Downsized dwellings: Inside Tokyo's tiny living spaces
japantimes.co.jp
japantimes.co.jp
Another example is a mini-documentary I saw recently about people in Japan living either temporarily or semi-permanently in Internet cafe cubicles.
It was somewhat sad just because the kind of person to do that sort of thing is usually a little lost or lonely. But that doesn't mean everyone or even most living in Tokyo is lost and lonely. It's a big place with millions of people, and they're not all the subject of alternative lifestyle documentaries.
Just like any other country on earth, there are undoubtedly Japanese people who trade commute time for extra space, just like we all do in just about any other city on the planet.
Actually, I don't think these micro apartments are sad - for the right person who's out and about a lot, maybe they're single, or have specific priorities on location or neighborhood, I'm sure they're a great option. They're also only about $600 a month.
To put this in further perspective, keep in mind that about 25% of the world does not have access to "basic sanitation," i.e. access to a flushing toilet shared by multiple families. In that context, perhaps our mental efforts sent toward pitying the lives of modern urban inhabitants with small apartments are misplaced. (Not to say that the main purpose of this article is to generate pity, but that might be someone's reaction)
Definitely -- anyone who disagrees needs look at the conditions that some high-rent NYC apartments are in. Showers in the kitchen, windowless bedrooms, brown tap water, any number of safety/code violations, and so on. They're not exactly common, but there's not much of a stigma and people will gladly pay 3-4x the rent of those micro-apartments just to live in the thick of the action. And wasn't there a story about a Google engineer living in a van or something?
Compared to the castles people have in midwest U.S., sure, they're a bit cramped. But $600/month to live in a major metro area with no roommates? Sign me up.
For the record, this is usually against codes, and typically indicates an illegal sublet.
The basic problem is that there are a lot of small patches of lands in Tokyo that are too small to build a normal flat (recall that a patch of land is very, very expensive in Tokyo and you cannot just buy an adjacent land to expand it). Until recently, these small patches were left vacant since there was really not much use.
Recently, due to lots of cheap money floating around, some speculative developers (Spilytus, referenced in this article, is one of them) try to utilize these lands, by building such micro housings.
So it is a relatively new thingy pushed by supply side speculators and I honestly do not think these small housings have so much popularity among actual dwellers as this article suggests.
I may be mistaken but I think my economics professor said that supply side economics is the dominant economic theory. Rather than the demand side, it is the supply side that's moving the economy. The supply side tells you what to like, what you need and what to buy. But as all things, it's a bit of an oversimplification.
It’s the politically dominant theory, insofar as it is the political dogma that provides justification for endless tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations and much bleating about how jobs are created by “job creators” rather than robust demand.
In terms of actual academic economics at this point it has about as much rigour and seriousness as phrenology.
Before smartphones, there were feature phones. Before those, there were PDAs and WAP on cellphones, and so on. A long history of carrying information with you and being able to access new information on the go. Smartphones are simply the latest iteration on a theme.
Frankly, it always made me wonder who actually does the shopping and pays the bills, in economics households, because it clearly isn't the Professors in question.
Perhaps "popular" isn't the right word here.
If it's not popular, then how can they charge the rents that they do?
A larger space at the same price would only be possible in a less desirable area, and a larger apartment in the same area would be too expensive.
Perhaps you mean they find the small spaces uncomfortable, or even undignified. That could very well be true, but even then, not so much that they are willing to leave.
A parking space + aisles is basically the size of a microapartment.
http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/0...
Suppose there is enough on-street parking for other non-residential uses. You don't want these spaces being constantly used by car owners who are living in apartment complexes that aren't meant for them. As a local government, you have to play the game of not letting them park using parking restrictions while potentially also managing by-laws that allow residents to get parking permits that let them bypass some restrictions.
This doesn't really apply in high-density urban areas, but I could see it being tricky to manage in growing areas.
