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It’s been my experience that the areas most often referred to as “bad parts of town” are the areas with the most people squeezed in without consideration for anything else. Small homes can be fine of there are other outlets in the area such as community centers, parks, libraries, stores, etc. Without those you just concentrate too much human suffering in one area.

There’s lots of architectural guidance, building codes, etc. normally linked to number of people in the household. But it’s all pretty damn relative, both culturally and individually.

When I lived in the city, I was pretty comfortable with a small appartment, because I spent a lot of time out of my home in cultural spaces. Now I live in the country, and in city-terms our house is gigantic for just the two of us. Netherthless, we’re continuing to convert old out buildings into more space because the demands on our home are much higher and we have lots of unused space.

Not only do we live there, but we’ve got jobs that involve a lot of remote working, and it’s also a building site/workshop as we renovate and make our own fixtures and furniture. Plus, because it’s more remote, we want guest bedrooms and extra space so that guests can come and stay for a while without feeling cramped. Then we’ve got animals, who bring their own clutter, and we also want to create a guesthouse that we can rent to tourists. Even without those extra requirements, we choose to sleep in adjacent, but seperate, bedrooms because we have sleep issues. And I know that is a crazy luxury that we wouldn’t have been able to afford in the city, but when space is cheap, there’s no real reason not to.

I know that my example is pretty extreme, but everyone’s needs are different. I have friends who basically live in one room and love that, because everything is within easy reach and they don’t want to have guests. But I know it would be depressing and claustrophobic for others. Sharing an apartment with four adult strangers is a different experience from a family home with four children.

I think there can be rules (you can’t claim something is a bedroom if it’s smaller than 6sqm) but there isn’t a one size fits all solution.

My wife and I bought our first house before we had kids. It was ~1000sqft, 3 beds 1 bath and perfect for just us. Granted we had 2 dogs and 5 cats so it felt hectic at times, but with a nice little back yard the dogs we’re much more calm.

After having 2 kids it started feeling cramped, 100% doable, but as someone who works from home I was dying for more space. The layout was also awful, it seemed like one of the previous owners tried to make it “open concept” and didn’t think it through, so there was nowhere you could go to get an ounce of privacy aside from the bedrooms which were 8x8 all around.

We recently moved to a 1900sqft house and its absolutely great. I can take work calls while everyone’s yelling in the living room and its not a bother. My toddler can play whole the baby’s napping without waking him up. The bedrooms are big with honestly huge closets. Before I was sharing a closet with my toddler and mostly living out of hampers, now he has a closet that his bed could fit in.

My only desire is am extra to for guest if anyone needed to stay with us for a while. I’m hoping to fix up the basement soon and make it a nice 900sqft guest house type thing.

I think we have more space than we necessarily need now, but that makes me happy.

Overcreowding is probably the word you are searching for. There are some studies but the idea is usually a refrence of this many square mts/ft per person and how kitchen and bathroom have to be if shared. WHO has it’s own and many governments too. There is a cultural factor too for example Japanese ppl is much more accustomed to smaller spaces rather than US ppl living in suburbs.

When we had 6 kids living with us, 2500 sq feet felt luxurious. Two kids in each bedroom upstairs, and we had a bedroom downstairs, there were 6 bathrooms in that house (5 full one just a toilet and sink) and it did feel big.

When we had 4 kids in a 1300 sq foot house, it was plenty enough room but there was only one bathroom and that made it more difficult.

We had 2 in a 1300 with 2 bathrooms AND a garage for storage and workout room, that worked fine, but the bedrooms were big and living room tiny, that is not ideal, it needed to be arranged differently.

Now we have 2 kids in an 1800 sq feet house and I would say this is ideal, it’s arranged so the kids have their own living room/gaming room outside of their small bedrooms, and we have a bedroom on the other side of the house where the kitchen and main living room are. Also a great big back deck that can be accessed from our bedroom and that main living room, which adds enough capacity we can have big parties. 2.5 bathrooms, 3.5 would be better. When these last 2 kids move out it will STILL be ideal, an office, a guest room or workout room, a den, we could even move the TV out of the living room then if we wanted.

So I think how it’s arranged makes a difference but family of 4 in 1800sq ft feels like we have a big house to me.

