

San Francisco Approves 220-Square-Foot ‘Micro-Apartments’ - Brajeshwar
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/san-francisco-micro-apartments/all/

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potatolicious
San Francisco has got to have the most frustrating and puzzling housing policy
I've ever seen in this country.

No, let's not build any more housing, let's completely stonewall any attempt
to redevelop any land whatsoever (except Mission Bay, because it's the San
Francisco Yuppie Quarantine Zone). Instead, let's subdivide existing housing
into increasingly tiny units.

Because gosh-durnit the cute colorful Victorians are sacred and override all
other concerns, including economic stagnancy, transportation nightmares,
unprecedented rent increases, destroying traditional neighborhood
demographics, and very fundamental quality of life.

Nope, none of that matters, because we're basing a housing policy on whether
or not this neighborhood can pass for one from the early 20th century!

~~~
temp453463343
I think your concerns are way overblown. But in a broad sense, yes, San
Franciscans have made a conscious decision to pay a premium so that their city
doesn't turn into New York.

> economic stagnancy

It's not some god given rule that cities HAVE to keep growing ad infinitum,
especially ones that have limited land. Most San Franciscans are happy with
the size of the city as it is.

> transportation nightmares

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. MUNI is very abundant and isn't
too expensive (compared to NYC it's really cheap). There is generally plenty
of parking outside of downtown.

> destroying traditional neighborhood demographics

Lol. The Chinese are doing just fine, but I guess you're referring to the
former ghettos (Lower Filmore, Hunter's Point, the TL, etc.) that had huge
drug problems and violence (It's still there, but siginificantly reduced) Yes,
gentrification is unfortunate - but building high rises everywhere would ruin
the "culture" much faster (though I would argue the Tenderloin doesn't have
much culture to lose) and wouldn't solve the poverty among "traditional
neighborhood demographics". What needs to be done, is a lot more needs to be
spent on schools and city college and less on low income housing (where people
are locked into poverty).

> very fundamental quality of life

That's just a vapid hyperbole. Not building high rises is preserving the
quality of life SF is known for. The NewYorkification of SF (started by the
Gavin Newsome) is what will ruin the quality of life.

In my experience the people that whine and moan about there not being enough
housing in SF are people that don't live there. I think what they're thinking
is if there were more teeny tiny apartments then they could afford to live
there. While that may be true, then SF wouldn't be SF anymore - and it would
only be a short term fix as SF would become just as crowded and expensive as
Manhattan.

~~~
jcdavis
I disagree, I think potatolicious was pretty on point

> It's not some god given rule that cities HAVE to keep growing ad infinitum,
> especially ones that have limited land. Most San Franciscans are happy with
> the size of the city as it is.

You have a source on that stat? Rents in San Francisco are up something like
25+% year over year in many areas. Does that sound healthy to you?

> I'm not sure what you are referring to here. MUNI is very abundant and isn't
> too expensive (compared to NYC it's really cheap). There is generally plenty
> of parking outside of downtown.

Nope, MUNI is awful. Unless you live relatively close on one of the train
lines, you are in for a world of hurt. The average speed of a MUNI bus has
been going down continuously over time (due to extra traffic), to the point
where it is now like 7mph. That means it takes an hour to go from one end to
the other (vs 25 minutes tops to go a similar distance on BART). That means
more people get cars, which means the buses get even slower. I'd happily pay
the NYC monthly rates if I had an equivalent transit system.

