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Whever you see a street image of russia/ukrain/belarus/moldova/kazakhstan ect you can immediatly say in a split second its one of these places.
There is something distictly ugly abou their urvan and suburban landscape.
Communists knew how to make things miserable.
But there is something that i noticed from spending time in these places tgat many people seem to forget.
Russia has a muddy or dusty climate and it generally alternates between the two.
Thos wpuldnt be a problem except that the majority of steets lack any canalisation.
There is no gutters in the streets, no storm water drains and nowhere for the mud and dust from cars or generalmorass pf life to go..
It doesn't go down tue train there it just sits.
That combined with very little effor to clean away the must and dust and in many times the few places that have actual drains being blocked throughly in the end leads to a right old muddy dusty place.
People just dont bother to build this basic infrastructure.
In some places there is drainage ditches but these are for excessive water and are not part of the road.
Thos very lack of decent drainage and the climate combine to make a terrible urban mudscape or a dust party most of the time.
Its utterly insane.. Many times the whole outside area is dusty in dry weather
I think a big part of it is because car ownership has gone way up since the fall of communism and parking wasn’t accommodated back then, so people just parked their cars wherever including green spaces, well except now they are brown spaces. For example in Volgograd.
So all that dust and mud is being tracked into the cities and causing them to get dirty as evidence by the muddy cars driving in the cities. For example Volgograd.
This is interesting, OP. A friend from Buryatia who was in a tour group that went to the San Francisco Bay Area and toured all around, including the wine-producing area, said, that the whole time he was there, he was thinking that something was missing from the picture, and he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Then he realized, "There's no mud!" It didn't feel like home because there was no mud or dust.
I interpreted that as the view of someone from Siberia, not western Russia or urban western Russia, but now you've given me more insight. My early experience in the USSR was mostly in "Leningrad", i.e St. Petersburg, where I recall no mud or dust issues. But maybe St. Pete's was built with drainage for the streets, since it would have been easy to install, give the fact that it's a city of canals.
Or it could be garden variety budget issues, as in some states in the US. Money get "borrowed" from the highway fund or city road maintenance fund to cover other pressing maintenance needs.
It can also be that the Russians like their places like that. Remember that Russia is designed for Russians. If other people like or not is fine, the aesthetic that should be the most important in Russia is that of the Russians. I think every country should adhere to the aesthetics of the locals and not necessarily the foreigners.
With that said, I don’t think if Russia is going to pave most of their parking lots, that it should be done with asphalt. There are many materials from cobblestones or brick to even placing gravel/pebbles over the dirt. I think the Russians have an opportunity to making their parking lot appear more handsome than simply putting asphalt. The Portuguese (and in Brazil) many sidewalks are done in what seem like a type of mosaic, which I think looks very nice. Can the Russians develop something similar that could be a very Russian mark or stamp?
It could be, but there are many places that have dirt roads due to choice. This happens in the USA, such as these dirt roads intentionally kept like that in New York state, USA. Why can’t Russia decide to keep many of its dirt roads as dirt roads?
This is in a very wealthy town in New York. It isn’t that they don’t have the money to pave some of the roads or someone steals it or the original budget is diverted to other things. Simply, they don’t want to pave them. It’s as simple as that.
Spoiler
Dirt or unpaved roads are not a sign of poverty, corruption or being undeveloped, IMO.
It can also be that the Russians like their places like that. Remember that Russia is designed for Russians. If other people like or not is fine, the aesthetic that should be the most important in Russia is that of the Russians. I think every country should adhere to the aesthetics of the locals and not necessarily the foreigners.
That's sort of weird statement. I can assure you, that Russians don't like their streets and roads to be full of potholes. They complain just like anyone else. But much of Russia is in northerly areas and has weather extremes that wreak havoc on paved roads. This includes Moscow. Maintenance is expensive.
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