Apartment

An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian

English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real
estate) that occupies only part of a building, generally on a single
storey. There are many names for these overall buildings, see below.
The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from
large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is
legally a condominium (strata title or commonhold), to tenants
renting from a private landlord (see leasehold estate).
Apartments facing Central Park in
Midtown Manhattan, New York City
Contents
Terminology
"Flat" vs "apartment"
By housing tenure
By size of the unit
By size of the building
By country
Types and characteristics
Studio apartment Apartments in Madrid, Spain
Garden apartment (US)
Garden flat (UK)
Basement apartment
Secondary suite
Salon apartment
Maisonette
One dwelling with two storeys
Small buildings with a few one-storey dwellings
Loft apartment
Penthouse An apartment complex in Gurgaon,
Communal apartment Haryana, India
Serviced apartment
Facilities
Various
Historical examples
Pre-Columbian Americas
Ancient Rome
Ancient and medieval Egypt
Yemen
Ancient China
Current examples
 England
Scotland
United States
Property classes
Canada
Australia
Yugoslavia
See also
Diverse types of apartments in
References
Minato, Tokyo, Japan
External links

Terminology

"Flat" vs "apartment"

Both words refer to a self-contained residential unit with its own

front door, kitchen, toilet, and bathroom. In some parts of the world,
the word apartment refers to a purpose-built unit in a building,
whereas the word flat means a converted unit in an older building,
usually a big house. In other places the terms are interchangeable.

The term apartment is favored in North America (although in some

cities flat is used for a unit which is part of a house containing two
or three units, typically one to a floor[1]). In the UK, the term A block of flats in Birmingham,
apartment is more usual in professional real estate and architectural England
circles where otherwise the term flat is used commonly, but not
exclusively, for an apartment on a single level (hence a 'flat'
apartment).

In some countries, the word "unit" is a more general term referring to both apartments and rental business
suites. The word 'unit' is generally used only in the context of a specific building; e.g., "This building has
three units" or "I'm going to rent a unit in this building", but not "I'm going to rent a unit somewhere".

Some buildings can be characterized as 'mixed-use buildings', meaning part of the building is for
commercial, business, or office use, usually on the first floor or first couple of floors, and one or more
apartments are found in the rest of the building, usually on the upper floors.

By housing tenure

(Condominium, public housing, owner-occupancy, etc.)

Tenement law refers to the feudal basis of permanent property such as land or rents. It may be found
combined as in "Messuage or Tenement" to encompass all the land, buildings and other assets of a property.

In the United States, some apartment-dwellers own their units, either as a housing cooperative, in which the
residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in a condominium, whose
residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings
designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment
 denotes a residential unit or
section in a building. In
some locations, particularly
the United States, the word
connotes a rental unit owned
by the building owner, and is
not typically used for a
condominium.

In England and Wales, some

Low-income housing of the St. Housing Development Board flats in
flat owners own shares in the
James Town neighborhood in Punggol, Singapore
company that owns the
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
freehold of the building as
well as holding the flat under
a lease. This arrangement is commonly known as a "share of
freehold" flat. The freehold company has the right to collect annual ground rents from each of the flat
owners in the building. The freeholder can also develop or sell the building, subject to the usual planning
and restrictions that might apply. This situation does not happen in Scotland, where long leasehold of
residential property was formerly unusual, and is now impossible.[2]

By size of the unit

Bachelor apartment, one-bedroom, etc.; see below.

By size of the building

Apartment buildings are

multi-story buildings where
three or more residences are
contained within one
structure. Such a building
may be called an apartment
building, apartment
A low-rise building of flats above complex, flat complex, block
shops in Fátima, Portugal of flats, tower block, high-
High-rise buildings in the English Bay
rise or, occasionally,
area of Vancouver, British Columbia,
mansion block (in British Canada
English), especially if it consists of many apartments for rent. A
high-rise apartment building is commonly referred to as a residential
tower, apartment tower, or block of flats in Australia.

A high-rise building is defined by its height differently in various jurisdictions. It may be only residential, in
which case it might also be called a tower block, or it might include other functions such as hotel, offices, or
shops. There is no clear difference between a tower block and a skyscraper, although a building with fifty or
more stories is generally considered a skyscraper.[3] High-rise buildings became possible with the invention
of the elevator (lift) and cheaper, more abundant building materials. Their structural system usually is made
of reinforced concrete and steel.

