Over the past decade at least, it’s been easy to view housing circumstances in Hong Kong as otherworldly. There, a combination of limited land and total devotion to free enterprise have historically produced both a need for cheap labour (provided by poorer citizens) as well as the inevitable necessity to house them nearby to their essential employment1.
Viewing the strange urban creation that is Hong Kong, sometime winner of ‘most expensive city in the world’ honours, its circumstances and faintly alien social framework make it easy for a distant viewer to wipe their brow and heave a sigh of relief. Such tiny home living surely must be an oriental aberration, not to be found in a more civilized society!
To give a lie to a socially superior presumption, ‘first world’ supposedly more civilized societies have, over the last half decade, seen a proliferation of ‘tiny homes.’ These — three tatami mats or even less — are being offered as ‘temporary’ housing for people who are homeless. Temporary? Alas, the supply of ‘permanent’ housing to move to from the ‘temporary’ home is minuscule at best, and commonly non-existent.
So we witness an apparently inevitable reality: three tatami mat living is, by ‘temporary’ stealth, creeping towards permanence in societies around the world.
The hugely crowded city of Tokyo, Japan now offers tiny living by traditional tatami mat measurement. Worth a look by everyone? After all, with the way housing costs are trending, you may one day be grateful for so much tatami mat space in New York, or Toronto, or London. Read more in The Guardian: You could cook while on the toilet: a night in one of Tokyo’s micro-apartments
