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An illustration of this which I happened to be looking at: Average home sizes (sq ft, sq m): Australia 2,303 214 New Zealand 2,174 202 United Sta

An illustration of this which I happened to be looking at: Average home sizes (sq ft, sq m): Australia 2,303 214 New Zealand 2,174 202 United States 2,164 201 Canada 1,948 181 UK 818 76 Edit: formatting.

bombcar 2y ago
Apparently, the UK size is roughly what the average US house size was in 1790 - though it really didn't start to grow much until the 1900s.
davisoneee 2y ago
...that's not really an illustration of that. When you actually consider population and land size, the numbers don't seem so strange. Just looking at wikipedia population and area (and a very simple scaling) % area housing = area_house * population So... aus 0.08% nz 0.42% us 1.82% can 0.08% uk 2.14% The UK has comparably _more_ of it's land covered with housing than the other nations mentioned. When you consider population density, UK >> US >> NZ > Canada > Australia. You would _expect_ countries with much more wide open space to have bigger homes, and the other nations homes aren't so big _when you consider their countries' size and population_.
- daz0007 2y ago
  it's not only the area of land but the material's used in the housing, as well as when the housing where built. The stagnation in other countries housing markets like the us is interesting, I don't know the answer but have they ever had social housing on the scale of the uk?
dzonga 2y ago
a simple metric is energy consumption look at this chat - courtesy of perpexity. United States 11,855 KWH China 5,474 Germany 6,483 Australia 7,000 (approximate based on recent trends) Singapore 9,000 (approximate based on recent trends) United Kingdom 4,701 Energy consumption of the uK is that of a poor developing country. people will cite the size of uk homes due to lack of land as if you can't build houses with a lot of sq/ft - sq/m vertically ? the only thing keeping uk afloat at the moment is the friendly immigration policy. money doesn't move in capital markets but people would rather pump money into property.
- tuatoru 2y ago
  As someone said recently, abundant energy is the basis of prosperity. There are no poor countries that use a lot of energy per capita, and no rich countries that use little. (China is a "middle income" country, not a poor one.) https://energyforgrowth.org/article/how-does-energy-impact-economic-growth-an-overview-of-the-evidence/ https://energyforgrowth.org/article/how-does-energy-impact-e...

bombcar 2y ago

Apparently, the UK size is roughly what the average US house size was in 1790 - though it really didn't start to grow much until the 1900s.

davisoneee 2y ago

...that's not really an illustration of that. When you actually consider population and land size, the numbers don't seem so strange. Just looking at wikipedia population and area (and a very simple scaling) % area housing = area_house * population So... aus 0.08% nz 0.42% us 1.82% can 0.08% uk 2.14% The UK has comparably _more_ of it's land covered with housing than the other nations mentioned. When you consider population density, UK >> US >> NZ > Canada > Australia. You would _expect_ countries with much more wide open space to have bigger homes, and the other nations homes aren't so big _when you consider their countries' size and population_.

daz0007 2y ago
it's not only the area of land but the material's used in the housing, as well as when the housing where built. The stagnation in other countries housing markets like the us is interesting, I don't know the answer but have they ever had social housing on the scale of the uk?

dzonga 2y ago

a simple metric is energy consumption look at this chat - courtesy of perpexity. United States 11,855 KWH China 5,474 Germany 6,483 Australia 7,000 (approximate based on recent trends) Singapore 9,000 (approximate based on recent trends) United Kingdom 4,701 Energy consumption of the uK is that of a poor developing country. people will cite the size of uk homes due to lack of land as if you can't build houses with a lot of sq/ft - sq/m vertically ? the only thing keeping uk afloat at the moment is the friendly immigration policy. money doesn't move in capital markets but people would rather pump money into property.

tuatoru 2y ago
As someone said recently, abundant energy is the basis of prosperity. There are no poor countries that use a lot of energy per capita, and no rich countries that use little. (China is a "middle income" country, not a poor one.) https://energyforgrowth.org/article/how-does-energy-impact-economic-growth-an-overview-of-the-evidence/ https://energyforgrowth.org/article/how-does-energy-impact-e...