Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[The Jewel of the Nile]

Video shared on the /r/fuckcars subreddit:

They really are just slowly reinventing the car, aren't they?

That "reinvented car":

There truly isn't anything new under the sun, is it?

 

[FPTMIU]

I don't know. The appeal of commieblocks is partly because it is misrepresented. Unless you were able to grease some wheels of the Party, you essentially crammed a whole family into a studio apartment. You were lucky if you got even another room, and children didn't have their own rooms. This page has Soviet-era apartments and while it paints an extremely optimistic picture of apartments it still comes off as grim. (They don't mention if bathrooms were shared or not).

The urbanist view of commieblocks is cozy studio apartments you get for free, right near schools and commercial establishments. KWC is extremely obscure, we have a cutaway view of it (who knows the accuracy, we also have the same things for Ancient Rome) but from what little we know of it in terms of documented sources, there's dark, narrow corridors, pollution from unlicensed factories and probably an enormous amount of mold (IMAGINE THE SMELL), extremely dangerous (one reason why there's probably so little documentation), and a very reclusive population. (There's the cope of "most residents were not involved in crime", but combining the passive sociopathy of big-city dwellers and the disregard of human life in China means that they could watch someone die and do literally nothing). I am sure that if KWC had not been demolished it would've collapsed or suffered a massive fire—the biggest structure collapse/fire death count in modern times.

But favelas are fairly well-documented and they suck. I just don't see it happening, at least not among most urbanists.

Commieblocks were good for their original purpose: Quickly building affordable housing in a war torn country and getting a roof above as many people's heads as possible. You have to keep in mind that the alternative to these apartments was far worse and for a quickly industrializing country, these were very modern to the average person. Sure, a bunch of single family homes in a giant suburb environment would absolutely be great, but this is a post WW2 european country that had a fuckton of people to accomodate for, building that would take too long and they needed living spaces ASAP. I think for the purpose of providing a home to every citizen, they are fine, but the issue is pretending that these are a great standard for housing, they are not.

It's pretty clear the soviets didn't even themselves like the Kruschevkas and Brezchnevkas that much. And if they had infinite resources at their disposal they would have just made art-deco Stalinkas (shown here)

Leftists soyfacing over commieblocks is extremely embarassing as while a decent and effective compromise for the time, it should be looked at as just that: a compromise. They aren't really needed in a modern developed country that can afford to build better housing for it's people. Ask any slav and they will hate their commieblocks, the only real benefit to them is that they're cheap to live in while keeping you warm in the winter.

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

Quickly building affordable housing in a war torn country and getting a roof above as many people's heads as possible.

They were absolutely amazing when first built- quick to assemble from pre-made structures, and they came with running water, electricity, a kitchen and a bathroom. The soviet bloc needed these to keep up with rapid urbanization as people flooded in from small villages. Most found jobs in large local factories
From their perspective, they were fucking lucky

or, as we say, grabbed God by his feet

- many villages at the time still lacked running water (you had to carry it in buckets from a local well) and electricity was spotty at best
That’s also why public transport is so ingrained in post-Soviet countries- it was the only reliable way to move people from surrounding villages or commieblock hoods to the factories. For your average Joe (or Ivan, or Mariusz or whoever) owning a car felt as out of reach as a spaceship
Edit to add some thoughts- the above comments were mainly about the first post-war years to the late 50s. When the overall situation got better and we started finally manufacturing our own stuff the car craze started here as well. Sure, they were crappy (heck, I know of at least one that couldn't drive backwards- GAZ-24 if I'm not mistaken) but owning a crappy car was still preferable to not owning a car at all. Besides, the red Fiat 126p is just cute and iconic

 

[LaxerBRO]

Leftists soyfacing over commieblocks is extremely embarassing as while a decent and effective compromise for the time, it should be looked at as just that: a compromise.

The size of a standard Commie Block apartment for a single person to a two parents, two kids was about 370 square feet.

