Rich and Strange Aeons

back in Vancouver

2022-04-01T23:06:53Z

Just Lyfted this morning back to 2km east of where I was, further east of Chinatown. It's a sizable-feeling 1BR place, a suite carved out of a house similar to my Richmond one where I just was. Downside: more footsteps above, concrete floor (there's radiant heat, but I have to ask it on, and I'm leery of the calibration.) Upside: no living room adjacent mine, and the neighborhood is soooo much more urban, I feel alive again! Italian market 1-2 minutes away, Chinese-ish supermarket 9 minutes away, Vietnamese market, bakery (way overpriced), restaurants... *and* it's quiet, I'm two streets south of Hastings, on Ferndale, which has planters in the intersections so you've got Dutch modal filtering: foot traffic can go through, cars have two-way access but *cannot* go in straight lines for more than a block. Also the setbacks are much shorter, *and* the front yards are more interesting...

Also downside, no laundry, I'll have to use a laundromat or go back to my 'shower laundry'. Also, no bathtub. There's enough space for one, but it's built as a step-in shower area. ;^^

Size! In meters, approximate with measuring tape: bathroom 2x2, kitchen 4x3 (wall to wall, so including counter/stove area), bedroom 3x3, living room 3x3. 34 m2. Sanity check: bathroom + kitchen length must equal living room + bed room lengths: 2+4 = 3+3, check. Overall, place should be around 6x6=36 m2... close enough. I've got a queen sized bed with small side dressers, a short couch, a low living room table, a 4-seat dining table in the kitchen... for a traveler, it's not cramped at all; if I were living here with hundreds of books, it'd be a bit more compact... doable, especially if you removed the big TV taking up one of the living room walls.

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parking space microapartments

2019-10-29T09:48:57Z

I guess I have a new temporary hobby, designing tiny spaces to live in.

I myself find it hard to believe that someone could live in the area of a parking space. I think part of that is that I visualize "parking" as a (compact) car in a curbside parking space, not a fully demarcated space that can take a full sized van or pickup truck. But anyway, let's do the math.

Small parking spaces are around 12 m2. A shower stall and toilet area each take around 1 m2 or less. A kitchenette area needs 2 m2 or less. That leaves 8 m2 to live in; Caltech freshman singles were 6 m2. A twin mattress is around 2 m2, and with the right furniture you get storage or even a desk under that. (Caltech had a neat bunk bed variant, where the top bunk was a bed and the bottom bunk was a solid piece of wood for a matress-sized desk. And you still get space to put drawers beneath, of course.)

This is hard mode. Standard US parking lot spaces are 15 m2 (8.5x19 ft). Sharing bathrooms helps a bit: 2 2x6 parking spaces could share 2x2 m2 of bathroom, leaving 2x5 m2 of housing on each side. Going to a second story obviously helps immensely.

[Data: US compact parking spaces are 8x16 feet, 11.89 m2. I've been pacing out curbside parking; 2x6 is a common result. Parallel parking spaces are *supposed* to be 2.1-2.4m wide, and 6.1-7.9 m long, for 13-19 m2, though if you don't have paint and parking meters then compact cars jam themselves in more tightly.

I bought measuring tape and deployed it at my current stay. There's actually a bathtub but one could shower in 2.5*2.5 ft2, 0.58 m2. Toilet area needs 2.5 ft width for comfort, 3 feet or so depth so you're not knees against the wall. 4 stovetop burners fit in 2x2 feet, a sink needs less, a large fridge needs a bit more. That's 1.1 m2 total, but counter space is nice.]

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parking space opportunity cost

2019-10-26T11:26:54Z

Parking spaces vary in size, but a US DOT standard for parking lots is 8.5x19 feet (~2.6x5.8 m), 161.5 square feet, almost exactly 15 square meters. That's in the low range of microapartments (Wiki says 150-350 feet, 14-32 m2) or tiny houses (100-400 feet2.) Squeeze in some stairs (or ladder, anyway) and you can double the space with two stories, into the high end of the range.

And that's just the parking space itself, not the total area per space in a parking lot, though of course people need space to move around in as well.

Non-compact parking spaces generally accommodate vans, generally 1.8-2.1 m wide and 4.8-6.2 m long. Vans can be turned into campervans or "Class B" motorhomes.

Compact spaces are 8x16 feet, 128 feet2 or 11.89 m2.

Parallel parking spaces likewise vary, but ranges seem to be 2.1-2.4 m wide and 6.1-7.9 m long, for an area of 13-19 m2.

So the opportunity cost of a parking space is a home -- a little room/studio for one person, or a decent small home for a person or couple. In current high value cities, that would be easily worth $600/month (new SROs in Seattle were going for that). With campervans and somewhere nearby to go to change water/waste/batteries, a parking space can be someone's home even without direct plumbing and power hookups, easily worth, oh, $100/month in land rent. Vs. a residential parking permit of $40/year (Somerville) or $25 (Cambridge, last I checked) or $0 (Boston, for as many cars as you register.)

Or of course you can group two or three spaces together to get something more like a conventionally sized home that would easily rent for $1000/month or more.

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