Compact Housing Is The New Urban Living
Recently, I had the chance to take a peek at this new trend in urban housing – compact living. With the growing rate of people moving back into cities globally, urban developers are exploring new ways of making housing more efficient, comfortable and still affordable.
Like most cities in the United States, there is a crunch for housing and people in most economic brackets are being priced out. I know quite a few people fighting with landlords over rapidly rising rents. Most of the time the high rents are not justified because the landlords don’t properly maintain properties. There are small apartments and houses that haven’t been renovated in YEARS and the landlords are charging ridiculously high rents.
Something has to change.
The City of Boston is touring a 385-square-foot model housing innovation unit around to different neighborhoods to start the conversation about alternative housing options. The units are examples of potential spaces the city could create for future housing. As you can see in the model above, the units have separate spaces for sleeping, bathing, storage, and dining, and are built so that up to four of them could be stacked on top of each other. The compact living spaces have lower square-foot minimums than are currently mandated by the city, which is currently 450 square feet.
I like them a lot, but they may not be for everyone. I can totally see myself living in this particular unit. Technically, there is only one room – the bathroom – as the other spaces in the unit are separated with curtains like the kitchen/living room and bedroom. Ideally, these tiny spaces could work for single people, young couples, students, empty nesters or anyone who doesn’t have much property. I did take some pictures, but I wasn’t able to get good ones because the space is so small. This one-bedroom/studio unit would go on the market for $1,000 – $1,400.
But I think compact living would be a hard adjustment for most Americans because we celebrate a culture of “going big.” The size of your property is usually a sign of success or the American Dream achieved – big houses, big cars, big screen TVs etc.
Also, America is a nation full of hoarders who just don’t throw anything away!
Maybe it is time to change this mindset and be more open to new housing ideas and consumption. A few years ago I went to Tokyo to visit a colleague who just moved into her 200 square-foot apartment with her husband and their toddler! I don’t know how they did it, but they made it work. I wish I had taken pictures of it at the time, but I did find plenty of YouTube videos about other people’s experiences with compact living in Japan, like this one.
Some people think it is a joke when New Yorkers say they live in closets…