(Although, I guess from a non car-owner's point of view you wouldn't care about whether other drivers are being inconvenienced by a lack of parking, because the knock-on effects wouldn't affect you.)
It's just as bonkers for a city to shut out everyone who can't use transit.
When the government forces all developers to build parking, and provides free or severely underpriced parking on streets, it lowers the market value of off-street parking. Developers are forced to price-in parking development and maintenance.
Developers will still build parking where residents need parking. If they didn't, they would have trouble selling/renting their property. There is no need to force them. In cities around the world, we still find private parking in absence of parking minimums.
I'm fine with landlords offering parking as a perk of rent - but the next landlord can offer an apartment to those who don't need/want a parking spot at a discount (how much discount is an open question). The law doesn't all the market to decide.
A lot of places do this, where they charge a few thousand a year to park on the street.
A lot of people don't need parking. And we are forcing them to pay for it. That's bad policy. My old condo had like $80,000 worth of parking attached to it with two spaces. I only needed one of the space.
If you need a parking spot, you should make sure you rent an apartment that has one.
Having a law that each unit has parking just increases rent and traffic.
How do you enforce that?
Sorry I'm not sure I follow?
By preallocating a parking spot for each occupant you prevent this problem.
Just because the person did not think they needed a car when moving into the home does not mean they will never want to get a car.
perhaps a better solution is to make each residence come with a parking spot - that is essentially owned by the resident. Then if they do not need it they could rent it out until which time they do need it (if ever).
I'm not sure where you've lived but I've never seen this happen? I live in the US. I've seen multiple ways to prevent this.
People who don't have a parking spot shouldn't have access to the parking lot.
Even if you do have access you have to register your car, and any cars that were not registered will get a warning then either a ticket or towed.
Another solution is to just have assigned parking.
Parking on the street is fine if that's legal? I don't see the issue with that.
> perhaps a better solution is to make each residence come with a parking spot - that is essentially owned by the resident. Then if they do not need it they could rent it out until which time they do need it (if ever).
This creates incentives to get a car though. You have to do more work to not drive and it's possible you can't find a "tenant" for the parking spot.
If it's worth it to have parking I'd gladly pay for it. For the moment I'm renting it out just below my costs because this next generation of renters aren't even bothering to drive much less park. So there is more capacity than need.
Also, the US is a big place with different local laws. Be careful about generalizing something across the whole country, because after a few Google searches, I couldn't find any Federal Laws about this.
You can live in a smaller space (I spent a year in a <200 sq ft studio) but as far as I know you can't build one nowadays.
I remember seeing talk about micro apartments in NY but I think they did a pilot program where they exempted a builder from the regulation rather than repealing it.
vs
"Where I live ... the ability to make this trade is more limited"
If you look at photos of Tokyo apartments from the early '90s (eg _Tokyo: A Certain Style_, https://www.gwern.net/docs/japanese/1997-tsuzuki-tokyoacerta... ), which were often photos of people making very similar tradeoffs for the same reasons (cheaper rent in the heart of Tokyo but then-relatively-small apartments, often one-room), the apartments are much larger than these but also far more cluttered, looking like they have hoarding disorders. Stereo sets, TVs, landline phones, walls or giant stacks of manga, vinyl records, cassette tapes, reference books, books in general, musical instruments (he photographed some musicians and music students), visual arts equipment - all of these take up an enormous amount of space collectively. But they can all be replaced by a desktop+large monitor and a smartphone and perhaps a digital input device like a tablet or keyboard for arts. (Even the desktop is physically far smaller than in the '90s.)
And that's precisely what the photographed apartments here do: you see desktop computers, a small handful of books which perhaps are sentimental or favorites, and much of the bulk of the space seems to now be used up by clothes, with food-related items being the next biggest category.