With that size, there was one bedroom where the parents slept, then there was the "living room" where the kids slept, followed up by a small bathroom (if you got your own), and a cramped kitchen. On top of all that, the walls were paper thin.

I don't understand how that can compare an apartment in the West, especially the US, to a commie block.

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

The size of a standard Commie Block apartment for a single person to a two parents, two kids was about 370 square feet.

With that size, there was one bedroom where the parents slept, then there was the "living room" where the kids slept, followed up by a small bathroom (if you got your own), and a cramped kitchen. On top of all that, the walls were paper thin.

There were actually multiple configurations of those. At least in Poland you had M1, M2 or M3- if you had a bigger family and lived in rapidly developing town you could ask for a bigger flat and get it without any problems. My mom lived with her older sister and their parents in a fairly spacious M3 (2 bedrooms plus a room they used as a salon plus bathroom and a kitchen) and my grandparents were your everyday workers, not party officials or other big fish. And let me tell you that the walls were not thin- to this day any renovation that requires doing something to the walls is a nightmare for the neighbors because you need insane power to make a dent in them.
Definitely preferable to living in the sticks back in the day

 

[Lovely Kin]

Leftists soyfacing over commieblocks is extremely embarassing as while a decent and effective compromise for the time, it should be looked at as just that: a compromise. They aren't really needed in a modern developed country that can afford to build better housing for it's people. Ask any slav and they will hate their commieblocks, the only real benefit to them is that they're cheap to live in while keeping you warm in the winter.

I find them interesting, but at the same time, they are nothing nothing to salivate about. My former professor from Russia lives in a Stalinka and enjoyed his, but he admitted he could never live in a Brezchnevka (or a Kruschevka, I forgot which one) again which he did when younger. Still believe he lives there since he went back to Russia. Soviet aesthetic fetishists confuse me, like many things, I'm sure there were cool things about it, but it certainly wasn't heaven like the soviet and second world fetishists like to believe.

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

Soviet aesthetic fetishists confuse me

While it's not a perfect comparison I usually liken the soviet nostalgia to the americana phenomenon- that is nostalgia for the "good ol days". It's mostly about the after-war economy boom and better living conditions for your normal person

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Commieblocks were good for their original purpose: Quickly building affordable housing in a war torn country and getting a roof above as many people's heads as possible. You have to keep in mind that the alternative to these apartments was far worse and for a quickly industrializing country, these were very modern to the average person. Sure, a bunch of single family homes in a giant suburb environment would absolutely be great, but this is a post WW2 european country that had a fuckton of people to accomodate for, building that would take too long and they needed living spaces ASAP. I think for the purpose of providing a home to every citizen, they are fine, but the issue is pretending that these are a great standard for housing, they are not.

The commieblocks were cheap and effective but they were obviously second-class (at best) to the common American apartment buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s. The problem with commieblocks and the too little, too late response to mass car affordability in the United States is that the Soviets never had an edge on the Americans as far as the quality of living war went.

Even if you ignored the obvious shortcomings of the commieblocks like communal bathrooms (in some, who knows how many) and lacking actual rooms beyond a living room, I think that the appeal that these apartments had more "mixed-use" nearby...but even then if you look at the average suburban apartment, there were always the usual convenience stores (probably a mix closer to a small grocery) which would've been far better than whatever commissary you get cabbage rations from.

 

[Kiska]

obviously second-class (at best) to the common American apartment buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s

Really? Wasn't that the same exact era (early 1950-early 1970s) when the worst American apartment projects were made in? I know "commieblocks" are cheap and all but I'd rather pick that, there's a reason why our single family housing has much greater envy on the global sphere than our apartments.


