Apartment - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An apartment or flat (in British English

British English

British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

) is a self-contained housing

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

unit (a type of residential real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

) that occupies only part of a building

Building

In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...

. Such a building may be called an apartment building, apartment house (in American English

American English

American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....

), block of flats, tower block
Tower block
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, office tower, apartment block, or block of flats, is a tall building or structure used as a residential and/or office building...

, high-rise or, occasionally mansion block (in British English

British English

British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

), especially if it consists of many apartments for rent

Renting

Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...

. Apartments may be owned by an owner/occupier or rented by tenants (two types of housing tenure

Housing tenure

Housing tenure refers to the financial arrangements under which someone has the right to live in a house or apartment. The most frequent forms are tenancy, in which rent is paid to a landlord, and owner occupancy. Mixed forms of tenure are also possible....

).

The term apartment is favored in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, whereas the term flat is commonly, but not exclusively, used in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

and most Commonwealth

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

countries.

In Malaysian English

Malaysian English

Malaysian English , formally known as Malaysian Standard English , is a form of English used and spoken in Malaysia as a second language...

, flat often denotes a housing block of lesser quality meant for lower-income groups, while apartment is more generic and may also include luxury condominium

Condominium

A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...

s.

In Australian English

Australian English

Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....

the term flat was traditionally used, but the term apartment is also frequently used, as is "home unit", or "unit" for short.

Tenement law

Tenement (law)

A tenement , in law, is anything that is held, rather than owned. This usage is a holdover from feudalism, which still forms the basis of all real-estate law in the English-speaking world, in which the monarch alone owned the allodial title to all the land within his kingdom.Under feudalism, land...

refers to the feudal

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

basis of permanent property such as land or rents. May be found combined as in "Messuage

Messuage

In law, the term messuage equates to a dwelling-house and includes outbuildings, orchard, curtilage or court-yard and garden. At one time messuage supposedly had a more extensive meaning than that conveyed by the words house or site, but such distinction no longer survives.A capital messuage is the...

or Tenement" to encompass all the land, buildings and other assets of a property.

In the US and Canada, some apartment-dwellers own their own apartments, either as co-ops

Cooperative

A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in condominium

Condominium

s, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older house

House

s are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment connotes a residential unit or section in a building. In some locations, particularly the United States, the word denotes a rental unit owned by the building owner, and is not typically used for a condominium.

In the UK, some flat owners own a share in the company that owns the freehold

Fee simple

In English law, a fee simple is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. It is the most common way that real estate is owned in common law countries, and is ordinarily the most complete ownership interest that can be had in real property short of allodial title, which is often reserved...

of the building. This 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.

In some countries the word unit is a more general term referring to both apartments and rental business suite

Suite (address)

A suite is the location of a business within a shopping mall or office building. The suite's number also serves as a sort of address within an address for purposes of mail delivery and pickup.Suite is written in short hand for postal addresses, "Ste"....

s. The word 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." In Australia, a unit refers to flats, apartments or even semi-detached

Semi-detached

Semi-detached housing consists of pairs of houses built side by side as units sharing a party wall and usually in such a way that each house's layout is a mirror image of its twin...

houses. 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 floors, and there are one or more apartments in the rest of the building, usually on the upper floors.

When there is no tenant occupying an apartment, the apartment owner or landlord

Landlord

A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant . When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner...

is said to have a vacancy.
For apartment landlords, each vacancy represents a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the apartment is vacant (i.e., unoccupied). Landlords' objectives are often to minimize the vacancy rate for their units. The owner of the apartment, typically when transferring possession to the occupant, gives him/her the key

Key (lock)

A key is an instrument that is used to operate a lock. A typical key consists of two parts: the blade, which slides into the keyway of the lock and distinguishes between different keys, and the bow, which is left protruding so that torque can be applied by the user. The blade is usually intended to...

to the apartment entrance and any other keys needed, such as a common key to the building or any other common areas and a mailbox key. When the occupant(s) move out, these keys are typically returned to the owner.

Apartment types and characteristics

Apartments can be classified into several types. In North America the typical terms are a studio
Studio apartment
A studio apartment, also known as a studio flat , efficiency apartment or bachelor/bachelorette style apartment, is a small apartment which combines living room, bedroom, and kitchen or kitchenette into a single room...

