[UtakataNoAnnex]

People in NA have this crazy obsession with personal space and its allocation, and there's definitely an expectation of living with space. Anyone who has been to a majorly dense city knows how little space is afforded to them in public and how a micro apartment in some of these places is quite nice by comparison. We are, after all, the people of the McMansion.

...this argument will likely fall flat when peeps are paying $399K for a six tatami unit though. >.<

 

[Northern Light]

Too bad that you oppose urban centres with 20M people, but they exist and people want to live in them. They are the most interesting places in the world that attract the most tourists. If each person gets 1000+sqft you end up with never ending sprawl

Tourists don't flock to the Paris suburbs, beyond the Peripherique. They don't flock to Queens or Staten Island either.

What they like is the historical core, though many would find the living very different from the visiting.

Lots of tourists flock to Toronto as well, but they don't lovingly talk about the skyscrapers in Ajax, or even the mundane ones at City Place. They talk about the shopping, or the cultural diversity, or the waterfront, or the cultural offerings (note, Toronto had Opera, Ballet, a Symphony, more theatres and more music and comedy venues 30 yeas ago, what it has now are monopolies/oligopolies over fewer facilities with higher ticket prices and fewer acts) .

400ft2 living does not draw people to Paris, NYC or Tokyo, nor Toronto.

Fewer people on the planet is a better solution to crowding that tiny housing. Which we'll get to, since the birth rate is plummeting.

But that will only be useful for 1-2 generations before we desperately need more people, as retirement ages get pushed out, worker shortages are a thing, etc.

Still a planet with 4 billion humans is much better than one with 8 billion. (attrition, not war or disease please and ty)

 

[Towered]

I disagree.

I find Tokyo and even London, claustrophobic, I don't see that as my problem of skewed perception, but theirs.

Frankly, I oppose the existence of urban centres of 20,000,000 (region) for just this reason. It sets off unreasonable real estate values and commute times the solution to which is ever more 'micro' living which is expensive, and unpleasant.

When you have a 1/2 fridge, and no spare bedroom and zero closet space and no parking, you don't have a utopian life..........you have misery for most people.

Because in Paris and in Tokyo the majority of households own a car, and now they have to pay to park it, typically several blocks away, they have 'stuff' which doesn't fit in their apartment, so they have to rent off-site storage for more money, and they can't buy anything in bulk, or even take advantage of a good grocery sale, so their daily goods costs are higher and they eat out more and even great expense.

Add that up to the tension of living in a very tight space and the unaffordability of starting a family and you see a plummeting birth rate.

I say all this as someone who helped abolish parking minimums, owns a car but takes transit far more frequently than I drive, has over 1,000ft2 to myself, but still shops for food 3x weekly because I enjoy it.....and doesn't have kids.

But I find the idea of living in a tiny box abhorrent. I enjoy camping, and my gear takes up 40ft2 (2 tents, 3 sleeping bags, a cooler, a drink cooler, 2 air mattresses, etc.) I have sporting goods, badminton rackets and birdies, tennis rackets and balls,
I have seasonal decorations (Christmas Tree, lights, stockings, etc.), I have a tool box, a drill, landscaping equipment (pruners, shears, trowels, shovels, saws etc.). Lots of other stuff too.

I have a wardrobe of clothes I actually wear, 1/2 a dozen towels, room to store the large package of TP when it goes on sale, first aid supplies, toiletries etc.

I have a spare box of my engineered hardwood flooring, a booster pack for my car battery, spare paint cans of my custom wall colours.

One of my bedrooms is my home office, which I actually work from and typing in right now; while another is a spare for company.

****

Here's the thing, all my friends call me a minimalist.

I like space around my furniture, and clear walking paths. I don't store stuff in public view, my walls have art, but its featured, not clutter.

If you want to live in 400ft2, I certainly wouldn't stop you; but if you want to insist others live in it cheerfully, I'll will strenuously object.

*slow clap*

 

[Mihairokov]

Represent a similar quality of space, never mind the fact that Tokyo and Toronto aren't even breathing the same air in terms of quality of broader urban environment, then I don't know what to tell you.

I don't know how you expect me to hold this opinion because I wasn't looking at specific units in this building, just speaking broadly about how other places on earth have similarly small apartments like Toronto. Toronto's main issue is that these are not made for living but for investing, and that's a leeching effect that isn't as strong elsewhere and speaks volumes about our culture in general. At this point we're speaking past each other.

If we want to get into quality of broader urban environment we can, but then we can also go into the broader social environment in which most of us would be permanently ostracized in Tokyo. Everywhere has pros and cons.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

If you want to live in 400ft2, I certainly wouldn't stop you; but if you want to insist others live in it cheerfully, I'll will strenuously object.

One of the worst crimes against humanity is asserting that was is good for me must be good for everyone else. And if they're not sucking it up, then they are weirdly deemed as a moral failure...

...people in real life don't work like that.

 

[ProjectEnd]

I don't know how you expect me to hold this opinion because I wasn't looking at specific units in this building, just speaking broadly about how other places on earth have similarly small apartments like Toronto. Toronto's main issue is that these are not made for living but for investing, and that's a leeching effect that isn't as strong elsewhere and speaks volumes about our culture in general. At this point we're speaking past each other.

If we want to get into quality of broader urban environment we can, but then we can also go into the broader social environment in which most of us would be permanently ostracized in Tokyo. Everywhere has pros and cons.

We're not speaking past each other, we're saying largely the same thing, I'm just saying in this City it's an excuse for greed and profiteering than a reality that designers actually try and solve as elsewhere. Increasingly (2015-2022ish), it was never a "problem" here because that terrible "unit" would still sell, so nobody had to bother to try and make it livable. It was just a commodity like sand or water or guano. I've been in the boardrooms and on the calls where precisely this is discussed and the degree to which the conclusion is "ehh, eff em, who cares, it'll sell, lol" is pretty much every time. So using the compact living solutions employed in other places as some sort of fig leaf for how things got so bad here excuses this industry in a way I'm just not comfortable with. If that's not what you were doing, my apologies.

Thread is way off the charts, happy to move it along.

 

[xmyth_]

Question: does anyone talk about the Distillery having fantastic shopping? Apart from the food joints, I don’t think I’ve purchased an actual product from there since the Xmas market last year

 

[GameOnBrad]

HIlariously, I saw two workers on this canopy on Friday. One tried to bellyroll over the balcony railing to get back inside. He struggled immensely.

I remember thinking . o O (Just take the glass pane out until you're done.)

Today...

 

[innsertnamehere]

Love 2 housing. Seller is trying to get $399K for this trash, down for $495K 6 months ago...

View attachment 678054

382sf, half of which is a hallway.. lol

Personally I find O1 decent for a small scale studio - it at least flows, has good windows, and doesn’t waste space.

What I also hate is these cramped 2-beds with two full baths.. just do 1 bath or a tiny powder room for the second if you must! Extra storage or living room space is much better value (and cheaper!) at that range of square footage. Of course I know these are designed for roommates to each have their own bathroom, but man.. a 2-bed unit can work on a pretty small size if you aren’t killing 80sf for a second bath. When I did the whole roommate thing we were in a 2+den with 1 bath for the three of us and it worked fine and gave us actually useable kitchen space and a good sized living and dining area.