Imagine what “left wing architecture” looks like after we end manufactured scarcity…
Vast forest arcology-scapes.
Enough to increase the carrying capacity of earth past 300 trillion humans, with vast space enough to live in lush nature…
But no, we have to keep the polluting rents extraction to keep the little people down, to keep the billionaires on top, even if it means even the billionaires have vastly less than they could in egalitarian emancipatarian abundance. At least they have more than others. That’s the most important measure. /s :-/
And pay no attention to the imminence of the bubble popping. ;D
Crazy how detached from reality, compassion, and morality, some are, that they pleep about aesthetics, preferring to keep millions destitute and homeless, to maintain their profiteering gamble.
Don’t be an idiot. Leftist housing looks like mass manufactured concrete and gyprock, supplemented by packed earth where appropriate, and probably some cardboard/glass/LDPS. At least for the next half a millenia or so.
Wanting to be approximately decent doesn’t overcome physics.
We can build a world where people live densly and affordably without inventing fantasy bullshit.
Don’t be an idiot. Leftist housing looks like mass manufactured concrete and gyprock, supplemented by packed earth where appropriate, and probably some cardboard/glass/LDPS. At least for the next half a millenia or so.
Wanting to be approximately decent doesn’t overcome physics.
We can build a world where people live densly and affordably without inventing fantasy bullshit.
Fun spray of fallacies there.
Starts with Ad-hominem (plausibly/presumably projection), proceeds through a lack of a constructive argument/engagement (ignoring what I said) with false dichotomy, appeal to status quo, appeal to authority, begging the question, circular argument, … and seems like incurious arrogant naive realism, and lack of an educated mind (as in the expression "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting or rejecting it).
You assert “Leftist housing looks” only one way. … So anarchist or agrarian housing are not “leftist” in your meaning of “leftist” (like it’s only the one type) are not “leftist”? Sounds like circular argument, appeal to definition, begging the question, a cherry picking lie of omission, a false dichotomy, appeal to cynicism, reification (new term to me). and whatever else I missed. Gets me wondering if this is a case of “received opinion” that’s not been introspected upon and scrutinised.
Perhaps for a more constructive argument, you could elaborate on what specifics of “physics” you think refute the possibility specific to my thought experiment I invited readers to imagine. Otherwise it looks like handwaving an appeal to authority to close the argument.
“We can build a world” amuses me, for the open positivity opening, and the limitation of just “world”, because much of the suppressed technology that avails such vast construction overlaps with the technology that avails all space to us (not limiting us to just a world). Though the amusement is short lived with the rest of that sentence falling to the false dichotomy, and the dismissive presumptive strawman for the ending portion of that false dichotomy.
I look forward to your elaboration on the physics aspect of your counter-argument. Or better yet, your entertaining the idea in curiosity, engaging in the thought experiment, leaving the incurious cynical presumption behind, getting constructive in a “how can we” rather than a “stupid cant”.
[Edit: PS, just for a fun extension to this, bouncing off a piece of an llm’s dubious analysis, that I looked at after hastily churning out ^,
capitalist/neoliberal housing also relies on specific materials and technologies, yet its limitations are rarely framed as “physics” but as market failures or policy choices. Funny how ‘physics’ only becomes an insurmountable obstacle when discussing leftist or egalitarian housing. When luxury skyscrapers or McMansions are built, we call it ‘innovation’ or ‘market demand’—not an immutable law of nature. Why the double standard?
reminds of a fun idea asserted emphatically as an invitation to entertain in the recentmost episode of derp with kurp that “if communism didn’t exist, capitalism would have to invent it” (paraphrased from memory ~ works better in original context/video/wording). ~ (albeit apparently using the newspeakified definition of “communism”, obviously not as originally coined by anarchists at least 5 years before Marx usurped it and handed it over to the tankies, authoritarians, totalitarians, fascists etc to wield as a means to abuse us by).]
You getting paid by the word count?
just xkcd386’d into brandolini’s law.
& always been more verbose than the average cat.
Vast forest arcology-scapes.
Go build yourself a house that is a forest archology-scape, something with trees and other plants growing all over the building. Not only is that significantly harder and more expensive to build, but you also have significantly more water intrusion issues, meaning the building won’t last nearly as long and will require horrifically expensive fixes on the regular.
end manufactured scarcity
Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive.
significantly harder and more expensive to build, but you also have significantly more water intrusion issues, meaning the building won’t last nearly as long and will require horrifically expensive fixes on the regular.