> Not building high rises is preserving the quality of life SF is known for

San Francisco doesn't need to build high rises everywhere in the city, it
needs to allow taller buildings (6-7 stories) in more areas without forcing
developers to jump through all the hoops they have to right now. Lots of
cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it doesn't seem
to hurt their quality of life too badly. Vancouver is consistently rated as
having one of the highest quality of life scores in the world and has tons of
high rises

~~~
_delirium
> Lots of cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it
> doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly.

It's actually pretty common for European cities to limit high-rise
condos/office buildings in the city centers (usually with limits around 5-8
stories). To still achieve dense housing, tall condos and office buildings are
usually built close to public transit somewhere a bit outside of the city
center, plus the suburbs don't start as close in, so there's a bigger
urbanized area. The Manhattan/Chicago/Vancouver style of a downtown
characterized by skyscrapers isn't very common in Europe; more of a North
American invention, particularly in the Chicago/Vancouver form where there's a
high-rise downtown that quickly turns into suburban homes within a few
kilometers.

The SF equivalent might be to not allow condo towers in SF, but to urbanize
the areas a few BART stops out: why are there single-family homes, not denser
housing, in San Bruno, West Oakland, and Daly City? But of course, the
Peninsula is even _more_ anti-development than SF is, so politically that just
trades one source of opposition for another one (to take another example,
people have been trying to convince Palo Alto to allow more dense housing near
downtown/Stanford/Caltrain for years, but Palo Altoans want to keep it
suburban).

~~~
scarmig
I think that's happening to some extent in West Oakland and Oakland more
generally, at least. West Oakland's been getting some development, and there's
the MacArthur Transit Village being planned at MacArthur.

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citricsquid
Although 220 square feet isn't a _great_ living environment and certainly not
one I would want to be forced to live in long term, I don't think it's
unlivable especially if you're only "living" there when you're not at work or
school. I live in England and space is quite expensive here if you want to
have quality too, for example I pay $2500 per month for ~<600 square feet
apartment, an apartment I was looking at in London was ~$4200 per month for
800 square feet (it was a high quality residence). America is very spoiled
with space, it would be impossible for me to get a 1500 square foot apartment
anywhere in England unless I was willing to live in the middle of nowhere (the
only apartment I found this big was 20 miles from the nearest city in a
questionable area).

The issue may be that this will raise prices of bigger apartments, but if
they're reasonably priced ($1000 per month?) I can't see how this is a big
problem. For someone that spends all day inside they might not be ideal, but
someone who treats their apartment as their "base" for sleeping and eating and
nothing more it shouldn't be a problem.

~~~
nicksergeant
I understand the appeal of living in a big city with... people and all, but
honestly your dollar goes much further outside city limits. $1,000/month for a
220 sqft living space would be met with absolute disbelief around where I'm
from (Rochester, NY, USA).

Location really is everything. Around here, you'll get about 2,200 sqft of
living space in a less than 10-year old colonial house with a 2.5 car garage,
2+ acres of landscaped yard, for about $1,500/month. That's ownership, and
only about 30 minutes from a large-ish metro area (1M in Greater Rochester).
Traveling to NYC / BOS / PHL? By car: 6 hours, by plane: 1 hour.

With telecommuting being as accessible as ever, I have a hard time
understanding why people pay these prices for such abysmal living spaces.

~~~
rmaccloy
One of the things I think people who haven't spent a significant amount of
time living in dense cities miss is that you do very little "living" in your
apartment.

I spend maybe two hours a day awake in my (reasonably large for SF) apartment
during the week, tops. The rest of the time I'm at work or out in the city
somewhere; I treat the local downstairs basically like my living room.

It's not a lifestyle for everyone, but I consider the entire city my living
space and I don't think it's abysmal at all.

~~~
nicksergeant
That's a good point, and you're probably right about folks who haven't lived
in large cities like that. Everyone's experience is different, I guess I was
just expressing my own personal experience against the article.

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innguest
That's nice and all, and I definitely don't mean to sound like the tough New
Yorker I am not, but if that's a "micro-apartment" then I have seen several
"nano-apartments" in NYC that wouldn't fit a queen-size bed comfortably, let
alone a nice kitchenette like the one in the article.

They're still livable, mind you, for some value of 'livable'.

In other words, if that is considered "micro" nowadays then my standards must
be awfully skewed (which they probably are) and I'm looking forward to being
pleasantly surprised when I move out of here.