, efficiency or bachelor apartment (bedsit
Bedsit
A bedsit, also known as a bed-sitting room, is a form of rented accommodation common in Great Britain and Ireland consisting of a single room and shared bathroom; they are part of a legal category of dwellings referred to as Houses in multiple occupation....

in the UK). These all tend to be the smallest apartments with the cheapest rents in a given area. This kind of apartment usually consists mainly of a large room which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom

Bathroom

A bathroom is a room for bathing in containing a bathtub and/or a shower and optionally a toilet, a sink/hand basin/wash basin and possibly also a bidet....

is a separate, smaller room.

Moving up from the bachelors/efficiencies are one-bedroom apartments, in which one bedroom

Bedroom

A bedroom is a private room where people usually sleep for the night or relax during the day.About one third of our lives are spent sleeping and most of the time we are asleep, we are sleeping in a bedroom. To be considered a bedroom the room needs to have bed. Bedrooms can range from really simple...

is separate from the rest of the apartment. Then there are 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. Depending on the building design, the entrance doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway. Depending on location, apartments may be available for rent furnished with furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in with their own furniture.

A garden apartment complex consists of low-rise

Low-rise

A low-rise is a building that is only a few stories tall.There is no universally accepted height requirement for a building to be considered a low-rise...

apartment buildings built with landscaped grounds surrounding them. The apartment buildings are often arranged around courtyards that are open at one end. A garden apartment has some characteristics of a townhouse

Townhouse

A townhouse is the term historically used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and in many other countries to describe a residence of a peer or member of the aristocracy in the capital or major city. Most such figures owned one or more country houses in which they lived for much of the year...

: each apartment has its own building entrance, or just a few apartments share a small foyer or stairwell at each building entrance. Unlike a townhouse, each apartment occupies only one level. Modern garden apartment buildings are never more than three stories high, since they typically don't have elevator

Elevator

An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...

s/lifts. However, the first "garden apartment" buildings in the United States, developed in the early 20th century, were five stories high. Some garden apartment buildings place a one-car garage under each apartment. The grounds are more landscaped than for other modestly scaled apartments.

Another definition of "garden apartment" is a unit built half below grade or at ground level. The implication is that there is a view or direct access to a garden from the apartment, but this is not necessarily the case.

Laundry

Laundry

Laundry is a noun that refers to the act of washing clothing and linens, the place where that washing is done, and/or that which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered...

facilities may be found in a common area accessible to all the tenants in the building, or each apartment may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built and the design of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the apartments in the building or separate for each apartment and billed separately to each tenant (however, 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 telephone

Telephone

The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

s are typically included in apartments. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

and similar amenities are extra also. Parking

Parking

Parking is the act of stopping a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied for more than a brief time. Parking on one or both sides of a road is commonly permitted, though often with restrictions...

space(s), air conditioner, and extra storage

Closet

A closet is a small and enclosed space, a cabinet, or a cupboard in a house or building used for general storage or hanging clothes. A closet for food storage is usually referred to as a pantry...

space may or may not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the apartment building, a series of mailbox

Letter box

A letter box, letterbox, letter plate, letter hole, mail slot, or mailbox is a receptacle for receiving incoming mail at a private residence or business...

es are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and, thus, to the mail carrier

Mail carrier

A mail carrier, mailman, postal carrier, postman, postwoman , postman/postwoman , letter carrier or postie is an employee of the post office or postal service, who delivers mail and parcel post to residences and businesses...

too. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual key

Key (lock)

s to it. Some very large apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer

Buzzer

A buzzer or beeper is an audio signaling device, which may be mechanical, electromechanical, or piezoelectric. Typical uses of buzzers and beepers include alarm devices, timers and confirmation of user input such as a mouse click or keystroke....

(equivalent to a doorbell) for each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, rubbish

Waste

Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...

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

Dumpster (term)

A dumpster is a large steel waste receptacle designed to be emptied into garbage trucks. The word is a genericized trademark of Dumpster, a American brand name for a type of mobile garbage bin...

. For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pet

Pet

A pet is a household animal kept for companionship and a person's enjoyment, as opposed to wild animals or to livestock, laboratory animals, working animals or sport animals, which are kept for economic or productive reasons. The most popular pets are noted for their loyal or playful...

s in an apartment.