This sounds like the kind of argument I hear against spaceships for everybody, that’s basically like “We can’t have spaceships! Screen doors don’t work in space!”. Yeah, well, don’t build them like that.
[Edit: Also sounds like people complaining about indoor plumbing, not understanding what that meant, imagining poop all over the place inside. No. We have tubes to manage where stuff goes. Ample dry clean space.]
Go build yourself a house that is a forest archology-scape,
:3
A house that is a forest arcology-scape… lol… just one house, going from horizon to horizon, with vast layers big enough to fit giant trees in… just a house? Seems more than a little opulent-overkill.
And, by myself? :3 If I had the resources, I would not do it just for myself.
Also, I did draft a small example (and even 1000 variations) of a largely self-sustaining house, using environmentally friendly materials, that would strengthen over time, and as intended to be lived in would increase in capacity to produce food and energy over time, and I was enslaved to do this design work while at my worst health, under promise I’d be put in it, if I’d only design a house fit for my needs, then, after much blackmail, slavery, and torture, they defrauded me, and built a design that inverted every key design element for my health, turning a healing home into a torture box, and what’s worse, it cost them at least twice as much. … I still don’t really know why they did that. Can only presume some kind of sadistic narcissistic Munchhausen-by-proxy. Gets me wondering how much more human potential is being squandered for utterly insane reasons. By this worse-than-Sisyphusian task, I have envied Gregor Samsa. … And I shall recover enough health, and build it properly, and more, yet.
Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive.
You’re kidding, right? That’s insanely farcical. Not even funny. If we’ve availed the means to build forest arcologyscapes, you think this makes housing building more scarce and expensive? I would love to hear your reasoning behind that, correct or incorrect. I wonder where your’re presuming screen doors. Like… concrete? LOL. Or perhaps unimaginatively in cognitive dissonance presuming aspects of the current economic paradigm would persist along side the deployed ability to construct vast linked forest arcologies…?
Also, just the same as we don’t have to increase the carrying capacity of earth into the hundreds of trillions, nor fill that capacity, and that’s just an example to illustrate some of the headroom we have with proper resource management, we don’t have to make everything on earth a forest arcologyscape.
Anyhoo, please don’t be put off by my reflexively scoffing incredulity, and do elaborate on how “Making everything a forest archology-scape is a great way to make housing even more scarce and expensive”. You might be right. I wouldn’t want to be barking up the wrong tree. (Pun not intended, noticed, and did nothing to avoid.)
But where would all the cars go? /s
“Roads? Where we’re going… we don’t need… … “roads”.” – Doc Emmett Brown, Back To The Future trilogy.
Enough to increase the carrying capacity of earth past 300 trillion humans, with vast space enough to live in lush nature…
I want what you’re smoking
At the time I was researching the technology and doing the maths, 20 years ago, I was mostly smoking Power Plant. High beta-pinene. Sharp clarity.
Dude I love brutalism
Dude I love brutalism
Reminds of one of my fave quotes:
“We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” ― Mikhail Bakunin
...
(So, lets have both.)
Brutalism is the architectural style of these buildings, the commenter above isn’t calling them “slavery and brutality”
Ok, but we have to agree that Soviet blocks are systematic government slop that destroy individuality and make people miserable.
[citation needed]
They are designed with productivity in mind, much like capitalist architecture, they aren’t designed to be liveable.
I would like evidence supporting
systematic government slop that destroy individuality and make people miserable.
I was under the impression they were centrally planned, modern brutalist buildings that didn’t meet all expectations as 2was typical of modernist project of the time (c.f. le corbusier’s projects).
Not some darstardly unliveable conspiricy.
Why did they leave so much room for light and green space?
I don’t get the individuality aspect. Do you mean the uniform aesthetic? You can still personalize inside, you know, the place you usually see where you live. I live in a beautiful altbau building in Germany and I couldn’t care less, like fuck do I care about the outside of the house, inside I cannot drew one hole into the wall without it becoming a day long project.
You cannot really express individuality with housing, unless you are building a house from scratch, which few of us do. We can hardly afford to rent anything, it’s not exactly pick and choose?
I’d argue insulation and soundproofing are bigger issues than individuality and making people miserable.