A low-rise building and mid-rise buildings have fewer storeys, but the limits are not always clear. Emporis
defines a low-rise as "an enclosed structure below 35 metres [115 feet] which is divided into regular floor
levels."[4] The city of Toronto defines a mid-rise as a building between 4 and 12 stories.[5]
By country

In American English, the distinction between rental apartments and condominiums is that while rental
buildings are owned by a single entity and rented out to many, condominiums are owned individually, while
their owners still pay a monthly or yearly fee for building upkeep. Condominiums are often leased by their
owner as rental apartments. A third alternative, the cooperative apartment building (or "co-op"), acts as a
corporation with all of the tenants as shareholders of the building. Tenants in cooperative buildings do not
own their apartment, but instead own a proportional number of shares of the entire cooperative. As in
condominiums, cooperators pay a monthly fee for building upkeep. Co-ops are common in cities such as
New York, and have gained some popularity in other larger urban areas in the U.S.

In British English the usual word is "flat", but apartment is used by property developers to denote expensive
'flats' in exclusive and expensive residential areas in, for example, parts of London such as Belgravia and
Hampstead. In Scotland, it is called a block of flats or, if it is a traditional sandstone building, a tenement, a
term which has a negative connotation elsewhere.

In India, the word flat is used to refer to multi-storey dwellings that have lifts.[6]

Australian English and New Zealand English traditionally used the term flat (although it also applies to any
rental property), and more recently also use the terms unit or apartment. In Australia, a 'unit' refers to flats,
apartments or even semi-detached houses. In Australia, the terms "unit", "flat" and "apartment" are largely
used interchangeably. Newer high-rise buildings are more often marketed as "apartments", as the term
"flats" carries colloquial connotations. The term condominium or condo is rarely used in Australia despite
attempts by developers to market it.

In South African English, an apartment is usually a single level rental area that is a part of a larger building
and can be entered from inside the building through a separate door leading off either a wind tunnel or
entrance hall/lobby that is shared with other occupants of the building.

In Malaysian English, flat often denotes a housing block of two rooms with walk-up, no lift, without
facilities, typically five storeys tall, and with outdoor parking space,[7] while apartment is more generic and
may also include luxury condominiums.

In Japanese English loanwords (Wasei-eigo), the term apartment (apaato) is used for lower-income housing
and mansion (manshon) is used for high-end apartments; but both terms refer to what English-speakers
regard as an apartment (or condominium) and not the level of luxury of a mansion in English parlance. See
Housing in Japan. Danchi is the Japanese word for a large cluster of apartment buildings of a particular style
and design, typically built as public housing by government authorities.

Types and characteristics

Studio apartment

The smallest self-contained apartments are referred to as studio, efficiency or bachelor apartments in the US,
or studio flat in the UK. These units usually consist of a large single main room which acts as the living
room, dining room and bedroom combined and usually also includes kitchen facilities, with a separate
bathroom. In Korea, the term "one room" (wonroom) refers to a studio apartment.[8]

A bedsit is a UK variant on single room accommodation: a bed-sitting room, probably without cooking
facilities, with a shared bathroom. A bedsit is not self-contained and so is not an apartment or flat as this
article uses the terms; it forms part of what the UK government calls a House in multiple occupation.[9]
Garden apartment (US)

Merriam-Webster defines a garden apartment in American English

as "a multiple-unit low-rise dwelling having considerable lawn or
garden space"[10] The apartment buildings are often arranged around
courtyards that are open at one end. Such a garden apartment shares
some characteristics of a townhouse: each apartment has its own
building entrance, or shares that entrance via a staircase and lobby
that adjoins other units immediately above and/or below it. Unlike a
townhouse, each apartment occupies only one level. Such garden Studio apartment in Sherbrooke,
apartment buildings are almost never more than three stories high, Quebec, Canada, showing double
since they typically lack elevators. However, the first "garden bed, kitchenette, and entrance way
apartment" buildings in New York, USA, built in the early 1900s, with sliding door to closet
were constructed five stories high.[11][12] Some garden apartment
buildings place a one-car garage under each apartment. The interior
grounds are often landscaped.

Garden flat (UK)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the use of "garden flat" in

British English as "a basement or ground-floor flat with a view of
and access to a garden or lawn", although its citations acknowledge
that the reference to a garden may be illusory. "Garden flat" can
serve simply as a euphemism for a basement. The large Georgian or
Victorian townhouse was built with an excavated subterranean space
around its front known as an area, often surrounded by cast iron
railings. This lowest floor housed the kitchen, the main place of
work for the servants, with a "tradesman's entrance" via the area
Georgian terraced townhouses. The
stairs. This "lower ground floor" (another euphemism) has proven
black railings enclose the basement
ideal for conversion to a self-contained "garden flat". One American
areas, which in the twentieth century
term for this arrangement is an English basement. were converted to garden flats.

Basement apartment

Generally on the lowest floor of a building.