In some parts of the world, the word apartment refers to a new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly called a loft

Loft

A loft can be an upper story or attic in a building, directly under the roof. Alternatively, a loft apartment refers to large adaptable open space, often converted for residential use from some other use, often light industrial...

, although some modern lofts are built by design. An apartment consisting of the top floor of a high apartment building can be called a penthouse
Penthouse apartment
A penthouse apartment or penthouse is an apartment that is on one of the highest floors of an apartment building. Penthouses are typically differentiated from other apartments by luxury features.-History:...

.

When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family member, the unit may be known as an in-law apartment

Secondary suite

Secondary suite is an urban planning term for an additional separate dwelling unit on a property that would normally accommodate only one dwelling unit. A secondary suite is considered "secondary" or "accessory" to the primary residence on the parcel. It normally has its own entrance, kitchen,...

or granny flat, though these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites

Secondary suite

or "mother-in-law suites."

A maisonette is an apartment with more than one floor.

In Milwaukee

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

vernacular architecture

Vernacular architecture

Vernacular architecture is a term used to categorize methods of construction which use locally available resources and traditions to address local needs and circumstances. Vernacular architecture tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural and historical context in which it...

, a Polish flat

Polish flat

A Polish flat is a two-family home with separate entrances, and with the units stacked on top of one another instead of side-by-side. Most homes of this type were constructed in the early 20th century....

is an existing small house or cottage that has been lifted up to accommodate the creation of a new basement floor housing a separate apartment, then set down again; thus becoming a modest two-story flat.

In Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, a communal apartment («коммуналка») is a room with a shared kitchen and bath. A typical arrangement is a cluster of five or so apartments with their common kitchen and bathroom and their own front door, 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.

Property classes

In every community there are several types of multi-family housing, properties are typically put into one of four property classes. Each "class" of properties has 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 located in desirable geographic areas. White-collar worker

White-collar worker

The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...

s 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. This is where you'll find many tenants that are renters "for life." On the other hand, some of their tenants are just starting out. And as they get better jobs, they work their way up the rental scale.

Class D
properties are where you'll find many Section 8

Section 8 (housing)

Section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937 , as repeatedly amended, authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of approximately 3.1 million low-income households...

in the US or government-subsidized housing tenants. They are generally positioned in lower socioeconomic areas.

Rome

In ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, the insulae

Insulae

In Roman architecture, an insula was a kind of apartment building that housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class...

(singular insula) were large apartment buildings where the lower and middle classes of Romans

Ancient Rome

(the plebs

Plebs

The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...

) dwelled. The floor at ground level was used for taberna

Taberna

A taberna was a single room shop covered by a barrel vault within great indoor markets of ancient Rome. Each taberna had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway....

s, shops and businesses with living space on the higher floors. Ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

insulae

Insulae

in Rome and other imperial

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

cities reached up to 10 and more stories, some with more than 200 stairs. Several emperors

Roman Emperor

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...

, beginning with Augustus

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

(r. 30 BC-14 AD), attempted to establish limits of 20–25 m for multi-storey buildings, but met with only limited success. The lower floors were typically occupied by either shops or wealthy families, while the upper stories were rented out to the lower classes. Surviving Oxyrhynchus Papyri

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

indicate that seven-story buildings even existed in provincial

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

towns, such as in 3rd century Hermopolis

Hermopolis

Hermopolis Magna or simply Hermopolis or Hermopolis Megale or Hermupolis is the site of ancient Khmun, and is located near the modern Egyptian town of El Ashmunein in Al Minya governorate.-Etymology:Khmun, the Ancient Egyptian name of the city, means "eight-town", after the Ogdoad, a group of...

in Roman Egypt.

Egypt

During the medieval Arabic-Islamic period, the Egyptian capital of Fustat (Old Cairo

Old Cairo

Old Cairo is a part of Cairo, Egypt, that contains the remnants of those cities which were capitals before Cairo, such as Fustat, as well as some other elements from the city's varied history. For example, it encompasses Coptic Cairo and its many old churches and ruins of Roman fortifications...