No, we don’t have to agree to that. The abolition of homelessness didn’t make people miserable, guaranteed housing made people thrive.
We’re talking of a country that in 1929 was a preindustrial feudal backwater nation with 85% of the workforce being peasants who, with a bit of luck, worked their landlord’s land with a horse, and without luck they worked it with their bodies. These people lived in poverty conditions without running water, electricity or more heating than a simple fireplace.
By 1970, even after suffering catastrophic destruction at the hands of the Nazism they heroically defeated, it was a fully industrialized country with a majority of the workforce in cities. People, for the first time, enjoyed access to commodities such as running clean water, central heating and electricity. This was literally a revolution for most. This housing was guaranteed, most people accessed it through their work union, and its rent costed a meager 3% of monthly income on average.
The USSR didn’t have the 200 year long process of industrialization that the UK, Germany, France or the USA enjoyed. They literally had to build new, modern housing for a hundred million people in a few decades. The only way possible to do this was with industialized panel construction. Since unemployment was abolished and jobs were guaranteed, everyone was employed in the country. It was literally impossible to build more housing.
This housing was not only guaranteed, it was also designed in walkable neighborhoods with easy access by foot to public transit, basic services such as childcare, shopping and medical attention, and there was a wide variety of cultural centres, sports facilities and other public activities. The socialist country created social people.
I loved to hate these buildings, but behind those grey boxes there was planning. Lots of nurseries, kindergarten, schools, playground, pharmacies, shops, and parks in-between, and public transportation. Whereas modern construction is all for maximizing profit, “luxury residence” everywhere, putting the most of sq meters in every plot, and f.ck the rest.
Also: the size layout of the flats is really good, not like the 39.5sqm random polygons of a modern buildding.
I can see some of that given the uniformity, but suburbia isn’t exactly all that diverse. So ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I know. But these are exclusive to America and the underdeveloped world, and we’re not defending that. It also has similarities with it. Europe has good housing (Though unaffordable) that isn’t suburbia, but modern day commie blocks aren’t exactly affordable in Russia either.
Funny story, suburbia is systemic government slop that destroys individuality, too.
Yeah, they’re both pretty crap compared to what they could be
Stop promoting left-right brain rot. Is what they want
“Stop promoting the knowledge that homelessness was successfully abolished 50+ years ago with socialist policy in a country with much fewer resources and technological development than what we have in 2025”
Yup. Freedom first.
And yet, there’s more greenery around this blocks than you’d see in a US city.
Of course! What use are green spaces? Cant extract profit from it.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #102: “Nature decays, but Latinum lasts forever”
:3
The weird thing is that I don’t mind that architecture. Gray buildings? OK. That’s fine.
Of course very old buildings have their own issues. They all do. And so do many new buildings… But looking at this picture, I just wonder what is supposed to be so bad… Shit, I mean, go to modern suberbia or gated communities and tell me you like the look of the cookie cutter homes that will fall apart in twenty years.
Concentrating human populations into cities, apartment living, etc is the healthiest thing for our planet.
Forest arcologyscapes would be way healthier.
And/or provisioning everybody with spaceships, and vast spinning orbital habitats
Or even, perhaps, underground habitats.
Or…
~ okay, seems “Concentrating human populations into cities, apartment living, etc” is not the healthiest thing for our planet.
We have so much headroom without the plans of the crooks in charge.
Until we live in Iain Bank’s imagination, that is. I should have clarified
This is fascist/communist dictatorship architecture. There was a Professor in our Honors College that would go on a fucking tirade about it whenever he saw it. It wasn’t even a lecture. I was working with him in his office and he just went off for 15 minutes about the Humanities building on campus.
Miss that man.
Dumb ass take. This is the architecture of a country that guaranteed housing for every single citizen and industrialized in 40 years time. Good luck building housing for 1/3rd your population during industrialization without utilizing big blocks and panel construction.
Did your professor tell you about the walkability in USSR neighborhoods? Easy access by foot to green areas, sports facilities, medicine, shopping basics, childcare and education, and public transit?
I mean the dark grey houses of capitalism using every square centimeter of ground are way more depressing than blocks with a lot of trees around them
I struggle with this because I hate apartments. Theyre inherently depressing.
As long as we can have apartments and I can still have my house and land, its fine.
