by Geoffrey Churchman

Futher to our previous article, Gwynn Compton has doubled down on his attack on Waikanae people who he apparently believes are well-off snobs and need “pack and stack” proletarian housing inflicted opon them. This example could be his ideal — Nowa (Nova) Huta.

A giant statue of Lenin dominated the Central Place (Plac Centralna). During the martial law years of the 1980s the communists found it necessary to install a guard post next to it.

This satellite city of Krakow, Poland, was created in the 1950s as a model town for the country’s communist rulers, and Eva and I have looked around it twice, having an interest in totalitarian architecture and design.

At its peak, Nowa Huta covered an area of over 65 km2 and had more than 200,000 inhabitants — today it is down to about a quarter of that. The main source of employment was the nearby Lenin steelworks built simultaneously. So it became in effect an early example of the Globalists’ heralded notion of a 15-minute city.

After the fall of communism in 1989, the factory was renamed after Tadeusz Sendzimir, a Polish-American metallurgist who invented cold rolling of steel sheets. Since then production has been limited. The plant now belongs to ArcelorMittal and only employs around 3,500 people or about 12% of what it did under the communists.

How the buildings look today.
The ease of closing off blocks to stop protestors was useful for the communist rulers during the martial law years of the 1980s. (culture.pl)
Tramways were built to transport the state’s workers to the steelworks in the background.
Housing blocks looked clean when built but were soon dirty with smoke-grime from the coal-fired steelworks.

(Most pics from idealcity.pl)

Meanwhile in western Europe today…

It’s almost too absurd: the Netherlands wants to build hundreds of thousands of homes [for Third World immigrants?], but refuses to invest in the essentials – roads, bridges, locks, and railways. While the housing shortage is mounting, traffic jams are exploding, and the infrastructure is creaking at the seams, The Hague continues to drag its feet. Logic is completely lost.

No roads, no homes
“If there’s no road, housing is useless,” says Herman Reinten of ReintenInfra. It’s a truism, but no one in The Hague’s political circles seems to grasp this anymore. Municipalities are aware of it. Construction companies are too. But they’re bogged down in a quagmire of regulations, delays, and lack of funding (via The Daily Standard).