Right wing architecture

Social housing typically doesn't look as good as high-end apartments, but it doesn't have to look terrible. Here's some pretty neat looking social housing in south Paris.

It's kind of the China Town of Paris.

It's right next to an accessible tram station, has green spaces and social areas spread around, a couple of malls with great independent restaurants right next door. There are cycle lanes all around the place.

If you're curious, here it is on Google Maps

I'd live here. I only wish there were more neighbourhoods like this.

Also part of why it looks depressing is because it's old and poorly maintained.

Just a touch of renovation and the houses start looking way better:

Meanwhile in famously communist South Korea...

They're called commieblocks if they're affordable to the average person. If not, they're "highrise apartments"

I live in a city with neighbourhoods built during Socialism, they're spacious, full of greenery and with important services within walkable/bikeable distance. Meanwhile we have new "urban villas", which are drab concrete boxes with apartments that have bizzare floorplans and seem to be built for money laundering purposes.

this is more to do with it being in moscow and built some 50 years ago, not with it being "left-wing" (whatever that means). Social housing around the world can look much better than this

take notice of your capitalist car park next time you go to big box centre. more depressing than housing

How the hell is this "left wing architecture"?? Apartment buildings have looked like this all around the world for at least 50 years.

The only thing more depressing than left wing architecture is right wing architecture

A spot in one of those for a family in Berlin costs 650.000€ because of how great the non-communist economy is doing at creating affordable housing. That is 14 times for median salary before taxes, or 21 times after taxes. https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/165160850

Lots of trees there. That place still looks pretty nice in the summer.

A quick web search had someone say it's Yaroslavsky District, Moscow and while I'm not entirely convinced (having trouble matching the photo to a map), in the summer it will probably look similar to the photo of Yaroslavsky District on Wikipedia.

Semi relatedly, there's some new blocks in my city that are both ugly and expensive to live in. It's this soulless, almost corporate feeling type of architecture. Doesn't fit into how the city looks at all. They had the opportunity to decide whether to build affordable housing or something pretty that aesthetically fits into the city and picked neither. No doubt the shareholders shed a tear of joy.

I hate our society's fixation with ugly utilitarianism. We could be making beautiful things for all of us

This litterally looks like any neighbourhood build in Spain in the 60s.

One interesting thing I'm noting is that picture appears to have been taken on a rather dreary winter day. I can see a lot of trees between the buildings, and I'd be interested in seeing what this place looks like in other seasons and better weather

I actually wish they’d build more of those than the overpriced “luxury condos” people build now that no one can afford.

homelessness

Data centers, that empty parking lot outside the abandoned mall, deportation camps…

On the picture: hundreds of flats with individual windows and balcony

Oh no, giving hundreds of families a balcony, how terribile! What's next: non-shared bathrooms and kitchens?

Who could've guessed, low-cost housing doesn't look fancy!

Funny enough, despite the ugly aesthetics, there is a great sense of community in social housing.

I'm not sure what "left wing architecture" means. Because, to me, this looks like the sort of thing you have to do when the population grows like crazy. Those tend to be areas where women have little education and little power.

I don't see this as left or right wing

This is architecture that could be done better.

Yes, we need to stop homelessness, but you also want to avoid creating spaces where nobody wants to live because it's ugly and depressing and guaranteed, the poor end up having to live there, and with that comes crime and what not and you end up with ghetto style areas where even police is uneasy

Take a little bit more space, put a little bit more thought into the designs, add spaces for children to play, add parks, make it look nice. Wr don't need luxury villas either, but there has to be something better than this

I've seen this posted before. Important points to consider: Imperial Russia had a housing shortage in the cities due to industrialization occurring and the existing housing was often of poor quality. According to one source: "In major cities, a significant portion of housing consisted of barracks, basements, semi-basements, dormitory-style rooms, dugouts, and semi-dugouts."

Then WW1 hit followed by the civil war and housing construction essentially stopped with some housing destroyed in the war. Then in the interwar period, priority was given to industrial construction in the USSR, resulting in low housing construction volumes, with a significant share consisting of temporary housing. Rapid industrialization and increasing population shifts to cities increasing demand. Then WW2 hit and huge amounts of existing housing were destroyed in the fighting.

So the USSR was in tight spot and did the best they could with limited time and resources which for most Russians ended up being a huge improvement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_construction_in_the_Soviet_Union

Just a reminder that the underlying problems that lead to this kind of architecture aren't explicitly left-wing. When you were born all the land already belonged to someone else. These might be private properties, corporate owned properties or state owned properties. If you weren't lucky enough to inherit something from your parents you are forced to live in these boxes. This problem gets worse over time. Lack of opportunities to earn enough money to buy a plot/house, paired with a lack of space in cities also contributed to the situation. It's shit everywhere because we as humans have continuously failed to implement better solutions.

lists one way of doing a thing "This is the only way of doing that thing!!"

Wtf is a left wing architecture.

The shit far right comes up with sometimes melts my brain.