) housed many high-rise residential buildings, some seven stories tall that could reportedly accommodate hundreds of people. In the 10th century, Al-Muqaddasi

Al-Muqaddasi

Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shams al-Din Al-Muqaddasi , also transliterated as Al-Maqdisi and el-Mukaddasi, was a medieval Arab geographer, author of Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim .-Biography:Al-Muqaddasi, "the Hierosolomite" was born in Jerusalem in 946 AD...

described them as resembling minaret

Minaret

A minaret مناره , sometimes مئذنه) is a distinctive architectural feature of Islamic mosques, generally a tall spire with an onion-shaped or conical crown, usually either free standing or taller than any associated support structure. The basic form of a minaret includes a base, shaft, and gallery....

s, and stated that the majority of Fustat's population lived in these multi-storey apartment buildings, each one housing over 200 people. In the 11th century, Nasir Khusraw

Nasir Khusraw

Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw al-Qubadiani or Nāsir Khusraw Qubādiyānī [also spelled as Nasir Khusrow and Naser Khosrow] Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw al-Qubadiani or Nāsir Khusraw Qubādiyānī [also spelled as Nasir Khusrow and Naser Khosrow] Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn...

described some of these apartment buildings rising up to fourteen stories, with roof garden

Roof garden

A roof garden is any garden on the roof of a building. Besides the decorative benefit, roof plantings may provide food, temperature control, hydrological benefits, architectural enhancement, habitats or corridors for wildlife, and recreational opportunities....

s on the top storey complete with ox-drawn water wheel

Water wheel

A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of free-flowing or falling water into useful forms of power. A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface...

s for irrigating them.

By the 16th century, the current Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

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

Renting

out to tenants

Leasehold estate

A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....

England

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the concept of the flat was slow to catch-on amongst the English middle-classes. Those who lived in these flats were assumed to be adaptable and ‘different’. In London, everyone who could afford it occupied an entire house – even if a small one.

During the last quarter of the 19th Century, ideas began to change. Both urban growth and the increase in population meant that more imaginative housing concepts were going to 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. Especially for male and female bachelors, the idea of renting a modern mansion flat came increasingly into vogue.

The first mansion flats in England were:

Albert Mansions, who was developed by Philip Flower and designed by James Knowles (architect). 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
Victoria Street
Victoria Street is the name of several streets in various countries:In Australia:* Victoria Street, Kings Cross* Victoria Street railway station, New South Wales* Victoria Street, Melbourne, Victoria...

at the end of the 1860s. Today, only a sliver of the building remains, next to the Victoria Palace Theatre
Victoria Palace Theatre
Victoria Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in Victoria Street, in the City of Westminster, opposite Victoria Station.-Origins:The theatre began life as a small concert room above the stables of the Royal Standard Hotel, a small hotel and tavern built in 1832 at what was then 522 Stockbridge...

. Albert Mansions was really 19 separate ‘houses’, each with a staircase serving one flat per floor. Its tenants included Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose connections with the developer's family were long-standing. Philip Flower's son was Cyril Flower, 1st Baron Battersea
Cyril Flower, 1st Baron Battersea
Cyril Flower, 1st Baron Battersea was a British Liberal politician and patron of art.-Background and education:...

developed most of the mansion blocks on Prince of Wales Drive, London
Prince of Wales Drive, London
Prince of Wales Drive is located in Battersea, in the London borough of Wandsworth. The drive is situated on the southern perimeter of Battersea Park.-Overview:The southern side of Prince of Wales Drive is lined with late-Victorian mansion blocks and villas...

.
Albert Hall Mansions, designed by Richard Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw RA , was an influential Scottish architect from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.-Life:...

in 1876. Because this was of a new type, risks were reduced as much as possible, each block was planned as a separate project with the building of each separate part contingent on the successful occupation of every flat in the previous block. The gamble paid off and the scheme was a success.

Scotland

In Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, 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 prior to 1919. Tenements were, and continue to be, inhabited by a wide range of social classes and income groups.

During the 19th century tenements became the predominant type of new housing in Scotland

Scotland

's industrial cities, although they were very common in the Old Town

Old Town, Edinburgh

The Old Town of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, is the medieval part of the city. Together with the 18th-century New Town, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has preserved its medieval plan and many Reformation-era buildings....

in Edinburgh from the 15th century where they reached ten or eleven storeys high and in one case fourteen storeys. Built of sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

or granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

, Scottish tenements are usually three to five storeys in height, with two to four flats on each floor. (In contrast, industrial cities in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

tended to favour "back-to-back

Back-to-back houses

Usually of low quality and high density, they were built for working class people and because three of the four walls of the house were shared with other buildings and therefore contained no doors or windows, back-to-back houses were notoriously ill-lit and poorly ventilated and sanitation was of...