This raises the question of what could be done to reduce those? Food patterns will probably shift further to takeout/online purchases because of the enormous investments in logistics for rapid delivery (I'm particularly impressed when I read about JD.com in China, and Tokyo is a logical megalopolis to reach similar delivery speeds), but clothes are a tougher nut to crack. New fabrics which are more dirt/odor-resistant to allow more wear? Reversible clothes which provide '2 in 1'? Fewer dresses and more mix-and-match? Rental clothing services powered by cheap delivery?
The apartment I have in my midwestern city came with a closet in a shared room that is locked by my door key that I can use to store things outside of my apartment. Bulk food storage and clothing storage could then be moved there, assuming proper ventilation.
1) most of Florida is barely above sea level, so digging down any significant distance results in hitting the water table
2) areas that are not right at the sea level are often prone to sinkholes
I think some space could be reduced by moving it to an office/gym. I know friends of friends who live our of their van near their work. They store most of their clothes in a gym locker and some clothes in a work locker. They shower and use the bathroom at the gym or work as well. That effectively leaves food, sleeping, and entertainment left for their living space.
You could move food storage to communal kitchens (or rentable commercial kitchens). I don't know if any exist for this use case, but I do know as a small business you can rent out a commercial kitchen for 1 day or so a month to make bulk batches of product to sell. (I did some work for a packaged quinoa company).
I agree, It is pretty incredible how many things have been miniaturized - thanks to smartphones I no longer travel with a laptop for leisure for example, I´m travelling halfway around the globe next month with only a carry-on luggage.
E-book readers such as the Kindle are another amazing advancement.
note I've lived in Tokyo on and over the last 21 years. I've lived in college dorm sized apartments and visited friends in smaller. I get it's partly culture but isn't there some limit? Would living in a capsule hotel be ok to some? Is it 100% personal preference or is there some limit?
You have over 4000 people living in Internet cafes ...
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/29/national/social...
Personally, I went from owned a multiple bedroom condo with fair amount to things to only the things that would fit in a Subaru crosstrek. Following our weedding, my wife and I spent three months touring the country rock climbing. Frankly, the living conditions we're awful! It was cold and wet and crowded and traveling in the fall you are left with the dilemma what do you do when the sun goes down and you are literately sleeping in a space smaller than most coffins and you have to move all your stuff to the front seats in order to lay down in the back. However, it afforded us the privilege of visiting every state West of the Mississippi and the Canadian Rockies. I was an amazing trip that I wouldn't trade the world for! (side note: spending literally every moment with someone for 3 months strait in a very confined living space while constantly dealing with every day problems neither of you have encountered before is a really great way to break in a relationship) That said we now live in a 650 sq/ft apartment and life is a lot more comfortable.
That or just break it.
I lived for a couple of years in a 16m² apartment, and with a bit of clever placement of furniture, it was quite comfortable. It definitely forced me to be more critical about buying new things, considering the space it would take up.
The bathroom was private, which I something I would insist on. Washing machines and dryers were shared, which is fine, especially since they were good-quality industrial units.
My only real annoyance was that the kitchen was just a small nook in the corner, with a fridge, a sink and two hotplates. Cooking something like bacon would stink up the whole apartment, as it was impossible to separate the cooking area from the living area. There was no oven and hardly any usable working surface, which quickly becomes annoying if you like to cook. I made do with a cheap toaster oven, but I would prefer not to have to do that again.
Small living is very possible, even in some comfort. I would recommend most people try it out at some point in their lives.
If you ask me, I'd be a proponent of limiting to above 15m2 units with shared spaces, and possibly age-limited.
In the Netherlands we have homes which are for youth only, can only rent them until age 27. I think such an age limit would make sense for such small units. The idea being that the image and culture of these buildings are focused on instilling the notion that these spaces are temporary.
I think it's fine you live in a 15m2 unit at age 20 as a student. But if you want to do that at age 40, it's super likely that it's not by choice. And that's not something we ought to necessarily allow.
The successful concepts I've seen typically have high-quality washer/dryers separate. A large communal kitchen to supplement a small private kitchen. A communal hangout space.