But a lot of times it seems like they want all of us to live in 1 bedroom ny style apartments like sardines and eat bugs, and i think thats where the backlash comes in.
I guess if youre homeless any apartment is a good one. But a lot of them would get destroyed from mentally ill people. So then what, build concrete cell block apartments ? Im really not sure.
Depends. Having a house in the middle of nowhere is reasonable, having a house in a population center is wasted space. You could fit a two mother in law units onto the land my home sits on and not negatively impact my life even a little bit.
Agreed
Theyre inherently depressing.
Lol what. How are apartments inherently depressing? Several of my friends have very nice apartments with natural light, grassy spaces, and close proximity to parks and essentials.
Personally I find isolated single family homes a little depressing, but that’s not an inherent property of them.
I’m the oddball who prefers living in an apartment. It has some nice features that are difficult to find in a stand-alone house, difficult to replicate, or simply don’t scale down well.
So they are living in those ‘luxury’ apartments. So many of those low income apartments are not very nice at all.
I don’t think most of my friends are living in luxury apartments. Though there are many shitty apartments, shittiness is not an innate attribute of apartments.
Although I do not personally feel that apartments are inherently depressing, perhaps someone who was more worried about exactly what decisions they are allowed to make about their living space might. They may be considering the lack of agency one experiences in some regards as a renter, which could make them feel as though every apartment type situation was inherently depressing.
Yeah, could be. I said elsewhere in this thread that I think they’re conflating renting with apartments. They said that buying an apartment is a “scam”, and I didn’t follow up with “but people rent houses, too.”
I could see why eternal renting is depressing, but that’s not the same as living in an apartment.
Several of my friends have very nice apartments with natural light, grassy spaces, and close proximity to parks and essentials
Cool, where can I get an apartment like that? I have one roommate, and combined we have a budget of $1k for rent and bills.
What kind of single family house can you afford with that in comparison?
Well, prices keep going up, so that’s a good question. Rent last year it was $700, this year it was $800, next year it’ll be $975. I got lucky and found somebody with a mortgage who needed a roommate, but I’ve been struggling with my health and I lost my job earlier this year because of it, so the budgeting has become impossible.
I keep hearing that there’s nice places I could move to, but they all turn out to need more bootstraps than god gave me.
Sorry, my question was rethorical. My point was that single family housing is more expensive than flats
Well, I don’t know. Where do you live? Where do you want to live? There are sites like zillow that let you search, but there’s other listings and word of mouth. A combined budget of $1k for rent and bills isn’t going to go very far most places.
You said these nice apartments were available, but I can’t find any, so I’m asking you.
Where do your friends live, and what do they pay for housing? How can I be like them?
I live in new york city. I don’t get the impression you’re engaging in good faith, though.
I keep being told that better is available, but am frustrated that there are never any details on how I can obtain it.
Well, you haven’t provided any details yourself so that seems fair.
Because they’re tiny and you cant make any noise in them (usually not allowed, and if it was id feel bad for annoying others)
Thats probably my biggest issue. I cant understand liking such small spaces and having people surrounding me watching and listening to everything i do, even if its passively. Plus, id be the one to get awful neighbors that I dread being near.
Also can’t make many changes, limits to what can be installed in general etc etc. How is owning literally nothing about your home NOT depressing
I chose all the furniture and decorations. How often are you remodeling your home? What kind of remodeling are you doing? Like, more than moving the contents around? That’s just not a thing I have a desire to do. (This isn’t sarcastic. I’m being sincere.)
I don’t even mean just large remodels, a lot of times in most Apartments the appliances are whatever you get and you can’t put your own in. Many apartments have rules and limitations on what can or can’t be hung on the walls personally I’m a huge fan of shelves on the walls a couple L brackets and some stainless steel string make for a very aesthetically pleasing and very useful shelf space most Apartments don’t enjoy you doing that.
Electricity bill getting really high and you wish you could have a heat pump dryer instead of the cheap ass piece of s*** they put in? Well that’s just too damn bad etc. Want to modify your balcony? Put up special netting or something? Some places will let you some places tell you don’t even think about it. And don’t you dare leave stuff sitting on the balcony we can’t have that it has to look nice
There are plenty of rules and limitations on apartments that go well beyond just Mass renovations
Not every apartment is tiny. I don’t have the measurements for mine but it feels comfortable with two desks, a couch, a coffee table, and some bookcases. Plus there’s the bedroom with a queen size bed, bookcases, another desk, and dresser. The kitchen is admittedly a little small. This isn’t a fancy apartment, and its priced pretty average for the city. I’m pretty sure all the units in this building are about the same.