Not to deride all American apartment architecture though, there are far better examples that could've been picked from, such as the turn of the century to the late 1940s Fourplexes. If anything though, I'd argue that was the last good era of American apartment architecture, since modern "New Urbanist" apartments face many similar issues that caused the downfall of most mid-century projects, and almost all of these old ones were still built with proper utilities, comforts, and the spaciousness people need to survive and thrive.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Really? Wasn't that the same exact era (early 1950-early 1970s) when the worst American apartment projects were made in? I know "commieblocks" are cheap and all but I'd rather pick that, there's a reason why our single family housing has much greater envy on the global sphere than our apartments.


Not to deride all American apartment architecture though, there are far better examples that could've been picked from, such as the turn of the century to the late 1940s Fourplexes. If anything though, I'd argue that was the last good era of American apartment architecture, since modern "New Urbanist" apartments face many similar issues that caused the downfall of most mid-century projects, and almost all of these old ones were still built with proper utilities, comforts, and the spaciousness people need to survive and thrive.

That wasn't the common American apartment, though--stuff like Cabrini-Green and other developments (colloquially referred to as "the projects") were urban renewal efforts to clear out slums. Most of the new apartments being built in the United States, even in "old" cities like Cincinnati (as opposed to "new" cities like Houston or Orlando), were considered nice places to live. I've attached an old 1973 paper for Cincinnati showing all these new apartment complexes (or relatively new), they all advertise various things including swimming pools, air conditioning, playgrounds for children, and others...there are tons and tons of ratty apartment complexes (clusters of 2-3 story buildings linked together with parking lots) filled with blacks/illegals/drug dealers/what have you today but all of them started out nice, just like everything starts out new. And these were all fairly affordable if you weren't dirt poor.

Even in apartment buildings that weren't the latest and greatest (and not obvious slum housing), you could easily have your own bathroom or give a child their own bedroom in apartments.

Note also how far out these buildings are—there's this idea that apartments don't exist in the suburbs (they obviously do and did).

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Really? Wasn't that the same exact era (early 1950-early 1970s) when the worst American apartment projects were made in? I know "commieblocks" are cheap and all but I'd rather pick that, there's a reason why our single family housing has much greater envy on the global sphere than our apartments.

There was a time when the projects were kinda the fuckin' bomb. But then it turned out that infesting them with niggers niggerfies them, and all the downsides came out.

50s-70s is when America went batshit with Prairie School and Bauhaus and shit - stuff that looked futuristic but was built like shit, or stuff imported from the Mediterranean and shoved into snowass, michigan.

Anything, even a flavela shantytown, can be great, if the people living there have pride in themselves and their houses. And anything will turn to shit if it's inhabited by people who have no pride in anything

 

[Kiska]

...

As usual niggers ruin everything , amen.

 

[The Jewel of the Nile]

As usual niggers ruin everything , amen.

The best TLDR of the entire thread lol

 

[quaawaa]

Anything, even a flavela shantytown, can be great, if the people living there have pride in themselves and their houses. And anything will turn to shit if it's inhabited by people who have no pride in anything

That was the biggest redpill about the Tenement Museum in NYC. All of the old photos show immaculately clean buildings despite the tenants being extremely poor yet this is what it looks like today with residents orders of magnitude wealthier:

 

[Yamamura]

That was the biggest redpill about the Tenement Museum in NYC. All of the old photos show immaculately clean buildings despite the tenants being extremely poor yet this is what it looks like today with residents orders of magnitude wealthier:
View attachment 7463936

Sometimes as a thought in the back of my mind I wonder what would happen if caning was introduced as a form of corporal punishment in the US.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Anything, even a flavela shantytown, can be great, if the people living there have pride in themselves and their houses. And anything will turn to shit if it's inhabited by people who have no pride in anything

This is my biggest belief for a community. If someone and the community has pride where they live, and truly loves it, they should take care of it. Many niggers, homeless, and antisocial weirdos have a habit of trashing things. Some will claim "it's quirky to keep it weird." But I believe these people who enter and destroy communities should be excluded, or put in a state hospital or prison.

As usual niggers ruin everything , amen.

