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Soviet Union built a lot of those “designed by numbers” cities. They had certain distances to stores, planned density of kindergartens and hospitals, so on. Complete failure. Society changes a lot in those 10-15 years while you plan and build those cities. That’s even if you ignore the fact that SU stopped existing while some places where not finished (I grew up in a district with ridiculous population - but no subway to connect to the rest of the city and not enough roads for cars)


I’ve grew up in one. While it’s not as nice as a single family home in Silicon Valley climate it did create tons of affordable housing.

Most places are screaming for densification these days so your argument seems even more wrong.


Soviet housing buildup was not a complete failure. That's an absurd thing to claim. It was maybe one of the best most successful program in the Soviet Union.

The Soviets had critical housing shortage after the Civil war and even worse after WW2. And even those houses that existed were pre-WW1 standards of modernity.

Now I think a to strong embrace of modernism. A lack of small scale capitalism. And their hatred for pre-Soviet old town really hurt them. And eventually to much copying the US in terms of cars did hurt their program.

But saying its a failure is simply inaccurate. From 60-80 an absurd amount of modern housing was built.


It was a complete and utter failure. Dense housing produces slums. Everybody in my old country is trying to get a house away from cities.




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