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Comment by wwosik | Hacker News Reader

There's a good reason to demolish much of that. It is overwhelming [1] in scale very ugly and not even painting it would help much. This building on the photo of Elista is nothing to look at.

But that photo from Makhachkala looks rather pretty and on a human scale. I imagine when the trees are green it must be a nice place (judging only from this one photo, don't know it IRL).

[1] The Ship https://www.google.com/maps/@55.7108903,37.6218164,3a,75y,21...

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> It is overwhelming [1] in scale very ugly

I agree it's indeed pretty ugly, but if you want to destroy every building looking that ugly, you will have to tear down half the cities in Europe -- and probably also many other places.

Honestly, without the written cyrillic, this could be many places in e.g. France or Italy.

I can only say I've been to a few cities here and there and nowhere did I feel as overwhelmed by the scale as in Moscow. Many of the cities remained not that high, London or Paris do not have such buildings in their city centers.

> Paris do not have such buildings in their city centers.

Because you were lucky enough to avoid the worst parts:

- Paris: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8235336,2.3674101,3a,75y,342...

- Marseille: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.2890541,5.437606,3a,75y,185....

- Toulouse: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5804085,1.4105313,3a,75y,287...

That Paris thing is certainly bad, but it looks rather like a backside, which often are not pretty. From the other side the buildings look nicer: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8230784,2.3662426,3a,75y,136...

Tolouse is not pretty - one of the Corbusier's or Corbusier-inspired crimes, but at least it does not have the scale.

That said even a tall and long building doesn't have to be dramatically bad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falowiec#/media/File:GDANSK,_F...

> That Paris thing is certainly bad, but it looks rather like a backside

I live in Paris; believe me, the best and the worst are two streets away. There are quarters in the 18th or the 13th that make OPs photo look like a dream.

https://itinerrance.fr/app/uploads/2019/05/head-fresques-bou... https://p1.storage.canalblog.com/11/75/1224518/120815785_o.j... https://www.blackandwood.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Paris...

Now there is a lot of subjectivity here, and to be honest, I'm not fond of the Warsaw building either, so I might be a very poor judge of modern architecture.

the second and third photos aren't too bad actually, but first one could indeed have Blade Runners around...

I agree that many if not most of these buildings are ugly. Many should be preserved though; normally this is done by a decision of a local body including architects and other experts.

These things aside, for someone visiting Crimea, for example, these buildings do matter a lot. They basically move you in time. You can actually get a strong feeling of things that you know maybe from very early childhood or mostly from books or documentaries. It is very, very different from anything you could see in the West.

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