Secondary suite

When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of the owner's family member, the self-contained
dwelling may be known as an "in-law apartment", "annexe", or "granny flat", though these (sometimes
illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than the landlord's relative. In Canada
these are commonly located below the main house and are therefore "basement suites". Another term is an
"accessory dwelling unit", which may be part of the main house, or a free-standing structure in its grounds.

Salon apartment

Salon apartment is a term linked to the exclusive apartments built as part of multi-family houses in Belgrade
and in certain towns in Yugoslavia in the first decades of the 20th century.[13] The structure of the
apartments included centrally located anteroom with a combined function of the dining room and one or
more salon areas. Most of these apartments were built in Belgrade (Serbia), along with the first examples of
apartments popularly named 'salon apartments', with the concept of spatial and functional organization later
spreading to other larger urban centers in Yugoslavia.[14]

Maisonette

Maisonette (a corruption of maisonnette, French for "little house") has no strict definition, but the OED
suggests "a part of a residential building which is occupied separately, usually on more than one floor and
having its own outside entrance." It differs from a flat in having, usually, more than one floor, with a
staircase internal to the dwelling leading from the entrance floor to the upper (or, in some cases, lower) other
floor. This is a very common arrangement in much post-war British public housing, serving both to reduce
costs by reducing the amount of space given to access corridors and to emulate the 'traditional' two-storey
terrace house to which many of the residents would have been accustomed.

A maisonette could encompass Tyneside flats, pairs of single-storey flats within a two-storey terrace. Their
distinctive feature is their use of two separate front doors onto the street, each door leading to a single
flat.[15] "Maisonette" could also stretch to cottage flats, also known as 'four-in-a-block flats', a style of
housing common in Scotland.

One dwelling with two storeys

The vast majority of apartments are on one level, hence "flat". Some,
however, have two storeys, joined internally by stairs, just as many
houses do. One term for this is "maisonette", as above. Some public
housing in the United Kingdom was designed as scissor section flats.
On a grander level, penthouses may have more than one storey, to
emphasise the idea of space and luxury. Plan of scissor flats.

Two storey units in new construction are sometimes referred to as

"townhouses".

Small buildings with a few one-storey dwellings

"Duplex" refers to two

separate units with a
common demising wall or
floor-ceiling assembly.

Duplex description can be

different depending on the
part of the US, but generally
has two to four dwellings
Dingbat MaryJane with a door for each and A triple-decker in New England.
usually two front doors close
together but separate -
referred to as 'duplex' indicating the number of units, not the number of floors, as in some areas of the
country they are often only one story. The term duplex is largely unknown in the UK; there, buildings
containing two dwellings with a common vertical wall are known as semi-detached or just a semi (the i
pronounced "ee" not "eye"), but the dwellings are usually two storeys (excluding any use of the roof space).
This form of construction is very common, and built as such rather than a later conversion.
In the United States, regional forms have developed, see vernacular architecture. In Milwaukee, a Polish flat
or "raised cottage" is an existing small house that has been lifted up to accommodate the creation of a
basement floor housing a separate apartment, then set down again, thus becoming a modest pair of
dwellings.[16] In the Sun Belt, boxy small apartment buildings called dingbats, often with carports below,
sprang up from the 1950s.

Groups of more than two units have corresponding names (Triplex, etc.). Those buildings that have a third
storey are known as triplexes. See Three-decker (house). Again, the term triplex is virtually unknown in the
UK.

Loft apartment

This type of apartment developed in North America during the

middle of the 20th century. The term initially described a living
space created within a former industrial building, usually 19th
century. These large apartments found favor with artists and
musicians wanting accommodation in large cities (New York for
example) and is related to unused buildings in the decaying parts of
such cities being occupied illegally by people squatting.

These loft apartments were usually located in former highrise The interior of a loft conversion in
warehouses and factories left vacant after town planning rules and Chicago
economic conditions in the mid 20th century changed. The resulting
apartments created a new bohemian lifestyle and are arranged in a
completely different way from most urban living spaces, often including workshops and art studio spaces.
As the supply of old buildings of a suitable nature has dried up, developers have responded by constructing
new buildings in the same aesthetic with varying degrees of success.

An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly called a loft,

although some modern lofts are built by design.

Penthouse

An apartment located on the top floor of a high-rise apartment building.

Communal apartment

In Russia, a communal apartment («коммуналка») is a room with a shared kitchen and bath. A typical
arrangement is a cluster of five or so room-apartments with a common kitchen and bathroom and separate
front doors, occupying a floor in a pre-Revolutionary mansion. Traditionally a room is owned by the
government and assigned to a family on a semi-permanent basis.[17]

Serviced apartment

A "serviced apartment" is any size space for residential living which includes regular maid and cleaning
services provided by the rental agent. Serviced apartments or serviced flats developed in the early part of the
20th century and were briefly fashionable in the 1920s and 30s. They are intended to combine the best
features of luxury and self-contained apartments, often being an
adjunct of a hotel. Like guests semi-permanently installed in a
luxury hotel, residents could enjoy the additional facilities such as
house keeping, laundry, catering and other services if and when
desired.

