It’s the year 2007. The iphone had come out but was still largely unknown. At work, one of my coworkers showed us his brand new cell phone and was very proud of it. “I can store it anywhere!” he said. The statement seemed fairly true, as the phone was about ½” by ¾” by 3”. That’s incredibly small when you compare it to earlier cell-phones, like the giant one Julia Roberts uses on My Best Friend’s Wedding. “All cell phones are going to be like this within a year,” he continued. Some of us nodded our heads, but I had my doubts, mostly because texting had hit it’s stride by then and I didn’t see keys or a screen for texting anywhere on that thing.
Ten years later and his prediction didn’t come true. Instead, phones got bigger again.
This phenomenon of preferred size fluctuating over time isn’t new. I was surprised when watching Peggy Sue Got Married to learn that the same thing happened to TV’s. Peggy Sue tells her friend in 1960 what the future of 1985 looks like and one item on the list is miniature television sets. Then she goes on to say, “Oh, and huge radios. For some reason, everything else gets tiny, but portable radios get enormous.” My whole life, radios have been relatively small and TV’s have only gotten bigger, so it seems strange that at one point people thought making small televisions was a good idea.
Though I have since seen miniature TV’s. They’re those smartphones everyone carries around. Maybe that’s why phones are getting bigger.
Housing has proved to be no exception. For many years, housing trends followed the theme of ‘bigger is better.’ Now the preference is mixed. Tiny houses and micro-apartments have made an imprint on American living. Turn on the TV and you’ll be able to find shows like Tiny House, Big Living or Tiny House Nation. Drive down the streets of a major city and you’ll see building projects going up full of units smaller than 400 square feet. Small is in and there are several factors involved as to why.
Going green - if you’re environmentally conscious, you think about the carbon footprint you leave on the earth. Many owners of tiny homes hope to put a minimal amount of strain on earth’s resources, which can include living off the grid.
Be able to easily move locations - this is another feature that tiny homeowners embrace. The same could be said of those who rent micro-apartments since many of those units are furnished, so they don’t have to move a lot of personal stuff around.
Live alone at an affordable price in a nicer location - that’s three benefits listed right there. Places like San Francisco and New York are known for high rent prices. While having roommates can help bring down your portion of rent, not everyone wants to share living space. Living farther from the city center can also reduce rent cost, but some people want the experience of stepping out their door and having the city at their feet. Micro-units make this possible.
Build more units in a limited space - with a large population, cities are known to be dense, so there isn’t a lot of extra land waiting to be developed. Building micro-units has been one way that cities have tried to catch up with housing shortages.
While I understand why micro-housing is a thing, I’m not sure I could ever join the bandwagon myself. Living in such a small space for longer than a couple of days would feel like the Kevin Bacon scene on She’s Having a Baby where the walls are closing in on him. I don’t think I could handle it.
After contemplating cell phones and televisions, the main question I’m wondering about is how long the micro-housing trend will last. My guess is that it is simply that - a trend. Small living spaces have been banned before by city governments and after a time it might be decided, again, that small spaces aren’t a good thing.
But what do I know? I apparently just really like watching movies, which we all know are 100% accurate, and my age doesn’t give me a ton of historical context to go off of for myself.