And finally, a private event room you can rent, e.g. 10 times a year, to say host parties, music, poetry, debates etc. If you've got say 360 days out of the year and a morning, noon and evening slot, you've basically got about 1000 slots to fill each year. If you share such a space with 25 units, each unit could rent the room almost every month.
None of this is perfect, particularly the age-limit is hard to enforce, and you start to touch on the gov vs personal-freedom debate. But I think the above minimum guidelines would be the least bad solution that finds a reasonable balance.
It really depends on the city though. If there's a ton of housing shortage and you've got people forced into 3-hour commutes, illegal dwellings, homelessness, >60% rent/income etc, aspects of which you see for example in Manilla, it makes sense to allow 15m2 units. In a city where there's no such housing shortage, I think it makes sense to set the minimum legal standard a bit higher.
If you mandate luxury in housing, everyone who cannot afford that level of luxury will go without housing -- or will end up in illegal and unsafe sublets with abusive landlords, which is far worse than an apartment of one's own that happens to have a floor area that is below your idea of luxury.
You have to find a balance. That balance will differ from city to city. But to mandate some minimum living standard makes a lot of sense. Breaking the law is not free of consequences, illegality is not the norm, it's a strong disincentive for anyone to engage in a housing practice which we as a society deem unacceptable. A line has to be drawn somewhere. From there you can, as a government, implement programs to help people meet those standards, and provide sufficient resources to do so.
Whether you think the line should be at 3m2, or 15m2, or 50m2, you can argue. What society deems acceptable is up for debate. I fully agree there. But the notion no mandated 'luxury', or minimum standard, should be set, and for government to just allow anything, without standards, because hey, otherwise you might create a situation where almost everyone lives according to an acceptable standard, except for a few edge cases temporarily breaking the standard illegally... I think that's silly.
I take it then, you're of the opinion we should have no regulations at all?
https://www.social-apartment.com/eng
I've considered living in one but the prices are not any lower and sometimes even higher than renting my own apartment. Maybe if I knew they had a community organizer that planned activities most days I'd consider paying the premium.
Some apparently have a theme like "musicians" so you have people the jam with and they have practice rooms.
Normally you'd expect this to generate a lot of turnover because there's a decent chance you can find a better deal on a $/m2 basis within a year or so. Which is tricky for normal landlords, because you need to organise viewings and find another tenant, which leads to temporary vacancy and lost income.
But these hotel-room like units tend to be so so uniform and modern, that, like hotels, you can easily get them booked via an online system without even having to organise viewing days or whatever, or better, generate a waiting list online of tens of people who're willing to move into one the moment one becomes available.
We have small apartments that aren't age-limited here, too, but they start (based on building regulations) at 18m2. The 'really' small units of 15m2 are allowed only for student rentals, which are typically linked to an age (27) or university enrolment requirement, or both.
The amount of organizations, businesses and cultural things started from couches, kitchen tables or hobby rooms are plenty. Certainly not something to be underestimated as a benefit to society.
I also find such small dwellings unpleasant. Small flats can be well designed, but these apartments take things too far.
The designers have recognised two features to amplify the sense of space: the double-height space and the large windows to flood the flats with natural light.
In fact, one aspect of more modern apartment design which is instantly recognisable no matter which country you live in: the long, narrow rectangular shape of apartments which allow more flats to be crammed into a plot of land. Compare these two identical studio apartments.
I'd be interested to hear opinions from anyone who prefers the studio apartment with windows at the narrow end (and why).
As an aside, it's interesting that you mentioned these apartments as something that might come from an "dystopian sci-fi novel". In J.G. Ballard’s science fiction novel,"Billenium" the population of the earth reaches 20 billion and 95% of the population resides in cities. Residential floor area per person is limited to 4m2.
In 2010, that inspired Waseda university in Japan to run a competition with the premise: could you live with another person in a home that measured just 15 square metres? The original competition website is long gone, but luckily, archive.org has a copy of the winning entries:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110630063557/http://www.all-was...
