Built? By whom?

The issue with soviet blocks was not the density. The actual design was brilliant as each of these blocks had all conveniences like schools and shops within reach.

The issue as with most soviet union is corruption and management incompetence. They took one design and applied to 15% of world's land mass. So the house in deep Siberia and coast of warm Azerbaijan were the almost the same. To add society was so broken than no one actually cared for the vision these houses had. This is entirely system failure not a design one.

People live just fine in close quarters - just take a look at Japan.

I'd love to live in an apartment block like that. Different strokes for different folks, you know?

Yes, but as much as we all like the Brutalism style, would the cost difference really not be worth it for Art Deco or anything a bit more psychologically welcoming or uplifting combined with generous green spacing and walkability.

A 300 million dollar mansion for one person. A 1.2 billion dollar prison complex for a few hundred people . Everyone else is homeless and lives under a bridge.

Because they think things make them extraordinary. They can't imagine the lives in those buildings being good without extraordinary things.

McMansions and parking lot deserts?

But everything gets depressing if all looks the same.

Prisons silly.

here's the image for other lazy bastards who don't wanna click on a website like me:

If you look at the 🌳 , the don't have leaves, indicating that the picture was taken on a cloudy autumn day. Everything looks depressing on a cloudy autumn day.

I mean, roommates are definitely a form of horror. For every well adjusted person out there, several exist that never learned to clean up after themselves or think of how what they do impacts another person.

Hell, there are a lot of people who actually take delight in the suffering of others. Imagine trying to convince your roommate to do the dishes more than once a month and they're laughing at you.

The blocks were built en masse with the exact purpose of escaping communal living that proliferated during rapid urbanization of the 1930s, so that connection is quite a stretch.