Homes under construction in Valencia, California, 2026. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images 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. The US, alas,...
The astonishing gap between America’s fastest- and slowest-building cities
HALO Newsroom
Sep 30, 2026 • 7 hours ago
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