EDIT: typo, I meant sqf and not sqm.
400 square feet (~37 m^2)
No need to turn this into another stereotyping Europe vs US issue. I agree 37 m^2 is plenty of room for some people, not for others, regardless of where you are from.
But it is kind of true that Americans are extremely melodramatic about this stuff. 800 sqft house is often referred as a "tiny house" in American media. In the UK (for example) this is an average house size.
I'm not sure it's just that, it's also I think, that Americans find it acceptable to live in suburbs. If everyone tried to live in the city centers (like they do in nyc or SF), small places would also be the norm.
Guess what, tons of land leads to different expectations
Suburbs are a compromise, where you get a little of column A (room enough for decent living) and a little column B (urban wages and access to capital), which equals a lot of column C (long, shitty commutes).
Well, one reason would be:
> long, shitty commutes
another is that some people prefer urban life.
I bet you'd be surprised to hear that in some countries people actually prefer to live in apartments to houses.When I ask why, they often state the fact that it is much less work to upkeep an apartment, so I guess that would be another reason. I personally understand why would some kid from the midwestern suburbs want to live in nyc, even if it means a much lower standard of living.
But in reality I think it really is purely cultural, people prefer what people like them around them prefer. People in the US were living in the cities as well before the "white flight", so at some point, urban middle class families were also the norm.
One sniff test for the credibility of this is to look at what rich people do.
No matter where you go, the wealthy tend to have large country estates. Sure, they may have a luxury apartment in town as well, but where do they spend their leisure time? Bingo.
Someone who is forced to live in a tiny apartment because they can't afford anything better isn't really making a free choice, even if they rationalize it by claiming that it is.
Of course, but I wasn't referring to those people. I was talking about the people who prefer to live in apartments, like, for example, my parents who moved from a house (that was actually in a great location) to an apartment by choice (in a worse location, and some years after that in another apt in a better location). Now they live in a house again (not by choice), but keep their city apartment. And my mom keeps telling me how she hates the house, and can't wait to move back to the city apartment :)
and she even has a housekeeper so it's not like she has to do the whole work around the house by herself. This is why I say it's really deeply culturally embedded. You are not able to step out of your cultural conditioning and imagine that there are people who really truly prefer to live in apartment.
Really, you exhausted all my arguments.
Look, you have admitted that rich people (i.e., the people who actually have a choice) prefer country dwellings.
This was true in Ancient Rome. It was true in Victorian England. It was true in the Soviet Union. And it is true wherever it is that you live.
"Really, you exhausted all my arguments."
No, the facts on the ground have exhausted your arguments.
No, I haven't. I am totally disinterested in rich people and what they prefer, but I'm not sure that there are fewer rich people living in cities such as NYC or Shangai than in the country.
> And it is true wherever it is that you live.
Right. Good to know. I'll let you get on with it now.
If I won Powerball tomorrow, I'd tell my boss I could either work 99% remote, or he could try to find someone else to take over. Then I would go home, and be a somewhat more comfortable version of the subsistence farmers my great-grandparents were. Sawing and splitting firewood would be an excellent break from debugging ASP.NET applications, and hilling potatoes would be a great distraction from fighting with upgraded Windows installer tooling. I would never have to bag up another dog turd. I'd have free, non-chlorinated, decent-tasting water. I could plink at tin cans in my back yard without violating any town ordinances, scaring the neighbors, or having the police called on me. I could see the stars at night without the baleful day-glo glare of halogen streetlights polluting the sky.
I am hopeful that this utopia might be achievable within a foreseeable timescale, sans massive lottery-related cash infusion. Much more hopeful than I am about the possibility of an urban environment that could possibly meet my requirements for livability.
His basic point is that if your sample set consists of people who don't actually have the choice of buying a large home, then that's a major confounding variable whose influence you cannot reliably determine on the results. Beyond that, the sample set also must be large enough for it to not be anecdata. A single couple doesn't imply much about societal trends at large, but the behavior of an entire class of people -- the wealthy -- does, to at least some degree.
Europeans, New Yorkers, and (increasingly) people from the Bay Area think that paying forty billion dollars a month to live in a closet is normal. It is not.
I should probably return that math degree :/
(see yesterday's discussion about rubbish buildings)
You mean 40 m^2 ? 400 m^2 is a big house :D In that case I can agree - in my country (Croatia) ~40-60 m^2 is the norm for family apartment. Also interesting - huge apartments (>100 m^2) are nowhere near to being proportionally expensive (except on the top end) because people can't afford them - eg. they might be double in size but only 1/2 more in price.
People need their space while it's true that there might be some "romantic" aspects to small housing the disadvantages are quite noticeable there are plenty of adverse physical and mental health effects when you live in smaller spaces, from asthma to mental stress and social friction that can increase the likelihood of divorces and breakups.
I live with my GF for 6 years and I would never ever live in an apartment with less than 2 bedrooms, people need their space, if you have a fight it's good to have a place to go and just cool down and not continuously get annoyed at the person, having a guest bedroom/office is also quite good for that time where you under allot of stress at work or just having a bad day and need to finish some things without being disturbed.
And while It's perfectly fine to say to your partner "look, I'm having a rough day and I need to be alone" it's just much better when you don't have too, when you know you can sit down some where and just relax.
Having larger space also gives people privacy which even in a relationship is very important if the 2nd bedroom door is closed my GF knows to knock, if our bedroom door is closed I know to knock. And before some one makes jokes about it no we don't expect to catch one of us with the mailperson in there but she might be having a private call with her parents or doctor, she might be planning a surprise and i can do the same.
And while you can do those things even without having an extra room by juggling your schedule the fact that you don't need too adds quite a bit of relief, I've seen other couples having issues while living in small apartments from having to lock yourself in the bathroom after a fight to having to make personal calls from it or worse have to say "hon, I need to make a call so I'm going out for a few" which is just uncomfortable for both people because even in a trusting relationship having a private call inside the house gives the added assurance that it's probably not that, while when you need to go out to make it there might be some fears gowning at your partner even if they are completely subconscious they are still there.
People need their space,calling it a luxury and that people in "Insert European, 2nd world, 3rd world country here" are living in small spaces is not true, because in many of them the overall living space tends to be much much bigger than what people would imagine, especially when you count in communal and open spaces.