• bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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    51 minutes ago

    I struggle with this because I hate apartments. Theyre inherently depressing.

    As long as we can have apartments and I can still have my house and land, its fine.

    But a lot of times it seems like they want all of us to live in 1 bedroom ny style apartments like sardines and eat bugs, and i think thats where the backlash comes in.

    I guess if youre homeless any apartment is a good one. But a lot of them would get destroyed from mentally ill people. So then what, build concrete cell block apartments ? Im really not sure.

  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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    7 hours ago

    Those look very similar in style to the 5-over-1s being built all over the United States. Four floors good, ten floors bad? Or does “left-wing architecture” refer to leaving the trees instead of paving every square inch of outdoor space for parking?

  • irelephant [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 hours ago

    Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather. The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).

    Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they’d look nice.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 hour ago

      Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather.

      Look at the trees. They don’t have leaves. The image was definitely taken in winter. That adds a lot to the depression of it.

    • Ansis100@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      As someone in a city with tons and tons of commieblocks - the apartments are usually fine, but no, these areas almost always look like shit and are depressing to be around, regardless of the weather.

      And this is not one random guy’s opinion, no one I know likes these parts of the city and is excited to live there.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    The thing is, a lot of capitalist countries also used to build these, except they stopped due to outrage from real estate barons and NIMBYs losing value on their buildings.

  • Amberskin@europe.pub
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    10 hours ago

    Yes, there is something even more depressing than late soviet (or late Francoist, if you want a right wing equivalent) residential monsters: just look at any first world homeless camp.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      9 hours ago

      also, if you live in the states, go look at some car oriented developments. they are just as brutalist, just as same-y, just as sad

        • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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          47 minutes ago

          I mean, those are basically just large apartments at that point, all cookie cutter. But at least the house is decent size and has a yard and you own it.

          With an apartment you have no yard, probably no garage, cant make any changes to it, and you hear all your neighbors, and smell them if they smoke, and you dont own shit. Apartments actually benefit the wealthy class, which is why I find it funny lemmings love them so much.

          I guarantee 99% of people would want a house on 2 acres thats a 30 minute drive to town than an apartment.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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            37 minutes ago

            With an apartment […] you dont own shit.

            What if you buy it? You can buy apartments, you know.

            I guarantee 99% of people would want a house on 2 acres thats a 30 minute drive to town than an apartment.

            I think that owning a house is also a lot of work, because you’re responsible for everything yourself, including construction and maintenance, and i don’t like that. There’s a proverb: You build the first house for your enemy, the second house for your friend, and the third one for yourself. It says that when you’re young and inexperienced, you don’t know what to look out for when you build a house. So you might build rooms without proper ventilation, and that makes mold grow. You might build the garage in the wrong dimensions, because you don’t know better. You might mess up the room layout or their sizes. When you buy an apartment built by the city, you can have a reasonable expectation that they’ve built 10000 apartment units before and know what they’re doing. With private construction companies, i’m reasonably worried about being ripped off or fucked with. I trust public housing much more than private construction companies.

            On top of that if i live in the city, i don’t even need a garage, nor a car. It’s all very efficient and compact.

        • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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          1 hour ago

          Yup. And look at the warehouses all these cars are going from these bullshit suburbs to get to. If you find joy in the architecture of a Home Depot you are a profoundly odd person

  • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 hours ago

    That isn’t left wing architecture. It’s USSR architecture. Don’t make everything bad from that dictatorship a part of the left. The Soviet Union wasn’t even real communism. Because communism wouldn’t have a regime consisting of oligarchs and a dictator for example. Just because some people abused something for bad, doesn’t make the thing itself bad.

    But these Stalin blocks were actually built an mass to house all the nomads living in the USSR. Most people didn’t have a home, electricity, running water. They used to live in tents. So even though these blocks are ugly and depressing, it made sure people didn’t have to live in a tent with -40°C and Stalin was widely praised for that.

    • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      I am a loud critic of the USSR but WW2 destroyed an enormous amount of housing in their country and they spent decades struggling to catch up. Even prior to that, they had WW1 and a civil war negatively impact housing and during the interwar industrialization they focused on increasing industrial output with most home building relegated to cheap temporary construction. A number of the economic issues faced by the USSR were unrelated to any specific political or economic system (for example, the vastness of the country added transportation expenses)

      Better than live in ugly apartments than freeze in the harsh Russian winters.

  • Saapas@piefed.zip
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    11 hours ago

    Homes are better than homelessness 100% but those commieblock suburbs can be pretty depressing. And I’ve lived in a few. Different colours and some evergreen stuff helps a bunch. Even some other marerials, some wood panels etc. But it all ads cost.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      tbf, they were built after ww2, the goal was to rebuild as many homes as possible as fast as possible. which was accompanied.

      I’d rather live in a commie block post ww2, than be homeless through a few Russian winters.

