&gt; The fact is living in apartments is very common all across Continental Europe<p>I had to google what a &quot;Brutalist architecture&quot; is. Turns out it&#x27;s somewhat similar to how Central and Eastern Europe countries look like as a whole: socialists governments used to love this style and were building tons of these. It&#x27;s now extremely common. Wikipedia says that 1&#x2F;3 of Czechs live in buildings like this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;1&#x2F;17&#x2F;Dlhe_diely_panorama_zo_starych_gruntov.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;1&#x2F;17&#x2F;Dlhe_die...</a><p>Which is probably representative to the whole former Eastern Bloc. Here in Poland these building were being built from 1950-ties to early 1990-ties, non-stop, one after another, district after district, city (and, to a lesser degree, town and village too!) after city.<p>I&#x27;ve lived all my life in one or another of those. They are old, very badly constructed and ugly as hell, but they are inhabitable and they provide homes for millions of people. It&#x27;s somewhat gross to hear your neighbour peeing at night, but it somewhat &quot;works&quot; - you have a cheap shelter for really many people close to city centres.<p>I don&#x27;t really want to make any point, I just wanted to provide some context to your statement about how common living in apartments is on this side of the Berlin wall.