> Have you lived in these?
Yes, in several different ones (when I was studying in Lublin I lived in 3 different places and later I rented a flat in Warsaw). I also lived in a detached house in countryside for most of my life and now I live in a reasonably modern neighborhood. I have a comparison.
> Parking spaces are ridiculously under planned, because workers used took a bus
That's the best feature of them. You can walk everywhere and cars are optional. Your kids can play with other kids without constant supervision. There's no vandalized underground passes stinking of piss where you get mugged. Old and disabled people can actually live there on their own. My wife's grandmother moved from a detached house to an old commieblock in a nearby city because of that - she doesn't drive anymore and living within walking distance of basically everything is a huge positive.
> These buildings are near their end of life since they weren't designed to last.
The ones in Poland are good to go for the next 30-50 years. It mostly depends on the rust protection for the concrete reinforcement. The cheapest ones with no protection are soon going to fall apart but we had very little of them. We built them with some galvanic protection. The ones with stainless steel are basically forever, but we had almost none of those.
> inner height is claustrophobic
250 cm. The same as in modern blocks in Poland (my current flat has 255 cm and that mostly depends on what kind of floor you have). It's the building code still. In fact the building code is much worse now - for example distances between blocks are several times smaller and there's no requirement to plan utilities in new neighborhoods. The end result is this:
https://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/17/a1/17a1a73c...
Notice that it's all houses and parking, no utilities whatsoever. No public transport. Schools, shops, parks, health clinic - you need to drive through these tiny roads with your car to get to all of these. The end result is traffic jams and people sitting in their houses all day cause there's nowhere to go.
I will grant you soundproofing is worse, but even in modern blocks you can still hear your neighbors.
