Ukraine can move beyond its Soviet architectural legacy | Hacker News Reader

Ukraine can move beyond its Soviet architectural legacy

counteroffensive.news

48 pointsdbuxton18 comments

Those plattenbau apartments still provide affordable and good housing - often modernised with insulation or solar roofs - for hundreds of millions in postsoviet states for the same demographics that live in cottages, moldy drywall houses or rotting trailer parks in "first world" nations.

Oh god, anything but a country cottage!

Gotta love how in one conversation, Americans will be mocked for living in "cheap McMansions". Then in another, Americans will be mocked for having small houses. Mocked for being rural. Mocked for being suburban. Only urban apartment dwelling bus riders are spared, but even then they are called substandard.

It don't think it is fair to characterize plattenbau as "Cheap, low-durability and unsafe". Many of these buildings have lasted for 65 years already and are plenty safe if no bombs are going of nearby. If you're actively being shelled almost no house is safe be it wood framing, brick or a modern glass skyscraper.

If you believe that building more housing is a solution to the housing crisis, then building large blocks of flats from prefabricates should seem like an attractive option.

You can build cheaply and efficiently because of economy of scale, and with large scale planning, entire settlements can pop up within 10 years complete with public transport, and amenities.

It really doesn’t have to look bad either. With modern materials, a bit of ornamentation, and greenery it can be a great place to live for hundreds of millions of people.

Somehow OT, but @what about those revolutional-technical-evolutions coming with "density":

https://videos.metro.co.uk/video/met/2024/10/29/645142234187...

...regards

I grew up in a panel block, now live in a more recent building and my general impression is that while their build quality left much to be desired, I had no complaints about walkability. I could go to school, the clinic, the dentist or post office without crossing a road - only streets with heavily restricted traffic. Almost all parking spots were in a ring around my superblock.

Much of that was due to the fact that communists weren't so bent on squeezing as much value as possible from every square meter of land.

Meanwhile in more modern architecture the (built in 2002) block neighbouring mine is spaced a regulatory-approved 7 metres away - windows facing. My relative lives in an even newer apartment which has windows facing the southwest only. AC becomes a necessity in such circumstances.

I can't recall ever seeing panel blocks where you could peer into your neighbour's apartment like that. In all the instances I can think of both blocks have blank walls there.

> I grew up in a panel block, now live in a more recent building and my general impression is that while their build quality left much to be desired, I had no complaints about walkability. I could go to school, the clinic, the dentist or post office without crossing a road - only streets with heavily restricted traffic. Almost all parking spots were in a ring around my superblock.

Very few people had cars when these houses were built, so parking and car-friendliness wasn’t obviously a priority. With the number of cars these days we have major issues with parking and emergency service accessibility around commie blocks.

nice article, would be nice also... some thoughts

- who finances? everything goes to war, even post-victory, focus will be on replenishing and criticial infra.

- shelters? only a handful of people with kids go to them

Last time I was in Odesa, the shelter (which was our underground parking garage) had maybe 20-30 people each night. At the time, russia was firing cruise missiles and drones at the city literally every night.

I suspect the future reconstruction effort is going to involve quite a lot more investment in underground shelters. I don't think Ukraine is going to trust russia for at least the next 100 years. Similar situation to Finland.

Sweden only stopped mandatory bunkers in apartment buildings in the 80s IIRC.

They might start again

I'm Norwegian. The basement of my primary school was constructed to double as a bomb shelter.

Swiss new housing isn't mandated to have underground bomb shelters as of late, but people are still planned to a shelter nearby - indeed schools or whatever else.

Sweden currently has 65000 shelters [1] with space for about 7 million [2] people while the population has risen to more than 10 million people. According to MSB (Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap or 'civil protection and preparedness authority') no new shelter has been built since 2002 and 'no new shelters are being built at this moment - in their FAQ about the subject the answer to the question 'Can I build a new shelter' is 'No, at the moment no new shelters are being built in Sweden, it is up to the government to decide whether the current threat level mandates the construction of new shelters'. This only goes for public shelters - one of the 65000 mentioned above - and people are free to build their own shelters so it is hard to say how many shelters there actually are.

[1] https://msbgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/nearby/index.htm...

[2] https://www.riksbyggen.se/bostad/kopa-bostadsratt/lagar-och-...

In my childhood we had bunkers everywhere. In schools, daily care, around in the neighborhood. I never saw them functioning, but we knew about them. But during growing up them was completely abandoned and destroyed. It took only about 45-50 years after WW2 ended.

We had them because of Germany.

I spent my childhood in Ukraine.

Germany will finance it you will see

No one goes to shelters in Kharkov, the alarm can go on for 12 hours at a time.

The missile flies for 40 seconds, the alarm usually goes off after the explosion.

exactly (ps: I live in kharkiv)

When the war started, I advised various public and business figures about houses for relocation and someone even replied that work was being done on it, but I don’t see any progress. I had many friends who lived in panel buildings and everyone complained, it was a real curse. In addition to poor sound insulation between walls, over time the panels start to delaminate, you constantly have to seal cracks to stop cockroaches from migrating. The lifespan is 20 years shorter than that of brick buildings, though it depends on the specific batch and some are of decent quality.

Another issue is centralized heating. Problems begin when they start repairing the pipes, going six months without hot water is normal. Insulation is a must, usually done on credit at your own expense.

These buildings are completely lacking in bomb resistance. Of course, there are many types and configurations, for example, I lived in Odessa in some fairly decent panel buildings that were apparently built for a few from the USSR Politburo, so probably elite.

Living underground is hell. It’s better to solve the problem politically with reliable air defense systems. On top of that, terrible high-tech bombs keep getting more advanced and basements could end up costing more than the houses built above them.

The outskirts of Kharkiv are a tragedy, condolences.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com