The advent of micro apartments has developers drooling and others worrying about a pigeon coop lifestyle. There are two sides to this story, but you have to learn to like the other side.
If you search micro apartments on Google, the images are pretty damn scary. There are the usual IKEA like clean images and spaces which just don’t look right. Some apartments look good, some look weird, some look ridiculous.
For a long time, there’s been an argument about minimum liveable space. In Japan, tiny apartments have been around forever. In New York, where the first “officially micro” apartments have been getting a lot of media attention, the expensive cupboard with window now costs around $2-3000 a month to rent anywhere outside Harlem. Some micro apartments are OK, some are, well, horrible.
High density living and high rise living have redefined living space. This has been going on since the postwar building boom. The famous, then infamous, then vacant Detroit tenement projects were one of the outgrowths of the new approach to planning.
The theory was that One Size Fits All apartment complexes would solve all social issues, promote equality, etc. We know what happened. The standardized buildings of today are the slums of tomorrow. That pattern repeats endlessly.
Reduced living spaces actually allow more apartments to be put on the same footprint. That means that developers make more money from each development. Instead of 100 apartments, build 150, and sell or rent at more or less the same price. It’s a no-brainer.
If the money looks credible, so do the risks, in so many ways. Whether these ultra-high density buildings will turn in to ultra-dangerous fire hazards, gangland jungles, or just the usual overcrowded horrors of recent years, time will tell. In places like Hong Kong, the micro apartments are even smaller. There’s even a thing called a house in a suitcase, which is all about bringing the amenities with you into an open space.
The positive side of micro apartments
Starting with the statement that I loathe the sight of these cheapskate, miserable little suppositories with kitchens — the new micro apartments do have some practical value and even a theoretical future in a useful sense.
As actual habitations for human beings, they have all the true “minimalist” credentials – Minimal thought, minimal talent, minimal effort, minimal sanity, and minimal respect for human beings or their intelligence. The practical side, ironically, is based on a practical principle which has little or nothing to do with the physical values of the micro apartments.
The New York Times points out that the smaller dwellings are actually pretty realistic for the over 65s. They’re less work, convenient, and very good for the less mobile. For the younger people, there’s no doubt that if you’re a work/sleep/save person, cheaper, smaller and low maintenance is better.
Economically, the greatest irony is perhaps that these slightly enlarged bedsitters are minimal space users in an environmentally positive sense. Big dwellings, particularly mainstream mansions and apartments, are environmental wreckers. A micro apartment future may seem a horrible price to pay for a cleaner, better world. It’s not, however, an unreasonable price, at least morally. Let’s face it, humanity has been wearing out the environmental credit card for a long time now. The interest rate will be a drastically curtailed standard of living, either voluntarily, or involuntarily.
These micro apartments may be unbelievable insults to the idea of a wonderful, glowing prosperous future as envisaged in the past. The Jetsons and others didn’t live in matchboxes. These apartments may be poky, architecturally unimpressive, and staggeringly barren looking things. The real issue is whether they can be made into decent places to live, with style and class, not just bitchy accountancy and overpriced properties as the main reason for their existence.
A side branch of micro living is the “tiny houses” movement, which is based on much smaller freestanding houses, certainly classier and charming in many ways. Maybe there’s a happy medium between standardized termite mounds and a decent lifestyle? Let’s hope so.
Historical footnote — it’s not the first time Westerners have lived in such tiny spaces. In the past, according to the English historian Trevelyan in his Social History of England, multiple families in London and elsewhere used to live in the same rooms, with the only barrier a chalk line.
Maybe things have improved — a bit.
