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?
I am from Argentina and since we were collonised by the Spaniards we have inherited some of their architecture and most if not all houses here are like that, they are all stuck together. I don’t think it is a good way of doing it, though, since I feel it is not dense enough and you end up wasting space, I guess having some spaces like this would not be bad but you definitely need a lot of vertical space for housing.
What do you think about mixing mid rises with townhouses compared to only townhouses or only apartments, in that case?
I think it depends on what you want a reasonable size for a city in terms of horizontal space (what is the answer to that I do not know), but I think a combination could. Although I cannot but feel that people in individual houses are getting some better deal since it is hard to own a backyard if you live in an apartment.
Only apartments sounds very alien to me, and I cannot really picture living in something like that, but at the same time I dont think be should dedtroy all those buildings that have been therr for so long, some houses need to be preserved so you mighst as well just leave some houses.
To be fair, there are people who prefer apartments to houses. Like me. In the end, I think having a reasonable mix of different types of housing is always good, as long as it doesn’t undermine affordability and sustainability, which should obviously be higher priorities.
There’s also the argument that (modern) apartments are more accessible if you have mobility issues, thanks to having elevators and usually flat walkways with few obstacles. With multilevel houses, you essentially can’t use the upper floors if you have trouble with stairs, unless you get an expensive stair climbing machine installed, but even then it’s not as good as a proper elevator.
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