I am not sure about "prefers", but both glare and heat can be a problem. To a large extent it is trying to "polish a turd". In small spaces a little extra space, a single wall or other improvements make a huge difference.
I lived in shared accommodations, barracks, dorm rooms, serviced apartments and whatnot. The equation mostly doesn't change. You need like five square meters for every "feature".
I've lived in both shapes (technically, they were 1 bedrooms, but had the same difference in layout). I much preferred the one with windows at the narrow end. It allowed me to actually use the walls for stuff - couch against one wall, TV opposite without having massive glare and my back to the window. Still allowed lots of natural light in.
The one advantage of the long layout was it allowed better airflow from a window at one end to a window at the other. But it also allowed way too much sunlight in during the summer, meaning that ventilation was less effective at cooling the space.
I've got a lot of books and board games that I keep in shelves, and so the much increased wall space allows me to place them more comfortably. I'm not interfering with light sources and I can secure the shelves to the wall so they don't fall down if my dog runs into them. It also makes it easier to keep the place cool in the summer since there's far less surface area to worry about.
People are different. And they can convince themselves of just about anything.
I know that in Sydney, Australia, there's a perceived "space shortage" but the true issues are regulatory, nimbyism, and behind most of that is a desire to protect the investments of existing property owners. We could just build upwards and have an abundance of centrally located dwellings. Most buildings in Sydney are just a few storeys high.
Tokyo reminds me of Sydney, except for the earthquake factor. If the earthquake factor isn't an issue, then the situation is truly extraordinary; millions of people living in the tiniest of spaces just to protect existing investors.
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-21/real-estate-warnin...
You can't just build up and up and ignore the issues at ground-level. As you add more vertical housing you still need more space and resources at ground level, for public transport, for parks, for schools which need sports ground, for everything. Everything else continues to get more congested and building vertically solves none of these inherent problems.
The experience of e.g. Hong Kong and Manhattan seems to suggest that it's easier to provide for public transport, schools etc, in ultra-dense environments. One of the core advantages of ultra-density is that less space is needed for streets and motor traffic. Ultra-density also makes logistics for basic goods and services (e.g. food and health care) more efficient. Even greenery can be more efficiently provided in ultra-dense environments, because multiplexing is possible as parks are rarely used by the majority of the population at the same time. E.g. London parks are pretty empty almost all the time.
(See also the scalability limits that high-rise buildings have w.r.t. economics of floor space, that I mention in another post.)
Why overfit on rare edge cases?
I don’t care if it’s empty when it’s raining, there’s a reason why that’s the case.
Having access to Hyde Park is pointless for the purposes I like green areas (to enjoy when the weather is nice)
On a more utopian level, people of yesteryear envisioned skyways between tall buildings as viable public transit. Once the density of high buildings becomes high enough, it could become feasible.
Note, the floor assignments above are something I made up on the spot. It gives the idea, but it is surely wrong in the details. Anyone wishing to build such a building should do their own calculations.
Note however that skyscrapers also have scalability limits: as height increases, the amount of interior that gets eaten up by non-usable infrastructure and support (e.g. beams, load-bearing wall, elevators). I have read on the internet (please correct me if my data is wrong -- I've not fact checked it) that the Burj Khalifa in Dubai occupies about 68796.6 m2, while offering about 334000 m2 of interior floor space. Thats about 4.85X increase. This means that if they simply occupied all the land and went up for 5 floors they'd have more floor space. As an example of a low-rise building, the Pentagon in the U.S., with 5 floors and 600000 m2 has more usable square footage than the Burj, the tallest building in the world. (Alas I don't know how much land the Pentagon uses, maybe somebody can tell me?) I also don't know if the Burj Dubai is representative w.r.t skyscraper economics. It's unlikely that Burj Dubai's main raison d'être has been rental income, it's more a landmark, drawing attention to Dubai, to the ruler's power, promote Dubai as a business location etc. (Those will indirectly affect achievable rental income in other, more functional Dubai buildings.) See [1] for a well-written introduction to the economics of skyscrapers.