A feature of these apartment blocks was quite glamorous interiors

with lavish bathrooms but no kitchen or laundry spaces in each flat.
This style of living became very fashionable as many upper-class
Serviced apartment, Mumbai, India
people found they could not afford as many live-in staff after the
First World War and revelled in a "lock-up and leave" life style that
serviced apartment hotels supplied. Some buildings have been
subsequently renovated with standard facilities in each apartment, but serviced apartment hotel complexes
continue to be constructed. Recently a number of hotels have supplemented their traditional business model
with serviced apartment wings, creating privately owned areas within their buildings - either freehold or
leasehold.

Facilities

Apartments may be available for rent furnished, with furniture, or

unfurnished into which a tenant moves in with their own furniture.
Serviced apartments, intended to be convenient for shorter stays,
include soft furnishings and kitchen utensils, and maid service.

Laundry facilities may reside in a common area accessible to all

building tenants, or each apartment may have its own facilities.
Laundry Room
Depending on when the building was built and its design, utilities
such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all of the
apartments, or separate for each apartment and billed separately to
each tenant. (Many areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially
if a pool is on the premises.) Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in apartments.
Telephone service is optional and is almost always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable
television and similar amenities also cost extra. Parking space(s), air conditioning, and extra storage space
may or may not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of residents
in each apartment.

On or around the ground floor of the apartment building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a
location accessible to the public and, thus, to the mail carrier. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with
individual keys to it. Some very large apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the
carrier and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders,
a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) may be available for each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings
such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, rubbish is often disposed of in trash containers similar to those
used at houses. In larger buildings, rubbish is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For
cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding smoking or
keeping pets in an apartment.

Various

In more urban areas, apartments close to the downtown area have the benefits of proximity to jobs and/or
public transportation. However, prices per square foot are often much higher than in suburban areas.
Moving up from studio flats are one-bedroom apartments, in which a
bedroom is separate from the rest of the apartment, followed by two-
bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. apartments. (Apartments with more
than three bedrooms are rare.)

Small apartments often have only one entrance. Large apartments

often have two entrances, perhaps a door in the front and another in
the back, or from an underground or otherwise attached parking
structure. Depending on the building design, the entrance doors may
be connected directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such Mid-rise One-plus-five style
as a hallway or a lobby. apartment buildings in Austin, Texas.

In many American cities, the One-plus-five style of mid-rise, wood-

framed apartments have gained significant popularity following a 2009 revision to the International Building
Code; these buildings typically feature four wood-framed floors above a concrete podium and are popular
with developers due to their high density and relatively lower construction costs.[18]

Historical examples

Pre-Columbian Americas

The Puebloan peoples of what is now the Southwestern United States have constructed large, multi-room
dwellings, some comprising more than 900 rooms, since the 10th century.

In the Classic Period Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan,[19] apartments were not only the standard means of
housing the city's population of over 200,000 inhabitants, but show a remarkably even wealth distribution
for the entire city, even by contemporary standards.[20] Furthermore, the apartments were inhabited by the
general populace as a whole,[21] in contrast to other Pre-Modern socieites, where apartments were limited to
housing the lower class members of the society, as with the somewhat contemporary Roman insulae.

Ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, the insulae (singular insula) were large apartment

buildings where the lower and middle classes of Romans (the plebs)
dwelled. The floor at ground level was used for tabernas, shops and
businesses, with living space on the higher floors. Insulae in Rome
and other imperial cities reached up to ten or more stories,[22] some
with more than 200 stairs.[23] Several emperors, beginning with
Augustus (r. 30 BC-14 AD), attempted to establish limits of 20–25 m
for multi-storey buildings, but met with only limited success.[24][25]
The lower floors were typically occupied by either shops or wealthy
Remains of an Ancient Roman
families, while the upper stories were rented out to the lower apartment block from the early 2nd
classes.[22] Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri indicate that seven-story century AD in Ostia
buildings even existed in provincial towns, such as in 3rd century
Hermopolis in Roman Egypt.[26]

Ancient and medieval Egypt

During the medieval Arabic-Islamic period, the Egyptian capital of Fustat (Old Cairo) housed many high-
rise residential buildings, some seven stories tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. In
the 10th century, Al-Muqaddasi described them as resembling minarets,[27] and stated that the majority of
Fustat's population lived in these multi-storey apartment buildings, each one housing more than 200
people.[28] In the 11th century, Nasir Khusraw described some of these apartment buildings rising up to
fourteen stories, with roof gardens on the top storey complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating
them.[27]