" terrace

Terraced house

In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...

s of brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

.) Scottish tenements are constructed in terraces of tenements, 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 stairs and landings are generally designated common areas, and residents traditionally took turns to sweep clean the floors, and in Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

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".

Tenements today are bought by a wide range of social types, including young professionals, older retiring people, and by absentee landlords, often for rental to students after they leave halls of residence managed by their institution. The National Trust for Scotland

National Trust for Scotland

The National Trust for Scotland for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, commonly known as the National Trust for Scotland describes itself as the conservation charity that protects and promotes Scotland's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations to...

Tenement House Museum in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

offers an insight into the lifestyle of tenement dwellers.

Many multi-storey tower blocks were built in the UK after the Second World War. A number of these are being demolished and replaced with low-rise buildings or housing estate

Housing estate

A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance...

s known in Scotland as housing schemes, often modern interpretations of the tenement.

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

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

when Housing Acts sought to provide "homes fit for heroes". Garden suburb areas, based on English models, such as Knightswood

Knightswood

Knightswood is a suburban district in Glasgow, containing 4 areas: Knightswood North or High Knightswood, Knightswood South or Low Knightswood, Knightswood Park and Blairdardie. It has a golf course and park, and good transport links with the rest of the city. Garscadden and Scotstounhill railway...

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

Calton, Glasgow

Calton is a district in the Scottish city of Glasgow. The name Calton is derived from the Gaelic "coillduin", which means "wood on the hill". It is situated north of the River Clyde, and just to the east of the city centre...

and the Garngad.

Post Second World War, more ambitious plans, known as the Bruce Plan, were made for the complete evacuation of slums to modern mid-rise housing developments on the outskirts of the city. However, central government refused to fund the plans, preferring instead to depopulate the city to a series of New Town

New towns in the United Kingdom

Below is a list of some of the new towns in the United Kingdom created under the various New Town Acts of the 20th century. Some earlier towns were developed as Garden Cities or overspill estates early in the twentieth century. The New Towns proper were planned to disperse population following the...

s 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

Castlemilk

Castlemilk is a district of Glasgow, Scotland. It lies to the south of the city adjacent to Rutherglen, Croftfoot, Simshill and the separate village of Carmunnock...

, 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

Billy Connolly

William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname The Big Yin...

once put it). High rise living too started off with bright ambition - the Moss Heights are still desirable - (1950–1954) 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.

In 1970 a team from Strathclyde University demonstrated that the old tenements had been basically sound, and could be given new life with replumbing with kitchens and bathroom. The Corporation acted on this principle for the first time in 1973 at the Old Swan Corner, Pollokshaws

Pollokshaws

Pollokshaws is a district on the southside of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The housing stock mostly consists of some sandstone tenement housing, tower blocks and modern brick tenement-style buildings...

. 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 and the policy of demolition is considered to have destroyed fine examples of a "universally admired architectural" style. The Glasgow Housing Association

Glasgow Housing Association

Glasgow Housing Association is one of the largest social landlords in the UK, with more than 50,000 tenants and 26,500 factored homeowners across Glasgow....

took ownership of the 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.

Yemen

High-rise apartment buildings were built in the Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

i city of Shibam

Shibam

Shibam is a town in Yemen with about 7,000 inhabitants. The first known inscription about the city dates from the 3rd century AD...

in the 16th century. The houses of Shibam are all made out of mud bricks

Mudbrick

A mudbrick is a firefree brick, made of a mixture of clay, mud, sand, and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. They use a stiff mixture and let them dry in the sun for 25 days....

, but about 500 of them are tower house

Tower house

A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.-History:Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountain or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces...

s, which rise 5 to 11 stories high, with each floor having one or two apartments. Shibam has been called "Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

of the desert". Some of them were over 100 feet (30.5 m) high, thus being the tallest mudbrick

Mudbrick

apartment buildings in the world to this day.

