Is 600 Square Feet the New Normal?

We're a family of five, and live in a two-story, three-bedroom semi-detached. Bedrooms are a little tighter than ideal, and we only have one full bathroom (you read that right), but we've gotten along fine. The concept of the six-bedroom, three-garage home has always been absolutely foreign to me. How could anyone -- barring an enormous family -- need such a behemoth? How many rooms could you really use?

Still, secretly I'd prefer it if people stayed in the suburbs. Please, take the three-hour commute to your sprawling mansion and leave the urban market behind you, so the demand stays level and doesn't price people like me out of it.

I recently moved into 580 sq.ft and everyone thought i was crazy. I have started using Store Your Style for the storage of my seasonal clothes and I had Diamond Kitchens come in and re-build the cabinets in my kitchen and bathroom to create more shelving and space. Living in 580 sq. ft forces you to have less clutter and live a minimalist lifestyle.

The new abundance of downtown 'small unit' living has opened up a whole new realm of choice for people. I think that different housing-types appeal to different peole based on their living styles at a certain time of their life. No kids in your twenties?-downtown suits fine. A couple of youngsters aching for space, privacy, security, and peace-of-mind?-a backyard-place away from downtown is the only affordable way to go. Kids gone and culture calling?-Live walking distance to nightlife, etc. Hopefully gone are the days where people felt that they 'had' to live in the same place at age 23 as they do at 47. Its all about choice and flexibility.

Two thoughts.

First, "Places to Grow" is actually quite weak. Portland, Oregon, under a Republican Governor no less, managed to impose a target of 60% (now 70%) of all development within the already urbanized area (non-greenfield development)

Places to Grow sets an objective of 40%, 20 years after Oregon adopted its standards, and doesn't even impose this new 'benchmark' until 2015!

I am not all that old (32) and I remember farms in the north end of Scarborough (Kennedy Road).

Now the sprawl reaches mindlessly so that there is virtually no break to the urban form from the Lake to Newmarket and from Oshawa to Stoney Creek.

We need more aggressive targets, sooner.

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Second thought. We have finally begun to accomodate single people in appropriate sized housing through the downtown condo boom.

But, Jeremy rightly points out that other lifestyles/family sizes continue to need diffent accomodation.

That, however, does not mean as much accomodation as suburban developers are providing. More bedrooms, yes, a second bathroom, sure.

But why must we have a spare room in a 3-bedroom house? What happened to putting the kids on the couch and giving the guest the kids room?

Why can't we build more semis? Put more garages in the rear, and still have yards, but with 30 foot frontages like in the City, instead of 40', 50' and even 60'?

And where are the apartments/condos for families?

Developers need to be compelled by municipalities to be more creative, and required to find more efficient ways of housing larger families.

Don L-You must have hacked my computer because N-blox will likely be the subject of an upcoming post of mine. Great little development!

Gloria-tell your mom she should be on blogTO!

Demographics are pointing to smaller dwellings. More single people, smaller families, aging population and empty nesters, the desire for smaller more centrally located housing grows.

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