So many people love to shit on these "commie-blocks" for no real reason.

As someone from a post-soviet country, and had to live in one of those.. there's plenty of reasons to shit on them.

Indeed. There is a hierarchy.
Commie blocks are better than tents.
But proper social housing is better than commie blocks.
And proper social housing mixed with middle class owner-occupied housing in the same neighborhoods and even within the same buildings is the best.
- Honestly if I wasn't busy at work I'd make a whole list of why commie blocks are bad, including why they hardly make good social housing
Ok im gonna try typing out some of the observations of living in commie blocks from personal experience as well as some stories from my friends. Im also spoilering it for anyone who doesn't want to read the list.. also also.. not a comprehensive list of everything, just what I can think of on my lunch break

Just to name a few :3.. im gonna go eat now
- Woah! Thanks for this, interesting hearing a firsthand account. Very similar to trailer park life in the US, in my experience. Public housing/the projects are also similar but I never spent much time in them, strong racial divide in most of the US between trailer parks and projects.
  I'm assuming a fair amount of drugs/addiction, small scale petty crime, and domestic violence? Cookouts and parties? Is there pride in being from a commie block? Is there a culture and music? Also, while I'm blasting you with questions, any chance you know a good documentary or book/article?
- We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits.. which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1.
  The roof. If yours flat. And even modern housing doesn't have two sets of stairs per entrance(?).
  Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones.
  Got it. You are talking about very old 4-5 story buildings.
  EDIT:
  Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
  Wierd. It is much easier to get 50%+1 in "small" 60-appartments building, than in same in new housing with over 10k people living in 3708 flats.
The history of these countries cannot be seen in a vacuum. Socialist countries were historically enemies of the United States. The U.S. did everything in its power to weaken them (including economic policy and assassinations) in the USSR, South America, and Asia. And then people knowingly proclaim that socialism can never work.
Yes there was corruption, bureaucracy, oversight, and abuse. Of course, there were missteps and injustices. The same can be said, however, for the U.S. today. At least the communist countries have the excuse of having to stand against the richest and most powerful country in the history of the earth. They did not have the luxury of developing an alternative system in peace.
If history were different, we would still live under the "divine right of kings" and people would argue that parliamentarianism is an untenable mob rule. So we surfs should just continue to work the land and suffer the abuses of the king and his vassals. But our course of history has proven this a lie; we know that the status quo only serves the interests of those who exploit the labor of others.
- Don't see where I said socialism can't work. I said that after living in a commie block for around 15 years I know that they aren't good housing :p..
- You know Stalin’s dead and he can’t actually give you a head pat for being a really good boy, right
- Ah yes if only the Americans weren’t checks notes feeding starving soviets the USSR would have won. Laughs in Berlin airlift.
Although it does appear that living in them was better than living in a tent and perhaps led to living in a better housing situation? Unless the place was demolished after you moved out, it would be better than a tent for someone else.
Bad housing is better than no housing, largely in part that it helps people get out of the inertia and deathspiral of homelessness.
There's a minimum a society should provide, and public housing at least can satisfy that.
- Not disagreeing there. My one and only argument to make here is literally "I disagree with the statement that people shit on commie blocks for no reason, as they aren't nice places to live". Obviously I have lived in one, and it's definitely preferable to nothing, so.. it's not like im saying "demolish commie blocks, and discontinue social housing" (the ones that do get major renovations are even quite nice :3.. definitely think there should still be more accessible options for social housing needs tho) just saying that the situation of living in one, as portrayed in the meme isn't ideal
- We should absolutely provide public housing and hopefully it’s nicer than commie blocks lmao.
  The point is people were removed from their homes and placed in commie blocks. The conditions were horrible and it’s all well documented since the wall fell. People shit on commie blocks because of the authoritarian history and not the fact that it’s a way to house homeless people. I’m not sure if I would prefer a communist block over a tent on a California beach to be honest I’ve only done one though.
- I can assure you that living in my house is a lot better than living in a tent as well
Look, the post clearly states "No real reason". You, you gotta learn to read.
(I lived in one of these and it was absolute hell)

Well, this picture is just poor city development. Living in appartement buildings 3-5-7-9 floors high is all very fine, IF

The neighbourhood is (pedestrian) permeable enough. The space around it must be pedestrian/cycle friendly and green. The blocks in this picture are way to wide, forming too big barriers for local slow traffic
there is a bit of variation in colour, size, shape. A neighbourhood with such blocks can surely have 4 identical buildings, but not 30... It feels uneasy to humans this way. We need a taller or oddly shaped or nicely coloured one once in a while, as a reference point, as things that give the neighbourhood a bit of an identity
The buildings themselves are high enough quality (well insulated, every appartement has 1 or 2 real balconies, ...)
there are plenty of playgrounds and sports facilities and cars are in general carparks in garages at the edge of the neighbourhood, not on the streets
neighbourhood is well connected to the rest of the city
there are plenty of jobs in the area. Probably the hardest part.

