A Huge Gap Between Fastest- and Slowest-Building Cities

The Soviet Union famously churned out tens of thousands of new apartment buildings in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s - some assembled in as little as 12 days - together comprising tens of millions of individual apartments. Such speed is not unique to communist command economies, or even to grim concrete mega-blocks. In Sweden and Japan today, modern, high-quality new homes can be factory-built and assembled in a matter of weeks using the same basic method - prefabrication - as the Soviets.