When It Comes To New Housing, We Need Quality As Well As Quantity

A basic lack of space in new homes is leading to confusion over the relationship between underoccupation and undersizing.  A housing crisis builds: demand goes up and supply goes down, while a groundswell of liberal voices calls for the development of more than 200,000 new homes a year.  Above all, they say, we just need to build more homes.  But if there's one thing we don't need, it's 200,000 more of the kind of homes we've been building up to now.  A new study carried out by academics at the University of Cambridge analysed 16,000 properties across England and compared them to the basic space standards set out in the London Housing Design Guide. Those working in housing and planning might be able to guess what came next: more than half (55%) fell short on floor space alone and a fifth (21%) were considered too small for comfortable habitation for the size of the household. Read more on the Guardian website.