Buildings are the same because this city was almost destroyed by nazis. Most of buildings were built from the scratch after 1945.
Built by the Commies, who were trying to make it look like they were doing good for all people equally. What they were doing was hoarding the wealth for themselves.
Looks like you were bitten by neo-liberals.
It explains why you're projecting ideological agenda to post-war years. It seems almost like if you would have thought about ideology while observing how your home is going to be destroyed by a fire... And spent a vast amount of time, trying to choose between capitalist water and socialist water.
C'mon, reality is way simpler, there was no time to think about religious bullshit.
Anybody except some stupid people would agree that universal project is very useful when you have to rebuild entire city as soon as possible. Because all stages of construction process may be parallelized with almost 100% efficiency. Since capitalists would do the same, type of economy doesn't matter here... This approach can save a lot of time & money, leaving more resources for doing something else. Closest real-life equivalent for multi-threaded computations.
Balz is such a typical GreatMotherRussia-can-do-no-wrong Commie apologist.
Let us all carefully note that he believes central planning results in "almost 100% efficiency."
No matter how obviously terrible an idea Communism/Stalinism/Leninism was, the blame is shifted from the Russians (who reportedly "
didn't love freedom enough" to the Evil Germans.
Never mind the fact the Evil Germans were provoked into their Third Reich by the threat of the Red Brigades taking over Bavaria, Paris, Milan, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Council_RepublicPlenty of cities were destroyed in WW2. Not all of them were rebuilt with shitty Commie construction. Just the ones in brain dead lobotomized Soviet shitholes, where the people were willing to ignore the difference between capitalist freedom and socialist slavery Because Hitler
®.
The reason the Soviet cities had to be built with equally shitty housing for everyone (except nomenklatura) is the Russian people's congenital affliction of class envy. They'd rather everyone be poor than see one person do better than the rest (zomg Kulaks).
This collectivist tendency is cultural and a source of great strength, but it comes with other weaknesses (such as Balz's propensity for romantic revisionism and wishful thinking) as a trade-off.