Planning: general 🌇 Why are there so many high rise apartments in Eastern Europe former USSR places?

[nec209]

Why are there so many high rise apartments in Eastern Europe former USSR places than say Western Europe. I read some city planner in the USSR or France started the high rise apartment trend to house the poor and low income and it spread to other Europe countries and than later on Asian countries.

But not sure if it started in France or the USSR? From what I hear there not many high rise apartments in the UK as it is mostly mid rise apartments and lots of townhouses and row houses. Also people living above store and in those row houses in the UK.

But what city planner promoted commie block tower that spread to other Europe countries than later on Asia? It seems Asia did not invent the high rise apartments but copied it from Europe when it became big trend there.

It seems these high rise apartments was cheep way at the time to house the poor and low income that those city planners at the time promoted and was used heavily in USSR.

But I hear France now is getting share of high rise apartments no idea how big trend is there unlike USSR places.

 

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Picture I took in July 1988 in Moscow. Yes, many live in apartments (kvarteera) and a few are lucky enough to have a summer home (dacha) outside of town. Small towns will be more stand alone dwellings but large cities, yes, most people live in apartments. Why is good question. Not sure if I ever came across an answer. Could be a few theories. Car ownership at least pre-glasnost was limited to those with high connections. Public transit was a must and high-density as we all know is good for mass transit. Limited income to afford a single-family dwelling? State control of most aspects of your life...all likely contribute to the use of the apartment.

 

[Planit]

LeCorbusier pushed the 'tower in garden' type developments in the early modernist era so that might be where you're getting the French connection (see what I did there).

 

[Dan]

The Soviet Union had an intensive housing production program, to relieve a severe housing shortage after WWII. From the Wikipedia entry for Khrushchevka:

Traditional masonry is labor-intensive; individual projects were slow and not scalable to the needs of overcrowded cities. To ameliorate a severe housing shortage, during 1947–1951 Soviet architects evaluated various technologies attempting to reduce costs and completion time. During January 1951, an architects' convention, supervised by Khrushchev (then the party director of Moscow), declared low-cost, quick technologies the objective of Soviet architects.

Two concrete plants were later established in Moscow (Presnensky, 1953; Khoroshevsky, 1954). By this time, competing experimental designs were tested by real-life construction, and prefabricated concrete panels were considered superior. Other possibilities, like in situ concrete, or encouraging individual low-rise construction, were discarded.

During 1954–1961, engineer Vitaly Lagutenko, chief planner of Moscow since 1956, designed and tested the mass-scale, industrialized construction process, relying on concrete panel plants and a quick assembly schedule. During 1961, Lagutenko's institute released the K-7 design of a prefabricated 5-story building that became typical of the khrushchevka. 64,000 units (3,000,000 m2 or 32,000,000 sq ft) of this type were built in Moscow from 1961 to 1968. The khrushchevkas were cheap, and sometimes an entire building could be constructed within two weeks. Poor quality construction has since become a liability, leading Moscow to announce the Moscow Urban Renewal Initiative an effort to replace structures that ended their functional lives.

In Moscow, space limitations forced a switch to 9 or 12-story buildings; the last 5-story khrushchevka was completed there during 1971. The rest of the USSR continued building khrushchevkas until the fall of the Soviet Union; millions of such units are now past their design lifetime.

There was only very limited private ownership of real estate in the Soviet Union. Thus, no single family houses, except for vacation dachas that were built mainly for seasonal use.

Of course, there's now private land ownership in post-Soviet Russia. The vast majority of the population live in rental or condominium apartments.

Whoops! Let me reposition the Google Streetview guy. Here's suburban Moscow.

And an awesome old Lada.

There's detached housing, but outside of very affluent areas, Russian subdivisions usually have far fewer improvements than their equivalents in Western countries.

Somewhere in Moscow's affluent western suburbs.

Robin Street. The majority of subdivision streets in Moscow's 'burbs look like alleys by American standards.

Out on the main road, lots of snipe signs for construction materials, equipment rental, sand, gravel, and the like. That's a violation.

Suburban Vladivostok, where the roads more closely resemble those in Pennsylvania.

 

[nec209]

Other thing I heard in the city with high rise apartments with higher density have better roads where I heard in the suburb have terrible roads many times not paved roads and roads with potholes. The USSR had hard time maintaining roads.

In the US in the suburbs a developer builds all the homes in new subdivision area and have to put in all roads and maintain it for set time before the city takes over it and maintain it and because of higher middle class the roads in the suburbs in the US are better maintained and much better.

Other thing I heard is in Russia and former USSR is the suburbs that are there very little unlike the US are more poverty and lower income and crime where the city is better the opposite of the US the down town area and old area more crime and ghetto like and out in suburbs lower crime and less ghetto.

LeCorbusier pushed the 'tower in garden' type developments in the early modernist era so that might be where you're getting the French connection (see what I did there).

View attachment 60895

I believe other countries like the UK, Australia and Canada look for inspiration from LeCorbusier to house poor and low income with high rise in park like setting and next to low density housing. And American middle class was very strong unlike Europe in ruins and poverty after ww2. And where as Australia and Canada major immigration in 50s and 60s with poverty and lack means to buy house.

I think the main difference of LeCorbusier is strong view of building high rise towers in low density areas by park and low density housing. Where US city planners promote density hight restricts. That high rise go in in high density areas with other high rise buildings and medium density goes in medium density areas and low density goes in low density areas making more uniform skyline.

Where LeCorbusier promoted very low density housing with these tower blocks by park and trails making strange looking sky line.

When you look at Asia countries it looks like they did not invent any thing but copied soviet idea of high rise apartments