Short answer. No.

People vary too much, and have wildly different ideas about how much is ‘enough.’

This line is from a novel, but there’s a lot of truth in it. “If I was on my own, I could live in a pup tent. When I have to live with one other person I need a 30 room mansion.”

Other people would be happy in a small place if they had access to different things; parks, gyms; museums; libraries; schools.

And, a world where all the hosues were similar size would look pretty boring.

As a single person, my 480ft²/45m² studio apartments is basically the exact space I need.

I think it greatly depends on how big the family is. If someone has six kids, they need rooms for those kids, and that would be too much for people with two or fewer kids. Even if you take away the dumb “girls need their own private locking space with two doors between them and any male in the house” rules.

Going to the other extreme, I’ve heard of prisons shut down and renovated as affordable housing. I think if you were going to make prison cells into housing for free people though, you would have to give those people control of the doors, and while I suppose a prison probably has a centralised location to cook for the entire population, you would probably want more local cooking on each housing unit, if it’s a big one with more than one. And the doors would be opened by the residents, I’m thinking with RFID or NFC cards. You can run power to each room through the water closets, i.e. where the plumbing goes. But none of these would be good for families, only singles. This would be a better solution for homeless people who don’t have anyone, and possibly for those who need help, as you could have social services, mental health type people go there instead of guards, to care for the people and their needs. Yes, almost like an insane asylum, but you give the residents full agency. No lockdowns or anything like that. Just people with basic living conditions being helped as needed, with conditions that are livable but would make anyone want to seek something better outside, anything, even if it’s just a single-wide trailer in tornado alley, just for the room and the space.

Hugely subjective and you’re right on cultural differences coming into play, as well as access to/existence of common areas. Are bathrooms communal? Are patios/balconies/outdoor spaces? Are there areas to congregate/socialize/eat nearby? This affects how much internal space is needed.

It becomes more of an urban planning, zoning, and building code exercise than one to be solved by developers, who will try to maximize revenue on any given plot when given the chance. The problem for developers (and accessible housing) is margin: unless gov heavily subsidizes low end residential, they will prefer to build more lucrative luxury apartments.

For contentedness, area per occupant would be the best bet. I’d expect an attempt to target median family sizes and working from there. Global household average is around 3.5 people.

Somewhere in the 20-55 square meter range per occupant is likely the sweet spot, depending on the above factors. You can get away with less space with more amenities nearby.

Mexico has “mini-casas” of ~325 square feet to provide housing for their working poor which residents had challenges with. Paris and Hong Kong have tiny apartments around 10 square meters, where residents spend a significant amount of time outside the home. But these were developer limitations, mostly, to cram as many units into a footprint as possible - not taking occupant satisfaction into account…

I think there’s reasonable high and low bounds as you say, but i think there’s a lot of factors as others have said. Income, culture, and cost of living are big factors. If you live in the USA and basically need to do a weekly shop at Costco for a family of 4 you need a lot more space than a single person who is able to eat out for nearly every meal in a dense urban area with affordable and moderately healthy street food (so a tiny hot plate suffices as a kitchen). But a family of 4 living in an urban area with lots of shops might do the groceries on the way home from work several times a week and then the refrigerator doesn’t need to be enormous.

Lifestyle plays into it as well. If you have a serious hobby you need space for it - whether it’s sewing, machining, fitness, or gaming. If you live on a rural property, you need space to keep chickens and a lawn tractor and a lot more necessities than someone in a flat in London.

Our house is ~100 m², but legally that doesn’t count the cellar or finished attic. It feels small for a family of five. So maybe 20m² as a minimum, even counting communal bathrooms and galley and laundry.

I don’t think I’m leaning too far out this window when I say: no, there isn’t an optimal size. It depends on so many factors. How many people? Is this urban or rural? What’s there neighborhood like? Facilities, public transport, doctors, grocery stores, etc.? What’s the crime rate like? How long is the commute to work? People have different priorities and make different choices as a result.

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I think as a single person a LK studio setup is good. Married might bump it up to 1LK. Every kid after can add a bedroom and and the dining area, so one kid 2LDK, two kids 3LDK. Bathrooms is a different story depending on where you live.