A lot of different terms for the same or similar thing, but I’m basically talking about any housing setup where you have a bunch of small houses that share the side walls with their left and right neighbours, as opposed to regular houses that are completely separate buildings. Typically they are multi-floor with a private entrance door and a small yard each, but are pretty narrow, often with total floor area per house that isn’t much bigger than a standard two or three bedroom apartment.

Apparently they can be less expensive and faster to build per square meter of floor space than a low- or mid-rise apartment, and a lot less expensive per square meter than a high rise, but they’re obviously also not as dense as a mid-rise apartment block and a lot less dense than high rise.

But, I’ve also heard a lot of arguments that their density is still sufficient for walkability and a non car-centric city, and combine a lot of the benefits of both an apartment and a single family house. Obviously, if you plan your district with cars in mind, you’ll have trash walkability no matter what you build, case in point, the new townhouses popping up in the US and Canada might as well be regular crappy suburbs with detached houses. But, many European cities and elsewhere seem to do a really good job of both being really walkable or non car-centric and also having a lot of townhouses, especially the old townhouse blocks that were built before cars became popularised. You can also interleave them with higher density apartments.

What do you think? Townhouses in walkable, non car-centric cities, yay or nay? Any other thoughts or relevant experiences living in them you want to share?