By the 16th century, the current Cairo also had high-rise apartment buildings, where the two lower floors
were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple stories above them were rented out to
tenants.[29]

Yemen

High-rise apartment buildings were built in the Yemeni city of

Shibam in the 16th century. The houses of Shibam are all made out
of mud bricks, but about 500 of them are tower houses, which rise 5
to 11 stories high,[30] with each floor having one or two
apartments.[31][32] Shibam has been called "Manhattan of the
desert".[32] Some of them were over 100 feet (30 m) high, thus being
the tallest mudbrick apartment buildings in the world to this day.[33]
Mudbrick-made tower houses in
Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen
Ancient China

The Hakka people in southern China adopted communal living

structures designed to be easily defensible, in the form of Weilongwu (围龙屋) and Tulou (土楼). The latter
are large, enclosed and fortified earth buildings, between three and five stories high and housing up to eighty
families.

Current examples

England

In London, by the time of the 2011 census, 52 per cent of all homes were flats.[34] Many of these were built
as Georgian or Victorian houses and subsequently divided up. Many others were built as council flats. Many
tower blocks were built after the Second World War. A number of these have been demolished and replaced
with low-rise buildings or housing estates.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the concept of the flat was slow to catch on amongst the British
middle classes, which generally followed the north European standard of single-family houses dating far
back into history. Those who lived in flats were assumed to be lower class and somewhat itinerant, renting
for example a "flat above a shop" as part of a lease agreement for a tradesman. In London and most of
Britain, everyone who could afford to do so occupied an entire house—even if this was a small terraced
house—while the working poor continued to rent rooms in often overcrowded properties, with one (or more)
families per room.

During the last quarter of the 19th century, as wealth increased, ideas began to change. Both urban growth
and the increase in population meant that more imaginative housing concepts would be needed if the middle
and upper classes were to maintain a pied-à-terre in the capital. The traditional London town house was
becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. For bachelors and unmarried women in particular, the idea of
renting a modern mansion flat became increasingly popular.

The first mansion flats in England were:

Albert Mansions, which Philip Flower constructed and James Knowles designed. These flats
were constructed between 1867 and 1870, and were one of the earliest blocks of flats to fill the
vacant spaces of the newly-laid out Victoria Street at the end of the 1860s. Today, only a sliver
of the building remains, next to the Victoria Palace Theatre. Albert Mansions was really 19
separate "houses", each with a staircase serving one flat per floor. Its tenants included Sir
Arthur Sullivan and Lord Alfred Tennyson, whose connections with the developer's family were
long-standing. Philip Flower's son, 1st Baron Cyril Flower Battersea, developed most of the
mansion blocks on Prince of Wales Drive, London.
Albert Hall Mansions, designed by Richard Norman Shaw in 1876. Because this was a new
type of housing, Shaw reduced risks as much as possible; each block was planned as a
separate project, with the building of each part contingent on the successful occupation of
every flat in the previous block. The gamble paid off and was a success.

Scotland

In Scotland, the term "tenement" lacks the pejorative connotations it

carries elsewhere and refers simply to any block of flats sharing a
common central staircase and lacking an elevator, particularly those
constructed before 1919. Tenements were, and continue to be,
inhabited by a wide range of social classes and income groups.
Tenements today are bought by a wide range of social types,
including young professionals, older retirees, and by absentee
landlords, often for rental to students after they leave halls of
residence managed by their institution. The National Trust for
Tenement in Edinburgh, Scotland
Scotland Tenement House (Glasgow) is a historic house museum
(1893)
offering an insight into the lifestyle of tenement dwellers, as it was
generations ago.

During the 19th century tenements became the predominant type of

new housing in Scotland's industrial cities, although they were very
common in the Old Town in Edinburgh from the 15th century, where
they reached ten or eleven storeys and in one case fourteen storeys.
Built of sandstone or granite, Scottish tenements are usually three to
five storeys in height, with two to four flats on each floor. (In
contrast, industrial cities in England tended to favour "back-to-back"
terraces of brick.) Scottish tenements are constructed in terraces, and
each entrance within a block is referred to as a close or stair—both
referring to the shared passageway to the individual flats. Flights of Tenement in Marchmont, Edinburgh,
stairs and landings are generally designated common areas, and built in 1882
residents traditionally took turns to sweep clean the floors and, in
Aberdeen in particular, took turns to make use of shared laundry
facilities in the "back green" (garden or yard). It is now more common for cleaning of the common ways to
be contracted out through a managing agent or "factor".