The need for transportation is a side-effect of not having sufficient dwellings close to where people are commuting to.
As far as I know most height restrictions are to do with casting shadows over other people's property.
For example, I own an apartment in a complex where some buildings exceed the area's height restrictions through an agreement with the government because the tall building is placed in the middle of the southern side of the block and hence only shades buildings in the same complex. If you're just building one building, that would be a problem.
Of course there are earthquake considerations, but everywhere I have seen them they're to do with choice of construction materials for a given size.
Source: me, I own an apartment in Tokyo and my wife is a licensed real estate broker.
So while I agree that we need to build upwards and increase density, we have to be mindful of air and light, especially air quality and sunlight at street level.
Still real estate is very expensive ( 13K$ per square meter for something downtown [2] )
The main effect of building so much is that now almost half of the South Korean population lives around Seoul.
[1] https://www.mensjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Seoul... [2] https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/in/Seoul
real estate is
very expensive
There is no shortage of high apartment towers in Tokyo and major city centers in Japan. So no, that's not a restriction as much as you would think.
It was perfect for me. I lived in Tokyo not have a roomy house, but to be in the middle of the action. The closer I lived to the center, the better.
These apartments are the same thing. They are great for young professionals in their 20's, but if you want a family, they aren't feasible.
Usually the shower, bathroom, and kitchen are in common, the former one on each floor. Usually there are paid professionals cleaning them regularly.
I don't consider them a bad accomodation. It's the equivalent of a school dorm. I wouldn't necessarily want to live there if working full time, but that's just preference.
You have to be an adaptable and accommodating person though.
Compared this to living in HK [1], a 9m2 space would get you a toilet and kitchen combined as one.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed...
I'd have never expected it until I lived it, but 10m2 is much more comfortable than 20.
I have 1 bedroom, 1 office and a living room, I don't keep trash in the flat we have a storage unit, in fact unless we convert the 2nd bedroom/office to a closet we actually rotate clothes in and out of the storage unit because there isn't enough wardrobe space for 2 people for all seasons.
Tiny apartments are a health hazard they damage both your physical and mental health, they aren't any more environmentally conscious than properly sized apartments and this whole minimalism fad is complete horeshit litterarly sold too and by useful idiots.
A 6m^2 apartment is below what is legally can be called a room in the UK, In fact it's the size of a US prison cell (5.8m^2), 20m is blow the legal limit for a home which iirc is 37m2 but in the UK this only covers recent builds and conversion so you might still find 30m flats somewhere however depending on the council they are can be illegal to rent out.
For perspective this is what 6 square meters look like https://weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6x9-jail-...
So yes while I was a bit hyperbolic I don't understand how someone can live in a literal prison cell yet alone calling it more comfortable than living in a small hotel room. But no I don't to question my conscience regarding what I need or don't need, what I want is an apartment in an area I like, close to what I need and want to have, for a price I'm willing to pay. Besides that I would opt out to get the largest apartment I can, 2 baths is a must because I live with a partner, having an extra room for work and or guests is also nice especially since it allows us both to work from home on the same day and gives us some room from each other if things get too heated and I don't have to be in her face or one of us has to go out.
>> they aren't any more environmentally conscious
>> this whole minimalism fad is complete horeshit litterarly sold too and by useful idiots
>> can live in a literal prison cell
You seem to be ranting. I think most of your points are beliefs without facts or just things you've invented to be angry about.
Or you know just take an air quality meter and check it for yourself.
In fact sleeping in small bedrooms is also quite terrible for your health.
People should not live in prison cells let’s stop making them sexy so developers can make more money by squeezing more people into a given area.
I don´t have the same experience in Europe.
Accent test for North Americans: See if you can say which person is the New Zealander and which is the Australian (before the 12 minute mark after which one of them says where they're from).
