Following the comments on the earlier post, allow me to summarise thusly:
Assuming
- plots are 9 yds wide and 36 yards deep
- the house has internal area 120 sq yds
- the garage is 3 yds wide and 8 yds deep
- you can choose between a semi-detached on the left or a terraced house on the right, which is the better layout?
I am pretty sure that the cost of building the semi-detached and separate garage is higher (in terms of foundations, bricks and roofing materials), but let's ignore that. What it boils down to is: a semi-detached with three rooms downstairs and up (of which one on each floor is usually too small) or a terraced house with two rooms downstairs and four rooms up (all OK in size)?
To my mind, the terraced layout is better: to keep everybody happy, I have pencilled in an integral garage downstairs with doors at the front and back so that people can carry mucky stuff from the garden to the front (most people will promptly convert this to an extra downstairs room, of course). And what you lose in the wasted strip of driveway at the side, you gain in a much bigger back garden (198 sq yds instead of 153); you could in fact make the terraced plot five yards shorter (lose the bit above the dotted line) and the garden is still 'better' as it is 'squarer'.
And terraced housing is almost infinitely scaleable. Here's a screenshot from Google Maps of some three-bed terraced houses in Leyton (without integral garages), including the roads in front and behind, that works out at 30 homes per acre (or "350 habitable rooms per hectare", to use the modern jargon):
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Town Planning: Terraced houses (2)
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23 comments:
It is also easier to make terraces look beautiful, because the repetition of architectural features on a large scale is more imposing - e.g. Bath, Buxton or any of the much more modest Georgian and Victorian terraces - provided they are not mucked about with.
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that extensive studies had worked out that the traditional British terrace street layour was almost as dense as Corbusien high-rises-with-large-gaps-between-them, with far fewer of the social drawbacks.
BE
BE - Yep, I'd seen that too.
I have some friends in the North that used to live in Jesmond in a three story terrace with a rear 'yard' onto a back lane. They had a garage in the yard. Very elegant street. Very efficient house with excellent sized rooms.
H, yes, they can be scaled upwards or downwards, in height or width, grandeur or simplicity. But 'Georgian' styling is also best in this regard.
BE, that's as true today as it ever was. Hence why I pointed out 350 habitable rooms/hectare. The NIMBY f-ers out in Woking describe anything over 187 habitable rooms per hectare as high density, which is half as much as those perfectly liveable terraces with a nice little back garden (ideally suited to people who like me who hate mowing lawns). You can't beat a few parks and open spaces though.
L, we can add extra storeys to suit taste. Three is enough for me (aka 'townhouses'). And a cellar would be nice. Makes four.
How dense do people actually prefer it though?
What, in general, would people prefer?
Isn't city property far too tightly packed and rural too sparse?
Too overcrowded here. Too lonely there.
This is not a matter of optimum choice.
We know the remedy right? Which would help distribute density to a more natural equilibrium.
Then it would differ be free choice.
The houses in Jesmond, Newcastle, are close to optimal. 5 metres frontage gives a good density and allows sufficient width for a small back addition for kitchen and bathroom without blocking the light to the back room. A density of about 15 houses per acre gives a decent amount of space around, whilst still giving enough people to support shops and services within walking distance.
Six storey blocks of flats on a street frontage also works well at a similar density but not for families with children unless there are good and well managed parks very close by.
Here is Larkspur terrace
aah...the back lane is important - the dustbins can go there and also the horses can be stabled there, beside the modern brick privy. Serious point though...a back alleyway is good
I like the back lanes for the reasons stated - they give you garage space and the dustbins do not need to be brought through the house... but my friend who lives in Jesmond says they have become a security hazard in recent years. I suppose they could be gated, though.
Terrace housing does not work particularly well unless the houses are arranged in conventional streets with at least twenty or so houses on each side. There is something to be said for not having front gardens but to have the ground floor level about 50 cm higher than street level. There is also an advantage in having a basement area between the pavement and the house, thus the front door is accessed over a bridge. Since the area has to be excavated anyway to construct the foundations, there is no point in filling the space up again when it could be used.
