I just think there should be a minimal housing arrangement that everyone is entitled to, it might not be great but it would help motivate people to move out, and also people won't be jealous of other people that got a better house on welfare.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. Is it really unreasonable for the State to provide basic food, shelter and amenities to those in society that need it the most? Especially as our productivity keeps increasing because of automation, we could reasonably provide it inexpensively?
Those panel houses which have been renovated and their elevators replaced are really nice. All of the buildings are painted different collors and the whole place looks prety idilic. Only real problem for the residents, is that it is hard to rase kids when you have one and a half bedrooms...
Now, Czech culture has become generational. For almost the majorty of my friends, the older generation lives in a panel house. Those are the grandmas and grandpas of my peers. The parents of my peers have bought a newer appartment somewhere else. And they have left the appartment in the panel house to their batchelor children, who like having cheep/free housing to live in till they get married.
However, there are also some massive developments at the edge of the city, where there are 20-30 panel houses, all huge, and no good public transport. The green areas have been replaced with parking lots and anyone who comes close wants to kill themselves.
It is shocking to me, how two buildings built from the same plans, 30 minutes appart, can give such a different impression. One seems like a dream and the other seems like dystopia.