The "after" is also fairly old - at least before the new safe confinement was built. Here's what it looked like around 6 years ago: (Apologies for the quality, on mobile and had to shrink it to get it to upload)
You can clearly see plants growing out of the concrete, based on the videos that exists of Pripyat from before the disaster that is not what it looked like.
Pripyat was a privileged town where people lived well.