In principle, the developers of the 1840s had a better idea how to do things than those of today.
I lived in Sunderland for a time in the 70's - don't ask why. My first digs were in an excellent mid terrace house near the sea front in Roker. Small front garden. Small and useful back yard. Very warm and cosy. Plus next door also had lodgers who were all young women....
Perfect.
RS, people are quite happy to live there - those particular houses are near the Tube station, shops etc with access to all the high paying jobs in London. They'll happily pay £15,000 a year in rent, for example.
Ph, those houses are 30 per acre, not 15, and still probably preferably to flats for most people (certainly they would be for me). So the cut-off point at which it is worthwhile building flats is very high indeed.
G, Ph, those back lanes may have served a purpose a long time ago, but by and large, the crime, fly tipping and so on make them a net negative nowadays.
Ph, why is 20 the cut off? And it is nice to have a front yard of maybe two yards deep so that you have somewhere to put the bins and also so that people aren't walking past within touching distance of your front window.
L, that indeed sounds perfect.
You claim in your earlier post that only 3% of neighbours make too much noise. I've read that a fifth of people wouldn't have bought their current house had they known what the neighbours were like and I think this is nearer the mark. "Big gardens and high walls make good neighbours," the saying goes. On a related theme, many people, including myself, would opt to live in two bedroom apartments rather than semis or detached houses, were there a guarantee of peace and quiet. Very strict sound insulation building regulations and the possibility of rapid eviction of the anti social would go someway towards facilitating this. Many people's quality of life would be improved beyond recognition and larger houses would be freed up for families.
JB, maybe it's higher than 3% but I doubt it's 20%.
And yes, of course some people prefer flats. Building decent flats with proper sound insulation (i.e. reinforced concrete floors and proper walls, not wood and timber and plaster) sorts all that out, as well as being good for fire insulation. Stick on a decent balcony and hey presto. This is what the Europeans do.
Best to move to Europe if you need to live in a flat. Also you don't get bothered by a greedy freeholder.
Jesmond houses are around 15 to 20 to the acre in the better areas. They are quite wide frontage and have either long front gardens or long back gardens. I bought a 1:1250 OS map and measured them out once.
Front gardens are a bit of a mixed blessing. If the ground floor is raised then passers-by are not intrusive even if the pavement is close. Front gardens cannot be used unless they are at least 30 feet long, as on the north side of Holly Avenue (off Osborne Road). The whole arrangement of Jesmond shows up nicely on Google maps.
Short terraces are an inefficient use of space. There was a rule at Washington New Town that terraces should not be more than six houses long. This led to lots of useless little bits of space being left over, and a lot of money being wasted on useless complicated landscape works.
The back lanes in Jesmond have become a bit problematical in recent years and probably need to be gated, with controlled access. The general principle of keeping the bins at the rear is a good one, though the entire approach to refuse disposal needs to change anyway. Garages at the rear are a good thing but people prefer to park at the front and then the street becomes a sea of cars. The picture of Jesmond I linked to earlier was taken in 1970, when there where just a few cars. Now all the streets are lined with cars on both sides, making them the dominant feature in the urban landscape.
I must say that the idea of "terrace with back lane and parking area at rear (space for three cars on your standard-width plot)" sounds a good one. The land for the back lanes can be taken out of the roads, as it would not need to be wide enough to have cars parked down each side and still leave room for two-way traffic in the middle and the back lanes can be gated to make both houses and cars secure.
Ph, yes, a very short terrace, of two houses only, is called semi-detached :-) But to look at, once you get more than thirty or so in a row, it gets a bit monotonous.
B, if back lanes and separate garages were such a good idea, how come they never caught on? I suspect that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. I'd prefer a wider road with on-street parking in front of my house. Plus, I'd keep forgetting my key to the gate.
