5 ms·
The town where I previously used to live had a similar concern. It's a small European town, with a University and a few other higher schools. The houses in so
by aoloe 10y ago
The town where I previously used to live had a similar concern.
It's a small European town, with a University and a few other higher schools.
The houses in some parts of town were split in smaller and smaller units to maximise the rent profit (split one 2 1/2 flat worth 1'400 p/m and rent two single room flats for 900 each...).
The results is that Anna from the article would have found a shady cheaper flat and would be very happy with it (well, it's a bit expensive but it's mine!).
But the spreading of micro apartments will also make her very unhappy for the rest of her life (the life before the first five years in her working career and the long years after that!).
She will come back and ask why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price!
She will state that not everybody is a twenty-something, who is almost never at home and only needs a bed to rest after yesterday evening party!
My stance: micro apartments are a need, but you probably don't want too many of them in town center.
You need a good mix there and the twenty-something are not the ones who pay taxes nor the ones that build a solid social life.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago"why there are no flats of reasonable size, for a reasonable price!" If there's demand, won't there be supply eventually? If people will start paying premium for reasonable size flats while leaving some smaller units unoccupied, market will surely correct itself. It's true that for some time market might be skewed toward wrong sizes, but you don't have to ban anything outright to prevent it, some soft regulations might be sufficient.
- Swizec 10y agoYes and no. Activation energy to build a new house with bigger units, or to merge existing units by tearing down walls, is exponentially higher than the activation energy needed to split a big unit into two small units. The problem you run into is that even people who have the money, can't find anything to buy or rent, and zoning laws or other types of limitations, prevent fixing the problem by increasing supply.
- sokoloff 10y agoSplitting a big unit into smaller units often creates problems of egress means (for fire safety) and figuring out what to do with storage space that may not be evenly distributed throughout the house. Joining existing units rarely creates that type of problem. And of course, nothing about that project is "exponential".
- guard-of-terra 10y agoIt seems that you're arguing that zoning can fix some problems created by zoning in the first place. When the real solution to this problem, as to many others, is increasing supply.
- pjc50 10y ago"In the long run, we're all dead" -- JM Keynes These are buildings we're talking about. A city can get stuck with the wrong size units for a very long time. There's a reason things like the Parker-Morris space standards were developed, and they recommended 30m^2 for single occupancy dwellings in the UK in 1961. The 220ft^2 apartments are 20.5m^2, not very large at all. The really tiny ones have communal shared cooking areas, which have the potential to be a social problem. I think people are terrified of some kind of Stand on Zanzibar future where they're economically constrained into smaller and smaller spaces, and this is one way to push back.
- sokoloff 10y agoIn a world of ever-growing population, I think you're economically constrained to smaller and smaller spaces or farther away (or otherwise less valuable) spaces. Pushing back on smaller spaces just changes the variables by which housing will be allocated economically.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoCities only take a small fraction of land. Growing population doesn't really matters here; (un)willingless to build does.
- sokoloff 10y agoIMO, unwillingness to live farther out on that large fraction of land that isn't the city is a bigger issue.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoWhy is it an issue? Why not let people live where they want to live and just build up?
- sokoloff 10y agoIt seems to be an issue only in that people seem to want in a certain place but not pay the prevailing rent to do so. If they're willing to pay the prevailing rent, there is no issue. In a neighborhood like mine (75% SFR, 25% MFR free-standing homes in West Cambridge), you can bet that I'll object to zoning changes that would allow "just building up". I don't need the noise, traffic, additional pressures on the school system, nor do I want to live in a mid-rise and high-rise district. If I did, I'd have bought in one...