My wife and I have three children and live in a 1150 ft^2 2 bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta. It's certainly a little cramped by suburban American standard

My wife and I have three children and live in a 1150 ft^2 2 bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta. It's certainly a little cramped by suburban American standards, but is table stakes in Europe and elsewhere in the world. It's the same way we all lived in my native USSR, though the apartments there tended to be larger and more rationally subdivided into lots of little rooms (so, an apartment with three rooms with closing doors, plus effectively a fourth room in the form of a kitchen, plus a foyer hallway, was a commonplace thing). My biggest annoyance with American apartment floor plans is the intense compulsion to imitate houses -- a door straight into a large combined living room and kitchen area. I'd gladly trade that for more compartmentalised rooms, and a layout that doesn't require someone entering the apartment to walk through space where someone else is hanging out.