United States and Canada

In the 10th century, the Chacoan people constructed large, multi-room dwellings, some comprising more than 900 rooms, in the Chaco Canyon area of what is now northwest New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

.

In 1839, the first New York City tenement was built, housing mainly poor immigrants. The tenements were breeding grounds for outlaw

Outlaw

In historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...

s, juvenile delinquents, and organized crime

Organized crime

Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

. Muckraker

Muckraker

The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...

journalist Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

Jacob August Riis was a Danish American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific...

wrote in How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s...

:

The New York tough may be ready to kill where his London brother would do little more than scowl; yet, as a general thing he is less repulsively brutal in looks. Here again the reason may be the same: the breed is not so old. A few generations more in the slums, and all that will be changed.

Tenements were also known for their price gouging

Price gouging

Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a crime that applies in some of the United States during civil emergencies...

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 colony of blind beggars, tenants of a blind landlord, old Daniel Murphy, whom every child in the ward knows, if 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
Metropolitan Board of Health
The New York City Metropolitan Board of Health was the first modern municipal public health authority in the United States. It was founded in 1866 by the New York Academy of Medicine, following a campaign led by Dr. Stephen Smith...

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. He knew intuitively what to expect. The result showed that Mr. Murphy had gauged his tenants correctly.

The Dakota

The Dakota, constructed from October 25, 1880 to October 27, 1884, is a co-op apartment building located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City...

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

Many reformers, such as Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

and Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis

, pushed for reforms in tenement dwellings. As a result in 1901, New York state passed a law called the New York State Tenement House Act

New York State Tenement House Act

One of the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 was one of the first such laws to ban the construction of dark, poorly ventilated tenement buildings in the state of New York...

to improve the conditions in tenements.

More improvements followed. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

signed the Housing Act of 1949

Housing Act of 1949

The American Housing Act of 1949 was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing...

to clean slums and reconstruct housing units for the poor.

Some significant developments in architectural design of apartment buildings came out of the 1950s and 60s. Among them were groundbreaking designs in the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments

860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments

860–880 Lake Shore Drive is a twin pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers on N. Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Construction began in 1949 and the project was completed in 1951.They were designated as Chicago Landmarks on June 10, 1996....

(1951), New Century Guild

New Century Guild

New Century Guild, headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is one of the earliest, largest, and most successful organizations of the many created across the country in the late 19th century that have dealt with the problems that arose as women in considerable numbers entered the labor force...

(1961), Marina City

Marina City

Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, directly across from the Loop district...

(1964) and Lake Point Tower

Lake Point Tower

Lake Point Tower is a high-rise residential building located on a promontory of the Lake Michigan lakefront in downtown Chicago, just north of the Chicago River at 505 North Lake Shore Drive. It is located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area...

(1968).

Apartment buildings are multi-story buildings where three or more residences are contained within one structure. In more urban areas, apartments close to the downtown

Downtown

Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core or central business district ....

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.

The distinction between rental apartments and condominium

Condominium

s 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

Housing cooperative

A housing cooperative is a legal entity—usually a corporation—that owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. ...

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 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.

Apartments were popular in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, particularly in urban centres like Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

, and Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

in the 1950s to 1970s. By the 1980s, many multi-unit buildings were being constructed as condominium

Condominium

s instead of apartments, and 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 slang term dingbat

Dingbat (building)

A dingbat is a type of formulaic apartment building that flourished in the Sun Belt region of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, a vernacular variation of shoebox style "stucco boxes". Dingbats are boxy, two- or three-story apartment houses with overhangs sheltering street-front parking...

has been coined 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 stilted, and with parking spots underneath.

Australia

In Australia, the term "flat" and "apartment" are largely used interchangeably. Newer high-rise buildings are more often marketed as "apartments", as the term "flats" can carry negative connotations of public housing. The term condominium or condo is rarely used in Australia despite attempts by developers to market it. A high-rise apartment building is commonly referred to as a residential tower, apartment tower, or block of flats in 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

Strata title

Strata title is a form of ownership devised for multi-level apartment blocks and horizontal subdivisions with shared areas. The 'strata' part of the term refers to apartments being on different levels, or "strata"....

