Solo dwellers and domestic spatial needs in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland

Anne Tervo,Jukka Hirvonen

doi:10.1080/02673037.2019.1652251

Abstract

Solo dwellers’ housing issues have received little attention in housing studies. This article addresses their domestic spatial needs in the context of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (HMA) where dwelling sizes have decreased rapidly. A critical stance towards the trend of constructing small one-room apartments and related norm deregulation is based on the notion that dwellings should be at least 50 m2 and contain more than one room in order to overcome the shortage of space experienced by solo dwellers (N = 1453). Emphasizing the perspective of housing design, the findings provide insights into floor plan design by focussing on apartment types and sizes in relation to kitchen types and the experienced shortage of space. All in all, the article demonstrates that solo dwellers’ domestic spatial needs are more diverse than expected based on their household size and related public discussion on urban housing.

Highlights

Decreasing household sizes have introduced a new level to urban housing issues in developed societies (Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000; Thorns, 2002)
In order to better understand what kind of dwellings solo dwellers would like to have, this paper explores their perception towards fixed dwelling features such as apartment types and sizes as well as kitchen types connected with floor plan design in the case of similar apartment types1 (Tervo & Lilius, 2017)
This paper has examined solo dwellers’ spatial needs and the experienced shortage of space highlighting the perspective of urban housing design

Summary

Introduction

Decreasing household sizes have introduced a new level to urban housing issues in developed societies (Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000; Thorns, 2002). The findings are based on four questions and one claim sentence, which considered the ideal number of habitable rooms (i.e., apartment type) and apartment size needed in correspondence to respondents’ current homes, favored kitchen type, use of ten extra square meters in relation to the respondents’ current home, and the experience of shortage of space. Focusing again on both ends of the age spectrum, the ideal apartment size for the youngest solo respondents is on average 62.7 m2 and 9.2 m2 more than that for the oldest solo respondents (Table 1) These findings indicate that the number of rooms and square meters are not necessarily comparable when defining the ideal apartment types and sizes. The findings indicate that there may be a demand for apartments with different sizes in each apartment type category

Number of rooms

Insights into Floorplans

Findings

Discussion and Conclusions