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by egao1980 1334 days ago
USSR had implemented this idea and it worked fine while factories / companies were providing accommodation in the walking distance along with all the necessary services - schools, hospitals, kindergartens and shops.

I doubt that it would work in a modern Capitalist society unless we all work from home.
4 comments
ETH_start 1334 days ago
USSR had chronic shortages in basic consumer goods like toilet paper, steadily fell behind the West in emerging technologies like semiconductors, and eventually went bankrupt [1], so I don't think you could describe anything in its centrally planned economy.

Japan has many highly mixed neighorhoods, but unlike in the Soviet example, they emerge organically, because zoning restrictions are lax.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/28/world/big-soviet-budget-d...

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Barrin92 1334 days ago
I'm confused, are you insinuating that Barcelona isn't real or not part of a modern capitalist society? These superblocks already exist in the city. This urban design has been around longer than the USSR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample

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egao1980 1332 days ago
Barcelona's blocks are nice but won't work as a mostly pedestrian self contained urban unit. People have to work and get social services outside those blocks.

If you scale them up a bit, add infrastructure, add workplaces and make it 10-15 walking distance and add public transit links to other such places that will do it.

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qaq 1334 days ago
As most anything else it did not work in USSR either for the most part.
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TulliusCicero 1334 days ago
> USSR had implemented this idea

Press [X] to doubt

Do you have any source that the USSR had superblocks like this?

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brabarossa 1333 days ago
They are called Microdistricts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdistrict

Examples: https://imgur.com/a/lxgdEpM

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TulliusCicero 1332 days ago
Not seeing a lot of evidence that this is similar? For example, the sections without roads don't necessarily look easily permeable to walk/bike traffic, which is a relatively defining trait.

Edit: well, in some sense yeah it's a huge block and thus a super block, but in terms of Barcelona-style super blocks with similar aims...

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