Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Publication Details

Sunday Times newspaper 01.11.2015. Reproduced here with kind permission of The Sunday Times.

http://store.thetimes.ie/

Abstract

When it comes to the topic of apartment sizes, planners and local authorities should keep this old adage to the forefront of their minds: less is not more. Ireland’s size standards for residential housing have tended to followBritain’s since about the 1940s. The UK has been producing ever-smaller units and with, in effect, no minimum national standard, it has the smallest homes in western Europe. This is not a trend we need to follow. Minimum space standards for a one-bedroomapartment in Dublin reduced from 484 sq ft in 1961 to 344 sq ft in 1987—and finally up to a more habitable 592 sq ft in 2011. The damage had been done, with undersized units already having been built, but better late than never.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/5r2j-jy17


Share

COinS