Living space
No, before you grasp the wrong end of the stick firmly in both hands, this is not a neo-Nazi rant about ‘lebensraum’. I’m talking about the space that we live in, our homes.
I am frankly amazed that so many people live in houses that are quite obviously too small for them. This has become very clear to me over the last few weeks, which I have spent largely looking at ads for houses (the landlord wants his property back and another move is imminent). Now my wife and I are not very large people. Tall, yes, fat no. And our son, who is also tall and thin, is about to move out and live with a friend. But in spite of the fact that there are now, arguably, only two of us, and that neither us of takes up much space, we have had ENORMOUS difficulty in finding a house that we can actually fit into.
In fact put us together and you could make one fat guy.
Despite its size, Norway seems to be full of houses that measure less than 100 square metres in area. In my book, that’s about right for a one-bedroom flat. For one person. But somehow they manage to cram three bedrooms into this space. Plus a kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room, bathroom, cloakroom, separate toilet and, for all I know, a sauna. In fact, I’ve actually seen – and this is the gospel truth – a house measuring 130 square metres (officially classed as ‘large’) with no less than 7 bedrooms!
25,000 years ago, to coin a phrase, we spent most of our lives more or less in the open air. We were surrounded by space. Naturally there came a time when we gave up our nomadic existence and built houses. And, castles apart, they were fairly modest houses too. There was a good reason for their small size though – it’s easier to build a small house than it is to build a big one. And big houses have to be heated in cold weather and that uses up a lot of wood (or peat, cow dung or whatever else was used).
The back garden.
But these days there’s no such excuse for building small. We have the technology and, if we’re smart, we can heat our homes efficiently at relatively little cost. Of course there’s the price of land to consider and the cost of building a larger structure but if people were already used to living in more space then it would be very difficult to persuade them to accept anything less. Developers would just have to get used to the idea.
In nineteenth-century Britain, low-cost accommodation was provided for working families. This was typically a terrace house and was familiarly known as the ‘two-up, two down’ – meaning that there were two main rooms downstairs (kitchen/living room and the ‘parlour’, which was rarely used) and two rooms upstairs (bedrooms). For a couple with, say, two children they were perfect and could even be called spacious for the time. In fact, they were state-of-the-art. I think it says a lot that surviving terrace houses are still very much in demand. Because they’re big and cheap. Well, at least bigger and cheaper than a lot of modern low-cost housing anyway.
Well, maybe not so very big.
Obviously there are scenarios when reduced living space becomes inevitable, and I blame the Japanese for this. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand why you can stick your hand out of your bedroom window and shake hands with your neighbour in Tokyo. I can understand it because Japan is a series of volcanic islands with very little usable space for a huge population. You end up living close together. But Norway?
Norway has a population density of 12 ½ people per square kilometre; Japan has a population density of 337.6 people per square kilometre. So why, in heaven’s name, does anyone in Norway live in an apartment measuring less than 50 square metres? Even in Oslo.
Naturally, living space has a lot to do with our own personal space, otherwise known as our comfort zone. This is pretty variable. The Japanese are able to tolerate the close proximity of their neighbours far better than people in Norway. However, a definite side effect of intrusion into our personal space is a dehumanisation of the other person, the intruder: our self-defence mechanism kicks in and we start to regard the intruder, as inanimate. This dehumanisation has obvious social consequences: if the other person is not human, he or she does not qualify to be treated as human.
A human doing his best to stay away from other humans.
Now I’ll be perfectly frank. I’d estimate my ideal personal living space at about 100 square metres, preferably a bit more. In fact, the Guggenheim Museum, minus the furniture, would be ideal for me. This has got nothing to do with my general misanthropy, which is known to be huge, and everything to do with having a bit of space to swing a cat in. Not that swinging a cat is something I tend to do frequently. Given the fact that I’ve lived in 2 major cities – London and Paris – and spent 19 years in the Netherlands (population density an astounding 396 people per square kilometre) you’d be forgiven for assuming that I might be used to living cheek by jowl with my neighbours. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A perfect home for cat-swinging.
And when you consider that Norwegians tend to be mesmerised by large groups of people and speak loudly (to communicate with the other side of the valley) if they speak at all, it’s almost inconceivable that they would wish to cram 7 bedrooms into a space measuring only 130 square metres. Especially in a country with an area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of less than 5 million.
So let’s have bigger homes. Let’s have bathrooms where you can work out and then step straight into the shower. Living rooms that can actually be lived in rather then tolerated. And, while we’re about it, let’s also have huge gardens, to remind us of the rolling savannas of 25,000 years ago. And then we might just be a little more…what was the word?…oh, yes…human.