In Glasgow, where Scotland's highest concentration of tenement dwellings can be found, the urban renewal
projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s brought an end to the city's slums, which had primarily consisted of
older tenements built in the early 19th century in which large extended families would live together in
cramped conditions. They were replaced by high-rise blocks that, within a couple of decades, became
notorious for crime and poverty. The Glasgow Corporation made many efforts to improve the situation, most
successfully with the City Improvement Trust, which cleared the slums of the old town, replacing them with
what they thought of as a traditional high street, which remains an imposing townscape. (The City Halls and
the Cleland Testimonial were part of this scheme.) National government help was given following World
War I when Housing Acts sought to provide "homes fit for heroes". Garden suburb areas, based on English
models, such as Knightswood, were set up. These proved too expensive, so a modern tenement, three stories
high, slate roofed and built of reconstituted stone, was re-introduced and a slum clearance programme
initiated to clear areas such as the Calton and the Garngad.

After World War II, more ambitious plans, known as the Bruce Plan, were made for the complete evacuation
of slums for modern mid-rise housing developments on the outskirts of the city. However, the central
government refused to fund the plans, preferring instead to depopulate the city to a series of New
Towns.[35][36] Again, economic considerations meant that many of the planned "New Town" amenities were
never built in these areas. These housing estates, known as "schemes", came therefore to be widely regarded
as unsuccessful; many, such as Castlemilk, were just dormitories well away from the centre of the city with
no amenities, such as shops and public houses ("deserts with windows", as Billy Connolly once put it).
High-rise living too started off with bright ambition—the Moss Heights, built in the 1950s, are still desirable
—but fell prey to later economic pressure. Many of the later tower blocks were poorly designed and cheaply
built and their anonymity caused some social problems. The demolition of the tower blocks in order to build
modern housing schemes has in some cases led to a re-interpretations of the tenement.

In 1970 a team from Strathclyde University demonstrated that the old tenements had been basically sound,
and could be given new life with replumbing providing modern kitchens and bathrooms.[35] The
Corporation acted on this principle for the first time in 1973 at the Old Swan Corner, Pollokshaws.
Thereafter, Housing Action Areas were set up to renovate so-called slums. Later, privately owned tenements
benefited from government help in "stone cleaning", revealing a honey-coloured sandstone behind the
presumed "grey" tenemental facades. The policy of tenement demolition is now considered to have been
short-sighted, wasteful and largely unsuccessful. Many of Glasgow's worst tenements were refurbished into
desirable accommodation in the 1970s and 1980s[37] and the policy of demolition is considered to have
destroyed fine examples of a "universally admired architectural" style. The Glasgow Housing Association
took ownership of the public housing stock from the city council on 7 March 2003, and has begun a £96
million clearance and demolition programme to clear and demolish many of the high-rise flats.[38]

United States

In 1839, the first New York City tenement was built, and soon
became breeding grounds for outlaws, juvenile delinquents, and
organized crime. Tenements, or their slum landlords, were also
known for their price gouging rent. How the Other Half Lives notes
one tenement district:

Blind Man's Alley bear its name for a reason. Until little
more than a year ago its dark burrows harbored a The Chestnut Hill, an 1899
colony of blind beggars, tenants of a blind landlord, old apartment house in Newton,
Daniel Murphy, whom every child in the ward knows, if Massachusetts
he never heard of the President of the United States.
"Old Dan" made a big fortune--he told me once four
hundred thousand dollars-- out of his alley and the
surrounding tenements, only to grow blind himself in
extreme old age, sharing in the end the chief hardship of
 the wretched beings whose lot he had stubbornly
refused to better that he might increase his wealth. Even
when the Board of Health at last compelled him to
repair and clean up the worst of the old buildings, under
threat of driving out the tenants and locking the doors
behind them, the work was accomplished against the
old man's angry protests. He appeared in person before
the Board to argue his case, and his argument was
characteristic. "I have made my will," he said. "My
monument stands waiting for me in Calvary. I stand on
the very brink of the grave, blind and helpless, and now
(here the pathos of the appeal was swept under in a
burst of angry indignation) do you want me to build and
get skinned, skinned? These people are not fit to live in
a nice house. Let them go where they can, and let my
house stand." In spite of the genuine anguish of the
appeal, it was downright amusing to find that his anger
was provoked less by the anticipated waste of luxury on
his tenants than by distrust of his own kind, the builder. Apartment buildings lining the
He knew intuitively what to expect. The result showed residential stretch of East 57th Street
that Mr. Murphy had gauged his tenants correctly.[39] between First Avenue and Sutton
Place in New York

Many campaigners, such as Upton Sinclair and Jacob Riis, pushed

for reforms in tenement dwellings. As a result, the New York State
Tenement House Act was passed in 1901 to improve the conditions.
More improvements followed. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman
signed the Housing Act of 1949 to clean slums and reconstruct
housing units for the poor.

