CITYSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART CONTEST WEEK #109 - Residential areas flash in the bus window

Russian language concept of "residential area", I think, is very different from what is called "residential area" in English, despite the fact that the Russian-English dictionary offers the word "residential". Of course, these quarters are indeed residential, but in Russia they are literally called "sleeping" areas. This name is unofficial, and it appeared in the 1960s, when the outskirts of Moscow (and then Leningrad and other major cities) actively began to be built up with multi-storey residential buildings. A lot of residents of such areas went every day (and still go) to work, which could be in the center or - even worse - in the area at the opposite end of the city. And since the sleeping areas are always located on the outskirts, the road takes a lot of time: an hour and a half in one direction, for example, as it was with me. Total: 3 hours on the road every day, 9 hours at work, and as a result, residents of sleeping areas often simply did not have enough time or energy for anything else. They would come home in the evening, cook dinner, eat, maybe watch a little TV, and then it was time to go to bed, because they had to go to work again early in the morning. That's why these areas began to be called sleeping areas. In other words, only on weekends did people really live in their huge apartment buildings, and during the working week they seemed to come here just to sleep.

P.S. The picture shows the district of Shushary behind the ring road of St. Petersburg. The house I once lived in is also in the picture. So, imagine, it is multi-storey: its lowest residential part consists of 14 floors, the rest have more than 20. My apartment number was 499, and I lived in section number 2 (the lowest), and there were 13 sections in total. 2048 apartments!

P.P.S. These green fields in the photo between the residential quarter and the road also began to be built up with new high-rise buildings (

Written for the CITYSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY AND ART CONTEST by @axeman

Camera used Pentax k-r

Thank you for stopping by and reading it

Your @irchen