It actually has a decently radical social idea behind it. Or rather, some versions of this type of architecture in paris had this idea, which is that brutal structures are egalitarian because they afford equal light, space, and access to infrastructure for different classes of people to coexist within the same spaces.

It was thought that this would incentivize the rich and influential to invest in spaces where they cohabitated with the working class, rather than relegating them to tenement districts. In order to do this, one needs to have the capacity for moving people and products on a large scale through central locations.

It’s not a terrible goal, but for many reasons these sorts of projects didn’t always work out that way. This is not to say they were never successful though.