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My dear Sergey Baklykov still at it... back home in Ufa this summer. It just blows my mind every time he goes back home to visit every year. Even the prettiest part of the city is RADICALLY upgraded from even ten years ago, but certainly since twenty years ago.
It was darn dismal back then, just starting with the playgrounds for little kids going in everywhere, but now everything is painted in pretty colors and fixed up or replaced, and the streets are covered in new pavements, broad sidewalks, mini birch forests, shrubs, flowers, heavy garden action everywhere, all the businesses open. Gorgeous.
No one is homeless. If yer destitute, you live in the old — well heated — Stalinist brutalist constructions, but even you have a courtyard garden, shaded picnic tables, playground, all the amenities.
Half Sunni Muslim, half Russian Othodox Christian, everyone living together happily, peacefully. Worst thing that's happened is paid parking has gone in at the center of the city to make all the workers move off the streets with their cars so the population has somewhere to park... meaning almost everyone has a car nowadays.
pipe up any time....
