I grew up in terraced housing in the biggest social housing scheme outside the Warsaw Pact, under the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

You never have privacy. I could hear my neighbour having sex. Party music vibrated through the floors regardless of dampening in the walls ( we tried cork sheets ). The back gardens were all overlooked. Everything you did was known. It was like growing up in a commune.

When I see new terraced developments I am angry at the human cost being paid just so a contractor can save the cost of one wall and a metre of land per house.

Modern construction methods have largely solved these acoustic/privacy issues.

Building codes throughout the United States require a measure of sound insulation between floors of multi-family dwellings. They specify a minimum architectural design standard of privacy of 50 STC (Sound Transmission Class) and a 50 IIC (Impact Isolation Class). The codes also state that validation of the minimum noise criteria can be field measured and the field measurements shall not be less than a 45 FSTC or a 45 FIIC.

Of course, contractors sometimes find ways to cut corners. But in general, neighbor-noise is a solved problem.

Yeah sure, but Cannabis fumes from the shared heating system are not. My friends are selling their downtown condos to GTFO to the suburbs.

Don't like it? Don't live in it.

Given the conflation with development style and architecture style, I’m not sure which term you’re looking for. Development-wise, I think we would just call this 18th/19th century urban apartment buildings. The architecture style could be mixed. But, what would you say the differences between this and older apartment buildings in NYC? Urban development typically has a bias for ground-level storefronts these days.

There are elements in the architecture which make the original European implementations especially livable. These are details that are entirely lost on average Americans who have never lived in these buildings. It seems to be a moot effort to communicate the luxury of lifestyle that can be found in these buildings, with their cozy crooks and jagged crannys, if you will. Popular thought is that this is outdated. It really takes living in them to appreciate the lifestyle French windows afford, for example.

Gaston Bachelard’s ‘Poetics of Space’ is some reading that I think speaks directly for the psychological value in this attention to detail.

Maybe "row housing"? "Block housing" evokes images of soviet-era detached apartment buildings.

“Soviet-era”? What era is that?

I think they are referring to post-war social housing common in Europe. The concrete exteriors were meant to convey stability in a society wrought with precarity. Those raised in these buildings generally express this exact sense of appreciation. An architecture nerd, I find these buildings simply marvelous. The style is termed ‘Brutalist’ architecture.

EDIT: I didn’t see their link before but, after following it, I guess it’s not what they meant.

> “Soviet-era”? What era is that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_architecture

You can. The large older water-locked cities are built this way. They're also coincidentally the cities with public mass transit rail systems. See: NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago