Prefabs were supposed to be the solution to the housing crisis. Building with prefabricated panels was supposed to be simple, modern, innovative, inexpensive, and easy. Many of these points were met, but because it was a solution to the crisis, there was pressure to build, and prefabrication allowed many urban planners to experiment, but often fail.

Everything is far away

In normal urban development, streets are usually lined with houses overlapping each other, but in prefabricated housing complexes, houses are usually built apart. Somehow this does not work well when multi-story houses rise up behind huge empty lawns. Public space in the form of lawns is rarely used and is often far from anywhere, from stores, from cars parked in the last available space a few hundred meters away, and from public transportation. This long distance seems to encourage the densification of residential areas by new buildings, making parking almost impossible.

Streets are less present

The urban core is arranged on streets, with prefabricated buildings variously located on vacant lots. Streets appear to be nonexistent or are curving as they should be. This greatly impairs one\’s sense of direction, the environment is uncluttered, and the corners are so intricate as to be frightening at night. Furthermore, to get where one needs to go, one often has to bypass a variety of pointless obstacles. A normal road would cut the distance in half.

Civic Amenities

Because the planners of the prefabricated apartment complexes wanted to separate the commercial area from the housing, in most places there are no stores on the ground floor of the houses, which used to be the norm. Civic conveniences, including stores, were added later, but in many cases what was planned has not been realized, and in some places life is not as comfortable as it was when they were built.

Thin Walls and Many People

It is obvious that noise is transmitted through thin walls. What no one immediately notices is that prefabs are on average taller than older houses, allowing several “popular” neighbors at once. On the other hand, you can chat without visiting …… Another drawback is poor insulation, which can be partially remedied with insulation.
Then wouldn\’t a smaller house be better ? And next door they are screaming that they scored again!