4 ms·

This article made me extremely unhappy. It's like a letter from the rich baby boomer generation living in big houses, and with multiple "investment" properties

by sqldba 12y ago

This article made me extremely unhappy. It's like a letter from the rich baby boomer generation living in big houses, and with multiple "investment" properties jacking up the prices for the rest of us, then telling us well you'll actually be happier living somewhere smaller! The article hit the nail on the head pointing out, repeatedly, that this wasn't a choice so much as something that had been forced upon these people who were simply making do with what they could. And yet it comes up with the wrong conclusion and title.

tormeh 12y ago
Ummm... If you don't earn that much, yet still want to live in the center of a big city, isn't small housing a good solution? Unoccupied investment homes are making the space problem worse, but fitting lots of people into a small area requires small housing. In everyday physics, space is conserved.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  Physics you say... how much vertical space is available but not in use?
- jjaredsimpson 12y ago
  Zoning laws and neighborhood associations actively fight vertical density which would bring down cost for new owners/renters all in the name of preserving "character." Space isn't conserved, it's increase is being opposed.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    I was working within the constraints imposed by those obstructionists.
- design-of-homes 12y ago
  "isn't small housing a good solution?" Size is relative. There are definitely cultural factors that influence what we consider small or large. For example, London has the London Housing Design guide which recommends a one bedroom flat for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres. I don't think that’s palatial or excessive. It's still less than what many other European countries recommend (it’s 20% less than what Germany recommends which is 60 square metres for a one bed flat for two people [1]) In the article, it states that UK developer Pocket Living are building 38 square metre one-bed flats. 38 square metres is fine for one person, but not for two people in my opinion. These apartments may have high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, but they are usually single-aspect and narrow in length (with the windows at the narrow end) in order to fit as many units into the available plot of land. I'm not a fan of this micro apartment trend. Housing lasts for decades and future generations will have to take over and live in this micro-housing stock. Is this the housing legacy we should leave future generations? [1] The Case for Space report (PDF) from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) published in September 2011: http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinternationalrelations/homewise/caseforspace.pdf http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinte...
  - davidw 12y ago
    > Housing lasts for decades and future generations will have to take over and live in this micro-housing stock. Italy - where I live - has a lot of old housing stock. Some of it is very old. When something isn't right for the inhabitants, they modify it. Adding plumbing, combining apartments, adding or removing walls... you can do quite a few things.
    - design-of-homes 12y ago
      I agree. But having enough space is what lets you adapt in the first place. You can't, for example, partition a space into two rooms when there isn't enough space to do that. This is an excerpt from the last national housing space standard published in the UK in 1961 (the national space standards were scrapped in the 1980s by the Conservative government). This report was written over 60 years ago, and yet what is says is still relevant today (at least in the UK) "…a good house or flat can never be be made out of premises which are too small...additional space is also an important long-term investment, for if a house or flat is large enough it can usually be brought up-to-date as it gets older; but if there is not enough space the improvements can be impossible, or at least unduly expensive. Homes are being built at the present time which not only are too small to provide adequately for family life but also are too small to hold the possessions in which so much of the new affluence is expressed...Such places cannot be expected to meet the needs of their occupiers today, still less hold their value in the long term." (From a government report called Homes for Today and Tomorrow, published in the UK in 1961)
      - pjc50 12y ago
        You can't, for example, partition a space into two rooms when there isn't enough space to do that. Quite often in modern steel-frame construction the only real constraint is the external walls and the support pillars. You can knock down all the plasterboard walls and turn it into an open-plan office if you want. You're right about old buildings, brick houses and external walls. I think in the UK the property industry sneaks round the Parker-Morris standards by expressing things only in terms of number of rooms, never total floor area.
eloisant 12y ago
It's not baby boomer telling younger people that they'd be happier living in smaller places, it's today young adults who choose to live in a smaller appartement rather than be far from their city center. You can live in a house for the same price as a small appartement if you accept to go outside of your city's downtown.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  Perhaps the difference is that today's outskirts are impractically far away. 2 hours commute per day? That's more than 10% of my awake time. i.e. Fuck that.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    There are two ways a commute of 2 hours a day of commuting can work out. One, if you can actually get work done while commuting. (That has a couple implications -- usually it means a train, not a subway, so you can get a little Internet, and there's a minimum commute length before you can actually get productive.) Two, if a substantial portion of that commute doubles as your daily exercise, and you can enjoy it and improve your health. (Usually this means a bicycle, which brings along certain weather-related implications to its practicality. Think it works better in Silicon Valley with its mild mild climate and utterly predictable rain.)
- tekacs 12y ago
  The problem with this in London (my city), at least, is that transportation (commute) costs[1] go up fast as you move further away, assuming workplace is not something you can easily change. This means costs don't go down as fast as you might expect, after the initial sharp drop. [1]: and this is completely forgetting the time involved.
  - stegosaurus 12y ago
    Right. There is virtually no difference here. I can get a 1BR flat around the corner for 15K GBP or a 1BR flat 1.5 hours away via metro for 10K GBP + 3K GBP travel costs. 3 hours commuting daily for 2K GBP saved? Not even minimum wage. (Driving is impossible, by the way. Parking costs would be 20GBP a day or more. A motorcycle could possibly work.) I actually think that commuting is broken as a concept, at least considering cost savings. It's likely easier for me to find a way to stuff in an extra hour of work, freelance or whatever, and do that instead of commuting.

