ABSTRACT

Houses are associated with ideas of space – gardens, pets, messy activities in a shed or tinkering with bikes – while flats seem to be solely related to a more internal environment traditionally planned to be as economical with space as possible. In terms of open space, comparisons between flats and houses are invidious unless the demand for private open space is addressed seriously. A commonly held view is that families living in houses form into tighter communities more rapidly than neighbourhoods consisting of equivalent family-size households in flats. In the post-war era flats became an integral part of public-housing provision, leading to the creation of homes as flats within mid-rise and high-rise buildings. One of the challenges in the design of flats is supplying the facilities that are straightforward and cost-effective to provide in a suburban house: these include parking spaces, places for bins and sheds for bicycles.