~~~
chimeracoder
I was going to say - that apartment is definitely larger than many in downtown
Manhattan (if you live in one of the older buildings - particularly the old
tenement buildings).

That might be 'micro' for Queens or even Washington Heights, but that's
certainly not 'micro' for Chelsea or the Village.....

> I have seen several "nano-apartments" in NYC that wouldn't fit a queen-size
> bed comfortably

My friend had a tough time figuring out how to fit his _full_ -sized bed -
ended up deciding that it wouldn't work, and opted for a futon instead.

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hkmurakami
"Take that, Tokyo"?

Are you kidding? Tokyo is laughing at SF's face, with its 80 square feet
(4.5jō) rooms [1]!

(not that I'd want to live in this kind of arrangement again...)

[1] 1jō = 17.79 sq.ft. 1jō is the standard area for one tile of tatami.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement#A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement#Area)

~~~
indiecore
pssh, 4.5jō? You can fit like seven people in there!

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alexhawdon
I'm not advocating taking this to commune-like extremes, but I'm surprised I
don't hear more about taking advantage of sharing certain items to maximise
living space and minimise costs. Two candidates that spring to mind would be
vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Surely it's cheaper to have one
industrial-quality version of each shared between 10/15 residents (with some
sort of online booking system) than for everyone to have one each and lose the
space?

~~~
objclxt
Are you by any chance European? A lot of US apartments do have a shared
laundry...I can't think of any of my American friends who have a washing
machine.

This is in contrast to the UK, where it's culturally the norm for every flat
to have its own washing machine (normally a condensor combi dryer, another
thing not so popular in the US). Sames goes for heat: heat if often shared in
the US, but here in the UK almost all apartments have individual boilers.

I am sure somebody here must have an explanation for exactly _why_ this
cultural difference has developed, because I have no clue!

~~~
alexhawdon
Yep - UK, and neither of those things are common over here (I don't know of
any at all).

How would the shared heating work, financially? Over here our energy costs are
very high so a lot (most?) of our energy bills go on heating and hot water; if
you want to save money, you put a jumper on and have a shower rather than a
bath. With shared heating you don't have this option, but do the overall
savings from greater efficiency (an assumption) make this a moot point?

~~~
gfhsdfy
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heizkostenverteiler>

~~~
alexhawdon
Thanks to you... and to Google Translate :) Love living in the future.

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rodelrod
Here in Paris, if you're under 30 a 220-square-foot apartment is considered
spacious. And it will not be "carefully designed".

~~~
w1ntermute
These SF "microapartments" are 220 square feet for $930/month. There are 10
square meter (108 square foot) apartments in Tokyo for which the rent is
$750/month. This is nothing.

~~~
matthewrudy
For a one year lease or a month-by-month? My room is about 100 square foot,
for 10,000HKD ($1200) per month short-term. Once you go for an annual lease
you get twice the space.

~~~
Keyframe
Where is the bathroom then? Shared?

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R_Edward
For a kilobuck a month, you can buy a 4-bedroom, 2-story, single-family house
on a half acre in a lovely suburb of Minneapolis. Of course, you'll also have
to buy a down parka, a car to get you to work, a snowblower, a lawnmower, gas
for the foregoing...

...and you're not living in San Francisco, which is a deal breaker for some.

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walnut-tree
I am not a fan of narrowly-proportioned, single-aspect micro-apartments. I
understand that space is at a premium but should we really consider 220 square
feet as acceptable? The size of homes (be they apartments or houses) can have
a profound effect on the quality of life for their occupants. Is this type of
housing really a long-term solution?

I live in the UK where the design of new build housing is generally poor.
England and Wales have no minimum space standards for housing and we are very
much the worse off for it. This is in contrast to many European countries that
do have minimum space standards. (The exception in England is London which has
recently adopted minimum space standards for any homes built with Government
money.)

