structural:expansion
Central and Eastern Europe

Although some Central and Eastern European countries during the interwar period, such as the Second Polish Republic, already started building housing estates that were considered to be of a high standard for their time, many of these structures perished during the Second World War.

In the Eastern Bloc, tower blocks were constructed in great numbers to produce plenty of cheap accommodation for the growing postwar populations of the USSR and its satellite states. This took place mostly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, though in the People's Republic of Poland this process started even earlier due to the severe damages that Polish cities sustained during World War II. Throughout the former Eastern Bloc countries, tower blocks built during the Soviet years make up much of the current housing estates and most of them were built in the specific socialist realist style of architecture that was dominant in the territories east of the Iron Curtain: blocky buildings of that era are colloquially known as Khrushchyovka. However, there were also larger and more ambitious projects built in Eastern Europe at the time, which have since become recognisable examples of post-war modernism; such as the largest falowiec building in the Przymorze Wielkie district of Gdańsk, with a length of 860 m (2,821.52 ft) and 1,792 flats, it is the second longest housing block in Europe.

In Romania, the mass construction of standardised housing blocks began in the 1950s and 1960s with the outskirts of the cities, some of which were made up of slums. Construction continued in the 1970s and 1980s, under the systematisation programme of Nicolae Ceaușescu, which consisted largely of the demolition and reconstruction of existing villages, towns, and cities, in whole or in part, in order to build blocks of flats (blocuri), as a result of increasing urbanisation following an accelerated industrialisation process. In Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), panelák building under Marxism–Leninism resulted from two main factors: the postwar housing shortage and the ideology of the ruling party.

In Eastern European countries, opinions about these buildings vary greatly, with some deeming them as eyesores on their city's landscape while others glorify them as relics of a bygone age and historical examples of unique architectural styles (such as socialist realism, brutalism, etc.). Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of the former Eastern Bloc countries have begun construction of new, more expensive and modern housing. The Śródmieście borough of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, has seen the development of an array of skyscrapers. Russia is also currently undergoing a dramatic buildout, growing a commercially shaped skyline. Moreover, the ongoing changes made to postwar housing estates since the 2000s in former communist countries vary – ranging from simply applying a new coat of paint to the previously grey exterior to thorough modernisation of entire buildings.

In the European Union, among former Warsaw Pact states, a majority of the population lives in flats in Latvia (65.1%), Estonia (63.8%), Lithuania (58.4%), Czech Republic (52.8%), and Slovakia (50.3%) (as of 2014, data from Eurostat). However, not all flat dwellers in Eastern Europe live in Cold War-era blocks of flats; many live in buildings constructed after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and some in buildings that survived World War II.