Even in less densely populated cities, there is a palpable sense that space is squeezed. “City populations are growing; space is finite. We need a solution to that,” says Reza Merchant, chief executive of The Collective, a UK co-living apartment operator. — Financial Times
Rather than building up, two popular responses to the housing shortage proposed by building owners have been to densify and to promote cohabitation. For consumers, escalating prices and population growth make subscribing to micro apartments and co-living situations appealing options, while for building owners, the opportunity for a significant increase in rental income without constructing additional square footage is almost too good to pass up.
Yet this tendency poses a problem; George Hammond of the Financial Times begs the question: "how can city planners accommodate growth without compromising quality of life; and how can they house those attracted to cities without destroying the attraction?" While density is a key factor in reducing the carbon footprints of city-dwellers, the loss of privacy and a proper respite from the cities in which they're placed suggest that there could be more thoughtful solutions to the housing shortage facing many of the world's densest cities.
3 Comments
Research "behavioral sink".
Read your link. Maybe I'm not understanding your point. The last bit— Rat to man comparison—cites a follow-up study that suggests that when it comes to humans, they could find "no appreciable negative effects" in "a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior." ... It "was not simply about density in a physical sense, as number of individuals-per-square-unit-area, but was about degrees of social interaction."
I could be wrong, but it seems that living in a micro-apartment would actually encourage social interaction.
That being said, I've read many of your posts in articles about housing shortages and crises, and I tend to agree with you.
Also, these micro-apartments make me sad AF. =/
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