The Dakota (1884) was one of the first luxury apartment buildings in
New York City. The majority, however, remained tenements.

Some significant developments in architectural design of apartment

Tenement buildings in Manhattan's
buildings came out of the 1950s and '60s. Among them were
Lower East Side
groundbreaking designs in the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
Apartments (1951), New Century Guild (1961), Marina City (1964)
and Lake Point Tower (1968).

In the United States, "tenement" is a label usually applied to the less expensive, more basic rental apartment
buildings in older sections of large cities. Many of these apartment buildings are "walk-ups" without an
elevator, and some have shared bathing facilities, though this is becoming less common. The slang term
"dingbat" is used to describe cheap urban apartment buildings from the 1950s and 1960s with unique and
often wacky façades to differentiate themselves within a full block of apartments. They are often built on
stilts, and with parking underneath.

Property classes

In the United States, properties are typically in one of four property classes, denoted by a letter grade. These
grades are used to help investors and real estate brokers speak a common language so they can understand a
property's characteristics and condition quickly. They are as follows:
Class A properties are luxury units. They are usually less than 10 years old and are often new, upscale
apartment buildings. Average rents are high, and they are generally in desirable geographic areas. White-
collar workers live in them and are usually renters by choice.

Class B properties can be 10 to 25 years old. They are generally well maintained and have a middle class
tenant base of both white- and blue-collar workers. Some are renters by choice, and others by necessity.

Class C properties were built within the last 30 to 40 years. They generally have blue-collar and low- to
moderate-income tenants, and the rents are below market. Many tenants are renters "for life". On the other
hand, some of their tenants are just starting out and are likely to work their way up the rental scale as their
income rises.

Class D properties house many Section 8 (government-subsidized) tenants. They are generally located in
lower socioeconomic areas.

Canada

Apartments were popular in Canada, particularly in urban centres like Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa,
Montreal, and Hamilton in the 1950s to 1970s. By the 1980s, many multi-unit buildings were being
constructed as condominiums instead of apartments—both are now very common. In Toronto and
Vancouver, high-rise apartments and condominiums have been spread around the city, giving even the major
suburbs a skyline. The robustness of the condo markets in Toronto and Vancouver are based on the lack of
land availability.[40] The average capitalization rate in the Greater Toronto Area for Q3 2015 hit its lowest
level in 30 years: in Q3 2015 it stood at 3.75 per cent, down from 4.2 per cent in Q2 2015 and down almost
50 per cent from the 6.3 per cent posted in Q3 2010.[41]

Australia

Apartment buildings in Australia are typically managed by a body

corporate or "owners corporation" in which owners pay a monthly
fee to provide for common maintenance and help cover future repair.
Many apartments are owned through strata title. Due to legislation,
Australian banks will either apply loan to value ratios of over 70 per
cent for strata titles of less than 50 square metres, the big four
Australian banks will not loan at all for strata titles of less than 30 The skyline of the Gold Coast in
square metres. These are usually classified as studio apartments or Queensland is dominated by
student accommodation. Australian legislation enforces a minimum apartments.
2.4 m floor-ceiling height which differentiates apartment buildings
from office buildings.

In Australia, apartment living is a popular lifestyle choice for DINKY, yuppies, university students and
more recently empty nesters, however, rising land values in the big cities in recent years has seen an increase
in families living in apartments. In Melbourne and Sydney apartment living is sometimes not a matter of
choice for the many socially disadvantaged people who often end up in public housing towers.

Australia has a relatively recent history in apartment buildings. Terrace houses were the early response to
density development, though the majority of Australians lived in fully detached houses. Apartments of any
kind were legislated against in the Parliament of Queensland as part of the Undue Subdivision of Land
Prevention Act 1885.
The earliest apartment buildings were in the major cities of Sydney
and Melbourne as the response to fast rising land values–both cities
are home to the two oldest surviving apartment buildings in the
country, Kingsclere in Potts Point, and The Canterbury Flats in St
Kilda. Melbourne Mansions on Collins Street, Melbourne (now
demolished), built in 1906 for mostly wealthy residents is believed
by many to be the earliest. Today the oldest surviving self-contained
apartment buildings are in the St Kilda area including the Fawkner
Mansions (1910), Majestic Mansions (1912 as a boarding house) and
the Canterbury (1914—the oldest surviving buildings contained
flats).[42] Kingsclere, built in 1912 is believed to be the earliest
apartment building in Sydney and still survives.[43]

During the interwar years, apartment building continued in inner

Melbourne (particularly in areas such as St Kilda and South Yarra),
Sydney (particularly in areas such as Potts Point, Darlinghust and
Kings Cross) and in Brisbane (in areas such as New Farm, Fortitude
Valley and Spring Hill).
The Canterbury in St Kilda, Victoria is
Post-World War II, with the Australian Dream apartment buildings one of the earliest surviving
went out of vogue and flats were seen as accommodation only for apartment buildings in Australia.
the poor. Walk-up flats (without a lift) of two to three storeys
however were common in the middle suburbs of cities for lower
income groups.

