Just know that not all of Bucharest looks like this. Looking at his other entries, he seems interested in visiting the more poor/neglected places of a city, which is fair.
I’ve been almost daily through these areas for years; used to actually live on str Anghel Nutu; finding this on HN on christmas day is a bit surreal. I come here for tech articles mainly
There's plenty of shit (literally and figuratively) everywhere I've been but I haven't seen northern Europe and Switzerland.
Indeed, if you're wealthy, you're gonna be living great anywhere.
But look at the poorest people, are they homeless? Do they struggle to afford food and electricity? Do they have the means to get to work and back? Health care? That's the true measure of a society imo.
I'll also add that in this case the buildings may be old and look straight out of a post apocalyptic movie, but they can be quite liveable inside.
And there's more space and green stuff around, compared to the newer (car centric I'd say) blocks.
Last time I visited my parent's commie-block, it even looked lovely (during summer) with all the trees outside. It's insides of those housing projects, that are soul-crashing really.