B, if back lanes and separate garages were such a good idea, how come they never caught on?
Thus: 1. The original terraces, and the vast majority of all surviving terraces, were built before the advent of the car, so no provision was made for cars. Where there is a back lane, it's usually too narrow to reverse a car into a garage.
2. People got used to parking in the street. As you point out, there is usually enough room for one car per house.
3. Along with the rise of the car came the rise of the suburban three-bed semi with garage at the side: less space efficient than terraces but more FBRI.
4. People got used to parking their car in fron of their house, where they could show it off to the neighbours if it was new and/or expensive.
5. Terraces fell out of fashion.
Now people generally have more than one car per household, parking your expensive car out fron is not such a good ide because of crime, as you point out it is time to rethink the terrace and, IMHO, part of that rethink is the back lane.
"Plus, I'd keep forgetting my key to the gate."
You don't forget the key to your house, do you?
Or do you and regularly stand shivering in the rain, whilst your wife comes back from wherever she is to let you in?
B, yes, that is how people behave and what they are like. That's what I'm like to be honest.
But can you actually draw up, on a spreadsheet using a reasonably accurate scale, how you envisage your model working, and then we can see whether it leads to more efficient land use. I just don't think it does.
For example, if you have your bins in front of your house then it is easier for the bin men to pick up, so that's the best place for them.
"For example, if you have your bins in front of your house then it is easier for the bin men to pick up, so that's the best place for them."
The temptation to design places where people live for the convenience of public employees like bin men or firemen is one to which town planners have long since succumbed. I would prefer such things were designed for the convenience of the people who live there. If a back lane is wide enough to get a car through ninety degrees into a parking space/garage, it's wide enough for a bin lorry to go up.
To return to your previous question, before there were cars, those who could afford not to walk used carriages. Terraces designed for people rich enough to own carriages were often designed with a back lane and accommodation for the carriages, horses and coachmen at the back in a mews.
Back lanes are a regional thing. They were almost universal in some parts of the country eg the north-east, but rare in others. They were originally for coal delivery and refuse collection. They are still used for the latter function. Saves carrying rubbish though the house. This was more of a problem when refuse included ashes and before the days of vacuum cleaners.
Terraces of more than about 50 houses lead to a street network which restricts the options for moving through it. But a sensible response to topography and the restrictions of the site will normally result in a layout that is not monotonous, without the need for contrived design. The Osborne Road area of Jesmond in Newcastle is an excellent example of this, and there are similar neighbourhoods elsewhere on Tyneside eg Whitley Bay, where the streets tend to have a slight curve, following the line of the coast or the railway that runs through the town.
"But can you actually draw up, on a spreadsheet using a reasonably accurate scale, how you envisage your model working"
OK, using your model of the terraced house, we take the "spare" five yards at the back, add a yard to make space for an average sized garage/ parking space perpendicular to the back lane, which we take from the front. This leaves you with three yards spare at the front, if you shrink the front garden/yard to your minimum of two yards, which can be used at the back for a lane. The house backing onto the example contributes its three yards and you have a back lane six yards wide, which is ample. Plus you now have an extra room in your house.
B, fair enough, but what that boils down to is using more space for roads, with pedestrian access at 'front' and car access at 'back'.
So you might just as well say, we'll have a narrower pedestrian access path between the gardens at the 'back' and the 'front' is reserved for car access and for dustbin collection.
I fail to see the point. One road in multi-use, for pedestrians, cars, dustbin lorries, is quite enough.
The other plus side is that back gardens are cumulative. I'd rather have a back garden that backs on to another back garden than one which backs onto a semi-public access road at the back, then I've got the grief with remembering to lock my own back gate etc.
Phys, back lanes made sense in the days of coal delivery and outside privies, but not any more.
Rubbish ALWAYS has to be carried through the house because that is where it originates. Whether you take it out to the 'front' or to the 'back' makes no difference.
So I am thoroughly unconvinced. I've seen programmes about this and the system never really 'works' as intended.
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