The main exceptions were Sydney and the Gold Coast, Queensland
where apartment development continued for more than half a
century. In Sydney a limited geography and highly sought after
waterfront views (Sydney Harbour and beaches such as Bondi) made
apartment living socially acceptable. While on the Gold Coast views
of the ocean, proximity to the beach and a large tourist population
made apartments a popular choice. Since the 1960s, these cities
maintained much higher population densities than the rest of
Australia through the acceptance of apartment buildings.

In other cities, apartment building was almost solely restricted to

public housing. Public housing in Australia was common in the
larger cities, particularly in Melbourne (by the Housing Commission
of Victoria) where a huge number of hi-rise housing commission
flats were built between the 1950s and 1970s by successive One Central Park, Sydney, which
governments as part of an urban renewal program. Areas affected features vertical hanging gardens
included Fitzroy, Flemington, Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond and and sustainable green design
Prahran. Similar projects were run in Sydney's lower socio-
economic areas like Redfern.

In the 1980s, modern apartment buildings sprang up in riverside locations in Brisbane (along the Brisbane
River) and Perth (along the Swan River).

In Melbourne, in the 1990s, a trend began for apartment buildings without the requirement of spectacular
views. As a continuation of the gentrification of the inner city, a fashion became New York "loft" style
apartments (see above) and a large stock of old warehouses and old abandoned office buildings in and
around the central business district became the target of developers. The trend of adaptive reuse extended to
conversion of old churches and schools. Similar warehouse conversions and gentrification began in Brisbane
suburbs such as Teneriffe, Queensland and Fortitude Valley and in Sydney in areas such as Ultimo. As
supply of buildings for conversion ran out, reproduction and post modern style apartments followed. The
popularity of these apartments also stimulated a boom in the construction of new hi-rise apartment buildings
in inner cities. This was particularly the case in Melbourne which was fuelled by official planning policies
(Postcode 3000), making the CBD the fastest growing, population wise in the country. Apartment building
in the Melbourne metropolitan area has also escalated with the advent of the Melbourne 2030 planning
policy. Urban renewal areas like Docklands, Southbank, St Kilda Road and Port Melbourne are now
predominantly apartments. There has also been a sharp increase in the number of student apartment
buildings in areas such as Carlton in Melbourne.

Despite their size, other smaller cities including Canberra, Darwin, Townsville, Cairns, Newcastle,
Wollongong, Adelaide and Geelong have begun building apartments in the 2000s.

Today, residential buildings Eureka Tower and Q1 are the tallest in the country. In many cases, apartments in
inner city areas of the major cities can cost much more than much larger houses in the outer suburbs.

Some Australian cities, such as Gold Coast, Queensland, are inhabited predominantly by apartment
dwellers.

Yugoslavia

The development of residential architecture in Yugoslavia during the period of socialism had its peak in the
1960s and 1970s. Significant progress in construction was accompanied by housing research directed
towards finding the optimal urbanistic solutions for the newly formed lifestyle of the socialist society. The
tendency was to "pack" as many residential units as possible into each building, almost up to the limits of
the functional minimum, at the same time with the aim of setting a more humane pattern of living.[44] As a
consequence of these aspirations, the following concepts emerged, making the core of housing research: (a)
apartments with an extended circulation area, (b) apartments with a central sanitary core, (c) apartments
with a circular connection and (d) apartments with extended perspectives ("an enfilade”).[45]

These "socialist" ideas for the organization of living space had a firm base in theoretical research and
underwent the phase of testing in architectural competitions, housing seminars and congresses, which made
them spread over the whole territory of the country.[46]

The process of humanizing housing was not characteristic only in the Yugoslav context; similar ideas also
appeared in other socialist countries of that period, as in the example of pre-fabricated housing construction
in the Soviet Union (Khrushchyovka), Czechoslovakia (Panelák), Hungary (Panelház) and East Germany
(Plattenbau).[47]

See also
Kamienica in Poland
Condominium
List of house types

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External links
The dictionary definition of apartment at Wiktionary
Apartment house (Architecture) (https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/29370) at the
Encyclopædia Britannica

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