Anyway, I wish we'd finally agree as a community to use one word for one thing, but not the other.
i.e., small homes: just small homes (like OP's link, serious and important approach to housing).
tiny houses: the new trend of putting a small home on wheels/trailer. (like 99% of the links on Google).
I'm all for the former (small units, when fit with modern-appliances, sound-proofing, and well-designed) can be a great way to live for young people for a few years, and help reduce costs.
Take a look at Amsterdam for example, it's population only recently growing back to the 1960s levels. [0] (suburbanisation happened in between).
However, housing prices grew by about 8x since the bottom.[1]
The funny thing you find is that we actually have way more housing than we used to, and until recently we actually had fewer people in the city than we used to, but prices are way higher. So what's changed? The most important change that I see is that, considering we have fewer people in more real estate, we all live larger.
And you can see this in a lot of data. Average home size in the US has grown way larger, while household size shrunk, you can see in this graph. [2] The axis kind of get exaggerated a bit, but still the effect is clear. We have twice the amount of space per person today than just 40 years ago. That's not ancient history.
This seems to be pushing up real estate prices more than anything. And one way to solve the issue is to simply reverse this trend of living larger. Instead, let's live a little smaller. If you look at other developments in our lives, this should make sense. A lot of our technology has miniaturised. We don't need a library of books or CDs at home, no record player, we have multiple virtual desks, some of us don't need a TV. We're more and more able to use public spaces to meet people, host people, be entertained. And of course, the nature of the family has changed, we marry less and later, have fewer children, live more individually. The trend of ever larger houses makes no sense in a world where we need smaller units, and often can't afford housing as it is. There's a lot of room for more (but always limited) smaller units in our housing stock, I think. Although I'm thinking 20-35m2, not 10!
The second trend of putting small homes on wheels/trailer, just isn't interesting to me. They're mostly just campervans, only a bit less mobile. They don't really solve any issue, as they're super low-density. They exist only in cheap low-density areas where they can be parked, where there typically isn't a housing shortage issue anyway, or in a HCOL environment, in a grey area of the law when parked in someone's garden or something, which isn't a solution at scale. They're fun, but not a serious approach to housing at scale. Yet these terms, small/tiny houses/homes are often intertwined and it muddies the conversation a bit.
[0] http://destadamsterdam.nu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/demofac... [1] https://www.nvm.nl/marktinformatie/marktinformatie [2] https://azgolfhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/American-...
In the UK it’s availability of finance. Mortgages used to be limited to three times the main earners wage, now it could be four or more times joint wages.
If I only needed a computer, I would actually have shit ton of space.
I'll probably spend a year or two in a studio apartment slightly larger than the ones in the article and then find a house with housemates, just like I did back in uni.
Also maybe it is just me but I'd probabbly have to find some sort of method of dealing with air circulation and smell...
1) to be legally recognized (as a self-standing home) the surface of an apartment cannot be less than 28 square meters
2)the minimum height of rooms intended for "long permanence of humans" (which is anything but bathrooms, corridors and closets that can be as low as 2.40 m) must be 2.70 meters
3) all rooms as above need to have a window no less than 1/8 of the surface of the room
4) there must be at least one bathroom in the house with all four pieces: basin, bidet, wc and bathtub (or shower)
5) the size in #1 is intended for a "single" person residing in it, the minimum size for two people is 38 square meters and for each person living in the house (this is not usually enforced in practice) there must be at least 14 square meters of surface (up to the first four) and 10 square meters for each more person
Very often local councils impose bigger sizes for the minimum apartment (in case of new constructions or refurbishing of old houses divided in more apartments).
Honestly, it wasn´t bad - I was outside all day, and the miracle of the Internet meant that when I was inside I wasn´t missing much. I did my studying and meetings on university buildings, so it was basically a dorm room.
Several poor families (single mother and children, some immigrants) did live in the same 14 square meters and that was sad.