Ah Shit, Here We Go Again

Do you know why they look “blocky and grey and depressing”? (Except when they don’t, because the homeowners tended to customise... e.g. the apartment usually had a balcony and it was common to customise the balcony with mosaics or whatever.)

Because they were built en masse to tackle housing needs, and they were built cost-efficiently - which meant no frills such as fancy facades or customisation. So yes, they look grey and boring because they were built to house people, not to “drive up the neighbourhood real estate value” or what the fuck ever. On the other hand, people also received these apartments for free and owned them (having to pay no rent or property tax, only a utilities bill). If the government offered you a job in a certain city, they’d also provide you housing (again, owned, not rented) - this happened to my paternal grandparents, who after finishing their engineering degrees were offered jobs in a town that was actively being developed. Sometimes apparently you also got them as like... a reward? My maternal grandmother received her 3-room apartment as a gift from the government for getting the Soviet equivalent of a PhD? (This was in Ukraine.) I’m a PhD student myself, and it’s a little wild to think about.

Also me:

Did not expect this kind of evolution 

This is a photo of an African-American burn victim who lost the pigmentation in his left arm after suffering second-degree burns following an apartment fire.