I very rarely hear my neighbors. I play music through speakers and (I’ve asked) they never hear me.
Also no one sees me, so far as I know. For contrast, where my parents live out in the suburbs, neighbors are always creeping on each other and gossiping.
Now, admittedly, there are many apartments that are tiny, or have shit sound proofing, or whatever. But, again, that is not an inherent property of apartments. Many houses have problems, too.
People surrounding me watching and listening to everything i do
Counterintuitively, denser living spaces make you less seen. Not that you’re invisible, but that you don’t register. If I went for a walk out in the suburbs, people would look and see me. They’d be like “Who’s that weirdo walking?” or “Did you see that weird guy with the metal band on his t-shirt?” Someplace denser, I blend in with everyone else and don’t get a second thought. Not even a first thought, most of the time.
I very rarely hear my neighbors.
Somewhat paradoxically, the soundproofing in big buildings tends to be much better than in smaller buildings. The concrete and steel and thick storm resistant windows and fire doors between unit and hallway required by the building code for tall buildings have so much weight that things like footsteps, moving furniture, and other sources of noise just don’t carry between units.
Those look very similar in style to the 5-over-1s being built all over the United States. Four floors good, ten floors bad? Or does “left-wing architecture” refer to leaving the trees instead of paving every square inch of outdoor space for parking?
5 or 6 stories are the most you can do with 2x4 construction bought from the local hardware store. They don’t want to spend the money on concrete and use the cheapest shit to furnish the apartment they can. There was a pretty bad fire in my state and they made the fire codes stricter on them. Faux luxury.
Yeah. The live/work/shop complexes are profitable. Especially when you can charge for parking, too.
The thing is, a lot of capitalist countries also used to build these, except they stopped due to outrage from real estate barons and NIMBYs losing value on their buildings.
Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather. The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).
Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they’d look nice.
Could get artists to do far better than just monochrome per building.
True, but even just the colour there makes the whole thing seem less depressing.
Yep. Colour psychology matters.
That looks like a SimCity screenshot.
North Korea is actually real life SimCity, that’s why people aren’t allowed in there.
They mixed residential, industrial, and commercial.
/original Sim City had color-coded zones
Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather.
Look at the trees. They don’t have leaves. The image was definitely taken in winter. That adds a lot to the depression of it.
Didn’t anyone think to scatter a few evergreens around?
E.g. a few pine and yew trees would be nice.
As someone in a city with tons and tons of commieblocks - the apartments are usually fine, but no, these areas almost always look like shit and are depressing to be around, regardless of the weather.
And this is not one random guy’s opinion, no one I know likes these parts of the city and is excited to live there.
You’re seeing the commieblocks 35 years after the dissolution of the country that built them, and likely 50-70 years after their construction. Anything that old without proper maintenance looks like shit.
I’ve lived my whole life in and around commie blocks and I do not share your sentiment. My blocks are colorful with massive murals painted on their sides making each unique. The green spaces in between also help a lot, there are nice playgrounds for the kids, outdoor gyms etc. All the commodities I need are very close to my living space. I have not seen a single space in my city that looks like one in the picture even though we do have a lot of commie blocks standing around. Although I must say that the city isn’t taking enough care of our buildings. While mine and most others around are holding up fine there’s one that looks like it has rotted over the years. It is really starting to ruin the atmosphere but it’s just an odd one out and I hope proper steps will be taken in the future to restore it back to it’s shape.
Yeah, in Czechia most of the are painted (perhaps not as well as in the original picture)
Right wing Architecture
“Rugged individualism.”
More like
Very odd to call things like that right-wing given they are most notable for being built in cities. Places well-known for being lefty.
Not really. Who do you think is more likely to sign off on this kind of thing? Certainly not a leftie.
They put butt-plugs on those posts?
right wing architecture: jail
The tarpe movement was very influencial from the 80s.
Yeah my parents did crack in these blue tents, so nostalgic
Still, some colors. And we know now a lot more about livable non-depressing urban planning.
Many of them were colorful in Soviet times, but the capitalist regimes don’t care for maintenance. As they say, “what communism built, capitalism cannot even paint”.
