Why Does Spain Have the World's Highest Concentration of Elevators?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
This smells like someone is forgetting a variable. In this case, it's probably the density of elevators per occupant. I'm guessing that Spain has lots buildings just barely too tall to be walk-ups. That's a much less snazzy subheadline.
For those unfamiliar, here's a beautiful shot of Hong Kong. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/HK_Kowloo...
I've seen buildings where each elevator (set) covered around 12 floors (+ ground floor). This was for a building with +/- 40 floors
They were also easier and faster to complete by not exactly stellar construction companies, so they could be dumped into the market (and during Franco's rule, basically as high as you could go with their defective concrete), and I think a lot of my country fellows associate them with the summer town architecture and higher quality of life, while taller apartment buildings were left for lame sunday tourist Benidorm holidays.
There's really really very few people accustomed to living in tall buildings. Taller buildings were built during the construction boom, but a lot of them are vacant.
As a recently minted homeowner myself, I must say I can see the attraction of apartment living more than I could before. This house is a lot nicer and bigger than our apartment was, but damned if I'm not having to replace the sewer line, the patio, and various other things, despite having had inspections beforehand. The less you own, the less there is to go wrong.
Then there is the cultural aspect of being owners not renters as the article goes into in detail.
It's way different than USA (except NY or SF maybe). Not better nor worse, just different :)
Neighbors as an asset... not so much. Some neighbors are nice, some are noisy, don't pay the communal expenses, quarrel a lot or fry sardines under your laundry lines. But crime is not a big issue, so in general you don't have to be afraid of your neighbors.
As someone who spent the majority of their early childhood (ages 3 to 9) in such a house, then lived in an apartment in a city (without an elevator on top floor), I never understood why anyone would want a house.
What do you even do with that much space? I live in a very comfortable 52m^2 (560 ft^2) studio and I don't have enough stuff to fill even half the storage space. Sure the kitchen is a bit small, and I guess the bathroom could be slightly more comfortable, but you can solve those with a bigger apartment; a house adds whole extra rooms.
Seriously, what do people do with that much room? Granted if you have a kid and a spouse you'd want something more than a studio, but my mum's apartment is about the same size as my studio and was a 2-bedroom. The three of us (mum, sis, and me) lived there for 15 years together and we were perfectly fine.
Hell even when it was four of us (dad as well) and we lived in that giant house, we only really lived on ground floor, which was essentially a 2-bedroom apartment, and the attic and basement were pretty much empty and/or filled with a bunch of junk.
From the best of my observation, houses are expensive, take up a lot of time, and largely empty/useless.
Having a safe spot for the soldering iron sounds like a good idea, but as far as putting away legos goes ... do you really want to teach your kids not to clean up after themselves? Those sorts of habits spill over.
Always putting things in their rightful place has been one of the most important lessons I've ever learned. That way your place is always tidy and you never have to explicitly do any tidying up.
The solution when I was a kid was a loft bed, it really saved a lot of space in my fairly small bedroom.
You may want an office in which to work or study without interruption from a spouse or children.
Many people enjoy having ample bathroom counter space for products.
A backyard can a safe place for children or pets to play.
Whatever you want
I guess I've got you beat for efficient living then? I live with my wife and our 4 kids in a 3030 sq. ft. home, which then works out to 505 sq. ft. per person. Also it depends on where you live, but in some areas it is cheaper to buy than rent, because you are just cutting out the middle man known as a landlord. Or I guess you can think of yourself as your own landlord.
And renting or buying, I would always go for an apartment. I just do not understand houses. If I wanted more room, I'd go for a bigger apartment ... like those fancy 2400+ft^2 two-storey apartments.
Why would American standards matter to how satisfied Spaniards are? This sentence in isolation seems weird. Is there a wider context?
Frames it as if the Spanish have failed (therefore also actively tried) to achieve this American ideal.
Overall, despite not having what some other culture have ... they are still happier, doesn't come off as curiosity about other cultures. It comes off as a surprise that other cultures are happier supposedly despite having tried to emulate that other culture, which is seemingly the gold standard.
It's a very subjective interpretation anyway, and you'll just say that it's a false impression.
I too find it fascinating and I too live in a large apartment building, but a lot of other Americans would too if it were legal to build those apartment buildings. Matt Yglesias explains why in The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0078XGJXO?tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=...), but the short version is that cities forbid taller buildings through height restrictions and parking minimums in order to protect the property values of existing owners by limiting housing supply.
For instance, Franco's rental laws have been weakened, but not by that much. Even when you could theoretically get evicted, a savvy lawyer can easily extend a renter's stay at an apartment, without really paying a dime, for about a year without facing eviction.
There's also pretty weak protections for renters whenever an apartment is vandalized by its occupants. It is not uncommon to hear stories about tens of thousands of euros of damage deal to apartments as retaliation to an eviction.
There's also rent controls that make San Francisco seem like a libertarian's wet dream. The longer you hold an apartment, the less likely than you'll want to leave, and the less profitable it is to the owner.
Such legal frameworks make apartment buildings that are built and designed for renters, managed by a company, to be an exception rather than the rule. There's just too much risk to take something like this on. So most rentals are really by people that own 4, 5 apartments, and select the renter's very, very carefully. For instance, my sister got a rather good deal a few years ago on a little apartment for her and her husband, she was pregnant at the time. The reason the price was so good was precisely that she offered an extremely low risk for the owner: The apartment will get too small for my sister's family by the time the kids stop being toddlers, she has great family references, and her job requires her to have a good public reputation. So she is a very small risk of staying there for very long, of damaging the apartment, and of becoming delinquent. A recent college graduate born in a different state and with a job would not be able to get the same deal, because of the different risk profile.
Another part that it's not mentioned in the article is when your average Spaniard stops living with his parents. Unlike in the US, when adolescents move out of the house to go to college, many Spaniards will live with their parents until they get married, and Spaniards don't marry young. This makes the share of owned houses pretty high indeed, as living with mom does not count as renting.
Spain's cities are extremely comfortable to live in, if you happen to have a job, so I do not expect the number of elevators to change. Number of renters, on the other hand, could be changed pretty quickly by legislation: Protecting renters actually makes renting harder!
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....
As you can see, Romania has the highest rate of homeownnership, and not Spain.
And this in the countryside, where one would think space would not be at a premium. This article explains a lot.
Why not Spain?