It's not rocket science. Vienna did this once. Also you don't need car parks if a city is well designed. Public Transport and Carsharing is enough
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa
- And most of Japan/Korea as well. Most people here prefer living in housing blocks
The original commieblocks were fairly walkable, with parks, schools, grocery stores, and so on nearby. I'm personally a fan of making all the buildings concrete blocks and then getting a bunch of local mural artists to paint them for visual distinction.
May I introduce you to the concept of microdistrict. That's how the original soviet developments were planned out - every house is guaranteed to have necessities like stores, a polyclinic, a school, a kindergarden, or a fire department within reasonable distance. Usually, walking distance. Everything is pedestrian permeable, there's public transport connecting the "sleeping districts" where there were mostly apartments to the industrial areas where the jobs were. And yeah, playgrounds in or near every building.
Jobs in the same area as apartments isn't really happening though, office buildings and industry tends to be away.
- Good on paper, terrible when commuting to work 2 hours one way in a packed train.
"I have never lived in, occupied, or been near anywhere that employs this type of housing. But, here's a list of stipulations I have decided are absolutely necessary based on nothing other than what I feel former soviet satellite states are like."
-This Dude
- I live in appartement building that is 5 floors high, 4 appartements wide, and almost all of the points I mentioned are satisfied in this location.
  It's a common mistake to confuse "commieblocks suck" (they do, I agree) with "living in appartementbuildings sucks" (it doesn't, can confirm.)
Don't forget access to businesses - I don't know the stats for 3 floor developments but 5 is already plenty to support nearly all your needs within at most a 15 minute walk.
I would add to this list, buildings and units that encourage resident diversity. As in, a diversity of ages, household size, economic class (and ideally also race/ethnicity/country of origin). Organically this means a mix of "luxury" and "budget" housing, unit sizes (studio through three bedroom at minimum), building ages and designs, target demographics for shops (e.g. upscale shopping alongside budget grocers), and community amenities (e.g. schools and senior centers). In a pinch subsidized housing can help with integration, but it's a limited and costly solution.

The projects were a flawed concept not least because it concentrates inequality leading to the obvious results.

So instead we have a morass of inscrutable regulations on 3-4 levels (federal, state, county, city) with wildly complex funding schemes making the few expert developers wildly wealthy while building tragically few affordable units.

Not just the concentration of inequality. Also there was often no infrastructure, no shops, no pubs, no nothing, super thin walls, so you could hear all your neighbours, terrible heat isolation... not so different from the tents but higher concentration of people, which made it worse. In many post-communist countries those were later remade into livable places, but it took lots of time and money to do so. Totalitarian regimes suck.

all I see are 2 examples of brutalism

Nah. Both are brutal, but only one is brutalist.

People shitting on commie blocks, but there's millions who would love to have a roof and plumbing.

The more densely we live, the more land that can be left wild/rewilded. We're not entitled to a tick tacky vinyl wrapped house surrounded by lawns and pavement. Our earth is fucked and getting more so by the day. It's a problem that can only be solved by us all living smaller lives.

I always tell people to look to Hong Kong for housing practices. They don't do everything right, but they're definitely on the right track.

I demand my own little box on a hillside!
- Support state owned apartments!

I mean, the people shitting on "commie blocks" usually don't mind that homeless people are barely considered human by the law... so they'd probably be on board with the idea of sending the police to slash all these tents

The commie blocks also had smart city planning, like you had a supermarket and everything else in walking range, and no through traffic. I do think they could be designed and build a bit nicer with modern technology. Especially higher ceilings and thicker walls. And then put those blocks out into nature or agricultural land and connect them via high speed rail or a self driving shuttle bus.

No city folks want to live in agri land due to smell and sounds from agri works. I do agree with more green areas. Stockholm gets a lot of flak for its miljonprojekt but there are quite a lot of trees and green areas within walking distance from most places
- I suspect most city folk live in the city to find work. So if more people could work online, or wouldn't have to work at all (less consumerism, wealth redistribution, basic income) then I suspect most would want to live close to nature but still luxuriously. So the ideal I can imagine would be a luxury apartment block surrounded by fields and forest (now pig manure though since we need to stop industrial meat production anyway)

I mean the US has much less soulless housing, and we have enough housing for everyone. The issue is we have a society that doesn't care to house the homeless.

The issues with the brutalist blocs built in Eastern Europe is usually more about the soulessness and drearineess of the architecture.

People on the streets is far more soulless than gray concrete housing. Especially because concrete can at least be painted over to make it look better.
- I think you misunderstood my point. That concrete block design came about due to a push for efficency and quickly rebuilding post WWII. So it was either house more people quickly or nice looking houses.
  The US hasn't really ever had to make that decision. We have enough houses as is for the homeless. The design of our homes/apartment buildings is not our limiting factor, it's our policies and approach to housing and the homeless.
- But look how colorful the tents are!

no pedos in my memes pls

Kinda works for representing evil, repulsive people though.

Affordable housing doesnt need to be expensive. You can have pretty nice midrises for very cheap. Design like 20 different models, all of em in 5 different colours, thats 100 different styles of apartment buildings and you just dont put two of the same next to eachother and problem solved. Mass produced, colourful, nice, cheap, housing.

You’re pretending that the blocks were built to house the homeless, when it was well to do families being forced into them. They lacked just about everything one can desire. So ya I don’t think the inhabitants of these places remember them fondly.

I am happy my grandparents can't read your comment. And neither can my great grandfather.
- I would be happy to learn about your family’s experience in a commie block. Which country were you guys from? What did your grandparents do for a living? Were they living in the country before Soviet occupation or after? High ranking party officials didn't stay in commie blocks that's all I meant.

I'll take "How the government can't solve your problems with unlimited money" for a preferential bread line or $1000 Alex.