by sqldba 12y ago

tormeh 12y ago

Ummm... If you don't earn that much, yet still want to live in the center of a big city, isn't small housing a good solution? Unoccupied investment homes are making the space problem worse, but fitting lots of people into a small area requires small housing. In everyday physics, space is conserved.

bottled_poe 12y ago
Physics you say... how much vertical space is available but not in use?
jjaredsimpson 12y ago
Zoning laws and neighborhood associations actively fight vertical density which would bring down cost for new owners/renters all in the name of preserving "character." Space isn't conserved, it's increase is being opposed.
- tormeh 12y ago
  I was working within the constraints imposed by those obstructionists.
design-of-homes 12y ago
"isn't small housing a good solution?" Size is relative. There are definitely cultural factors that influence what we consider small or large. For example, London has the London Housing Design guide which recommends a one bedroom flat for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres. I don't think that’s palatial or excessive. It's still less than what many other European countries recommend (it’s 20% less than what Germany recommends which is 60 square metres for a one bed flat for two people [1]) In the article, it states that UK developer Pocket Living are building 38 square metre one-bed flats. 38 square metres is fine for one person, but not for two people in my opinion. These apartments may have high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, but they are usually single-aspect and narrow in length (with the windows at the narrow end) in order to fit as many units into the available plot of land. I'm not a fan of this micro apartment trend. Housing lasts for decades and future generations will have to take over and live in this micro-housing stock. Is this the housing legacy we should leave future generations? [1] The Case for Space report (PDF) from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) published in September 2011: http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinternationalrelations/homewise/caseforspace.pdf http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinte...
- davidw 12y ago
  > Housing lasts for decades and future generations will have to take over and live in this micro-housing stock. Italy - where I live - has a lot of old housing stock. Some of it is very old. When something isn't right for the inhabitants, they modify it. Adding plumbing, combining apartments, adding or removing walls... you can do quite a few things.
  - design-of-homes 12y ago
    I agree. But having enough space is what lets you adapt in the first place. You can't, for example, partition a space into two rooms when there isn't enough space to do that. This is an excerpt from the last national housing space standard published in the UK in 1961 (the national space standards were scrapped in the 1980s by the Conservative government). This report was written over 60 years ago, and yet what is says is still relevant today (at least in the UK) "…a good house or flat can never be be made out of premises which are too small...additional space is also an important long-term investment, for if a house or flat is large enough it can usually be brought up-to-date as it gets older; but if there is not enough space the improvements can be impossible, or at least unduly expensive. Homes are being built at the present time which not only are too small to provide adequately for family life but also are too small to hold the possessions in which so much of the new affluence is expressed...Such places cannot be expected to meet the needs of their occupiers today, still less hold their value in the long term." (From a government report called Homes for Today and Tomorrow, published in the UK in 1961)
    - pjc50 12y ago
      You can't, for example, partition a space into two rooms when there isn't enough space to do that. Quite often in modern steel-frame construction the only real constraint is the external walls and the support pillars. You can knock down all the plasterboard walls and turn it into an open-plan office if you want. You're right about old buildings, brick houses and external walls. I think in the UK the property industry sneaks round the Parker-Morris standards by expressing things only in terms of number of rooms, never total floor area.

eloisant 12y ago

It's not baby boomer telling younger people that they'd be happier living in smaller places, it's today young adults who choose to live in a smaller appartement rather than be far from their city center. You can live in a house for the same price as a small appartement if you accept to go outside of your city's downtown.

bottled_poe 12y ago
Perhaps the difference is that today's outskirts are impractically far away. 2 hours commute per day? That's more than 10% of my awake time. i.e. Fuck that.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  There are two ways a commute of 2 hours a day of commuting can work out. One, if you can actually get work done while commuting. (That has a couple implications -- usually it means a train, not a subway, so you can get a little Internet, and there's a minimum commute length before you can actually get productive.) Two, if a substantial portion of that commute doubles as your daily exercise, and you can enjoy it and improve your health. (Usually this means a bicycle, which brings along certain weather-related implications to its practicality. Think it works better in Silicon Valley with its mild mild climate and utterly predictable rain.)
tekacs 12y ago
The problem with this in London (my city), at least, is that transportation (commute) costs[1] go up fast as you move further away, assuming workplace is not something you can easily change. This means costs don't go down as fast as you might expect, after the initial sharp drop. [1]: and this is completely forgetting the time involved.
- stegosaurus 12y ago
  Right. There is virtually no difference here. I can get a 1BR flat around the corner for 15K GBP or a 1BR flat 1.5 hours away via metro for 10K GBP + 3K GBP travel costs. 3 hours commuting daily for 2K GBP saved? Not even minimum wage. (Driving is impossible, by the way. Parking costs would be 20GBP a day or more. A motorcycle could possibly work.) I actually think that commuting is broken as a concept, at least considering cost savings. It's likely easier for me to find a way to stuff in an extra hour of work, freelance or whatever, and do that instead of commuting.