I completely agree that it's not just the size of an apartment that is
important but the quality of the space. There's much that can be done to make
better use of space in homes: it all comes down to design.

Housing is a topic that's very close to my heart. I write a blog about housing
in the UK and wrote some thoughts a while ago about the size of a dwelling and
the quality of the space:

[http://homesdesign.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/space-
standards-...](http://homesdesign.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/space-standards-
and-housing-design/)

~~~
MichaelSalib
_should we really consider 220 square feet as acceptable?_

Yes. If you don't make much money but want to work in SF/NYC/Boston/etc, your
only option is to spend a lot of time driving/commuting from somewhere with
cheaper housing. For some people, the choice to waste three hours of their
life driving in traffic every day is worthwhile because they get a big house
with a yard. But others would be happy to sacrifice lots of living space if it
meant that they didn't have to blow 3 hours of stressful commuting.

When cities declare "you can't sell a 220 sq ft apartment", they force that
choice on everyone, even people who wouldn't choose it for themselves.

Minimum area standards basically impose a floor on the cost of living. In some
American suburbs, this is often explicitly used to keep out the undesirables;
you require that each house have at least an acre of land and that the
structure take up less than X% of the lot so that prices rise to the point
that low income folk or recent immigrants can't afford to live in your town.

------
greggman
If they're going to make them that small at least do it right

[http://www.ted.com/talks/kent_larson_brilliant_designs_to_fi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/kent_larson_brilliant_designs_to_fit_more_people_in_every_city.html)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak>

There's nothing "smart" about SmartSpace :-(

~~~
youngtaff
The 'SmartSpace' is a pretty abysmal design / use of space

There are other examples around of similar sized spaces that are much better
used

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charonn0
I run an SRO Hotel[1] in SF; my rooms are comparable in size to the thousands
of other SRO units throughout the City and are as small or smaller than the
units in the article. The only difference with these new units is that it
won't be poor people who live in them.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy>

~~~
scarmig
Interesting--I've always wondered who runs SROs, especially since they get a
spectacularly bad rep. Have you considered doing an IAmA or something?

The SRO analogy immediately came to mind--I wondered what would prevent these
from having the same issues residential hotels have. Is it really just the
(reasonable) expectation that setting a artificially high price will drive
away the poor?

~~~
charonn0
The bad reputation they/we get is almost entirely due to the (comparatively)
low rent. Our client base consists of the poor, students, and people with
mental or substance-abuse problems (who tend to be very poor indeed.) Those
tenants with addictions or mental illness are the most visible (and obnoxious)
of our tenants even though they aren't the most numerous.

Simply: these new units are more of the same, but for wealthier people (and I
_will_ be sending in my resume, TBH.)

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LarryMade
More like Western Micro. I agree with the comments, $959 a month doesn't seem
like "low income" rent to me either.

~~~
snogglethorpe
If the alternative is studios for $3000 and up, that's a pretty sweet rent
though...

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jusben1369
Man increased urban density flows on to everything including public and
private services. I see why these decisions make sense in a vacuum but wonder
what they mean in the broader context.

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annableker
I wish my 1-bedroom in Noe Valley was this efficient. One room could have
everything useful stacked on top of each other, and the living room could just
include badassery.

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vinayan3
The housing unit looks very sterile. Almost like a hospital room. Some of the
character of SF wil be lost.

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venturebros
My place is under 200sq ft in Seattle.

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startupfounder
We need this in NYC.

~~~
potatolicious
We're getting it: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/nyc-apartment-
size-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/nyc-apartment-size-
bloomberg-micro-apartments_n_1660396.html)

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drivebyacct2
I think it looks fantastically fun. I want to retire when I'm young and get
one of those tiny houses that I could drive around the country. I have a lot
of gadgets but otherwise live very minimally (when you move three times a
year, every year for 5 years you avoid acquiring "crap").