      • Saapas@piefed.zip
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        2 hours ago

        These sort of housing projects popped up in many parts of the world and sometimes they definitely were needlessly austere. Better than nothing though. A lot better.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I didn’t realize an expansive category of political ideologies had adopted a unified architectural language. 🤦

    • Axolotl@feddit.it
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      22 hours ago

      those are FUCKING SPIKES to keep people away, the fact that they don’t use daggers instead is strange

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 hour ago

        i think the things on the green bench might be anti-handholding or anti-cuddling things instead. you know, to aid against the display of lewd activity in public (/s)

      • kossa@feddit.org
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        10 hours ago

        They keep the homeless at bay, but wait until the Ayurveda Yoga crowd discovers them. They’ll be worse than a pidgeon infestation.

          • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            The difference is if you build public bathrooms, the pigeons won’t use them. If humans are shitting outside to a degree it becomes a problem, the problem isn’t the people doing the shitting.

            Now, if we could get pigeons to use a bathroom, or even a shitting mat, that would be an achievement.

          • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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            10 hours ago

            You’re not wrong but people gotta defecate and frequently have no where to do it. If we cared for our people, with housing in this case, it would benefit literally everyone else too.

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Actually, they are. As far as the average conservative cares, both of them are dirty pests that should be driven away.

          • Typhoon@lemmy.ca
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            19 hours ago

            And under no circumstances should you feed them or they’ll become dependent on you and keep coming back. It’s better to let them die.

            • slappyfuck@lemmy.ca
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              12 hours ago

              Might as well just put em out of their misery note then.

              (For anyone who does not know, right wing lunatics are starting to openly advocate for this!)

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    As someone who’s grown up in one of those and now rearing a child in Canada, I’d like to tell you that it was an absolutely incredible place to grow up in. The urban planning is such that there’s parks with kid playgrounds sprinkled between the buildings. There’s ample trees. There’s schools and kindergartens at walking distance where kids would often walk alone to/fro. There’s convenient public transit stops. There’s density that lets kids make tons of friends and always have someone to play with without “playdates.” Parenting in such a social environment is so much easier than what parents face in Toronto, it’s not even funny.

    E: Oh and the square footage in the average commie block apt is equivalent to a large old-school 2 or 3-bedroom apartment in Toronto. Most are family-sized units.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 hour ago

      There’s density that lets kids make tons of friends and always have someone to play with without “playdates.”

      man, that’s what i missed as a kid sooo much. i would have needed this.

    • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      It’s probably fine if you’re used to it but man I’d be so depressed living in such a densely populated city.

      • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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        44 minutes ago

        Same here. I guess different people like that but I cant be around that many people.

        Pandemics happen easier because of dense populations too.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I still live in one of these, walking my dog is a treat, so many trees, kindergarten, school, pharmacy, groceries, even a pub all within 200 meters.

      The part I hate about this place the most is that they made a roundabout in front of the school so parents can drop their kid off by car easier, it’s the most americanized aspect, absolutely disgusting, there are literally two bus stops next to this school going in both directions.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        That’s my Canada goose brain talking. 😆🪿 It’s literally the common term used to refer to the total area of a housing unit. Here for example a major real estate firm explains the importance of square footage measurement.

        For extra entertainment, this is a handy flowchart of Canadian units of measurement:

        • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          It’s similar in the US. We use gallons for milk and fuel, liters for mid size beverage (like a liter of water or two liters of soda) and fluid ounces for single servings (12 oz can). Pints are used to measure beer served from a keg into a glass. Medications use mililiters.

          Large quantities of weed use Pounds and ounces, smaller quantities use grams. Hard drugs pretty much exclusively use metric. Medication uses metric exclusively while most other commerce uses pounds and ounces. Firewood is sold by the “cord”

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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            3 hours ago

            Yeah. That said, I think on average there’s more imperial in the mix in the US than Canada. Canada went through an intentional Metrification process but it didn’t go all the way through. In part due to trade with the US. 😅

          • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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            7 hours ago

            FWIW, a lot of the bougie drinks (fancy soda water, juices, pre-mixed cocktails, etc.) now come in 330mL cans, probably because at 11.7 fl oz, it’s a form of shrinkflation. And those mini cans of soda are technically 222mL.

            Also, do note that a U.S. customary pint is different than an imperial pint. (You get 20% more beer in Britain.)

      • stray@pawb.social
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        13 hours ago

        I would measure my apartment in square meters, but I’ve realized I would use the phrase “square footage” to refer to the surface area of a living space. Is there an alternative? “Square meterage” doesn’t work.

  • Flickerby@lemmy.zip
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    9 hours ago

    If the sky is pretty and golden you don’t don’t have to look at or think about the actual people in the streets. Like magpies.

  • eronth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 hours ago

    I recall that picture being a photoshop of a right-wing country. So it’s both fake AND fundamentally right-wing in design.

  • cyberwitch@reddthat.com
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    17 hours ago

    To me this says less “Leftist” and more “rich urban planners cutting corners for lower-class housing which will end in a horrific fire or collapse.”

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      The above is definitely not because of developers.

      Look at all that greenspace.

      Why is the above considered ugly on the first place?

      • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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        11 hours ago

        Rows of uniform monotonous rectangles made of concrete. Even a coat of paint and some color would be more pleasing on the eye but I’m not sure you could reasonably paint concrete and get it to last thru Russian winters.