My great uncle always believed if it wasn't for niggers fucking up the projects, and acting like savages in them, they would have been a much better thing for poor Americans who needed something to get off their feet. But he says if you throw a money to a nigger, he will spend the money on anything but something that improves him.

Sometimes as a thought in the back of my mind I wonder what would happen if caning was introduced as a form of corporal punishment in the US.

My university had many international students, and one of the most common questions I got from some were "Why aren't they being arrested?" "If this happened where I'm from, the whole place would come together and drive them out" and I think one even said a caning would happened if that happened where he lived. I can understand how jarring it was as the university was in a soft on crime city. As much I do defend the US, I do absolutely agree we need to be much tougher everywhere on crime. Even in the areas that are "tough on crime" but that puts me on the fringe.

But really, I think crime would go down faster if we had caning, and we would have a sharp decrease in disruptive public behaviors. Shame we can't suggest new punishments or it's "cruelty"

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

My great uncle always believed if it wasn't for niggers fucking up the projects, and acting like savages in them, they would have been a much better thing for poor Americans who needed something to get off their feet. But he says if you throw a money to a nigger, he will spend the money on anything but something that improves him.

The biggest fucking casualty of the niggerfestation is the blacks (specifically the black family). There were real discrimination issues and shit before and after the civil war, but the black family was rapidly improving and well on their way to being "white" - and the projects would have been amazing for them.

But then the racist as fuck US Gov't decided that blacks and niggers are exactly the same, and blended them together with crack and absolutely fucked everything sky-high.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

I have a suspicion that in a decade or so the Neo Urbanist soys will argue that the only appropriate dwelling for 21st century and beyond is a favela because it's how le diverse BIPOC folxerinos of the Global South live and every other type of settlement was invented by racist mayonnaise ghouls and makes the BIPOCerinos cry. They already love commieblocks and gigantic bughives and complain how any style of buildings that isn't Brutalism is reactionary and chuddy, it shouldn't take them long to make the jump to "You know what? All those commieblocks we love look too... Eurocentric. They look like something a wh*te m*n would come up with, they don't look welcoming to the refugees from DR Congo, Nepal and Haiti, let's replace them with shoddily assembled shanties, preferably built on slopes and cliffs. And if you don't think so, then remeber who also didn't want to live in a diverse ghetto, sweat summer chuderino!"

Nah, favelas are too space inefficient and sprawl out like suburbs. What they want is something like Kowloon City, but gentrified so it is safe and trendy to live there. Seriously it would be such an easy pitch because it lines up with their ideals and values. Everyone lives in pods to maximize residential density, every nook and cranny has a shops, services, amenities, and common areas so it is all walkable and there for very convenient. Also because the community is so dense it would be hard for police and other agencies to adequately enforce so that is another plus for the ACAB crowd.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Nah, favelas are too space inefficient and sprawl out like suburbs. What they want is something like Kowloon City, but gentrified so it is safe and trendy to live there. Seriously it would be such an easy pitch because it lines up with their ideals and values. Everyone lives in pods to maximize residential density, every nook and cranny has a shops, services, amenities, and common areas so it is all walkable and there for very convenient. Also because the community is so dense it would be hard for police and other agencies to adequately enforce so that is another plus for the ACAB crowd.

I can't wait until these carfuckers have some big money behind them, because every attempt to "build what they want" that isn't already in the fucking center of the most expensive/densest cities in the world has resulted in nobody fucking wanting to live in their overpriced shitbox.

The cost of building up is so fucking expensive after just a few stories, that it would be significantly cheaper in most cases to literally extend transit lines further into medium or low density suburbs than redevelop upwards.

SimCity and its sequels have been a disaster for the urban planning.

 

[Apple Porcupine]

Jason claims he's done trying to hock his comedy channel.

One of his viewers assumed it was a ripoff channel using his AI voice:

Incidentally this most recent one was written by Andrew Orvedahl. Never heard of him but I can't think anything remotely positive about someone who names their kid Jupiter.