. Due to legislation, Australian banks will either apply loan to value

Loan to value

The loan-to-value ratio expresses the amount of a first mortgage lien as a percentage of the total appraised value of real property. For instance, if a borrower borrows $130,000 to purchase a house worth $150,000, the LTV ratio is $130,000/$150,000 or 87%.Loan to value is one of the key risk...

ratios of over 70% 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 square metres. These are usually classified as studio apartments or student accommodation. Australian legislation enforces a minimum 2.4m floor-ceiling height which differentiates apartment buildings from office buildings.

In Australia, apartment living is a popular lifestyle choice for DINKY

Dinky

Dinky may refer to:* Dinky Duck, a toon by Terrytoons* Dinky Toys, a brand of die-cast toy vehicles* Dinky Bingham, a musician and music producer...

, yuppie

Yuppie

Yuppie is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s. It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession...

s, 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

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

and Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

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

Parliament of Queensland

The Parliament of Queensland is the legislature of Queensland, Australia. According to the state's constitution, the Parliament consists of the Queen and the Legislative Assembly. It is the only unicameral state parliament in the country, the upper chamber, the Legislative Council, having been...

as part of the Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885

Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885

The Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885 was a law passed by the Parliament of Queensland in that year to prevent overcrowding and urban degradation in cities and towns in Queensland, especially in Brisbane...

.

The earliest apartment buildings were in the major cities of Sydney

Sydney

and Melbourne

Melbourne

as the response to fast rising land values. Melbourne Mansions

Melbourne Mansions

Melbourne Mansions was a five-storey apartment building located in Collins Street in Melbourne, Australia. Constructed in 1906, it is thought to have been the first purpose-built residential apartment block in the city....

on Collins Street, Melbourne

Collins Street, Melbourne

Collins Street is a major street in the Melbourne central business district and runs approximately east to west.It is notable as Melbourne's traditional main street and best known street, is often regarded as Australia's premier street, with some of the country's finest Victorian era buildings.The...

(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

St Kilda, Victoria

St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...

area including the Fawkner Mansions (1910), Majestic Mansions (1912 as a boarding house) and the Canterbury (1914 - the oldest surviving buildings contained flats). Kingsclere, built in 1912 is believed to be the earliest apartment building in Sydney and still survives.

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

Potts Point, New South Wales

Potts Point is a small, densely-populated suburb of inner-city Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Potts Point is located 3 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney....

, Darlinghust

Darlinghurst, New South Wales

Darlinghurst is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Darlinghurst is located immediately east of the Sydney central business district and Hyde Park, within the local government area of the City of Sydney...

and Kings Cross

Kings Cross, New South Wales

Kings Cross is an inner-city locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney...

) and in Brisbane (in areas such as New Farm

New Farm, Queensland

New Farm is an inner suburb of Brisbane, Australia, located 2 km east of the Brisbane CBD on a large bend of the Brisbane River. New Farm is partly surrounded by the Brisbane River, with land access from the north west through Fortitude Valley and from the north through...

, Fortitude Valley and Spring Hill

Spring Hill, Queensland

Spring Hill is an inner suburb of Brisbane, Australia located 2 km north of the central business district. Parts of Spring Hill can be considered to be extensions of the Brisbane CBD.-Schools:Spring Hill is serviced by a number of schools...

).

Post World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, with the Australian Dream

Australian Dream

The Australian Dream or Great Australian Dream is a belief that in Australia, home ownership can lead to a better life and is an expression of success and security...

apartment buildings went out of vogue and flats were seen as accommodation only for 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

Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...

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

Bondi Beach, New South Wales

Bondi Beach is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, Australia. Bondi Beach is located 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council, in the Eastern Suburbs...

) 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

Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...

. Public housing in Australia

Public housing in Australia

Public housing in Australia is usually provided by departments of state and territory governments. Australian public housing operates within the framework of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, by which funding for public housing is provided by both federal and state governments...

was common in the larger cities, particularly in Melbourne (by the Housing Commission of Victoria

Housing Commission of Victoria

The Housing Commission of Victoria was a State Government body responsible for public housing in Victoria, Australia...

) where a huge number of hi-rise housing commission flats were built between the 1950s and 1970s by successive governments as part of an urban renewal program. Areas affected included Fitzroy

Fitzroy, Victoria

Fitzroy is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra. Its borders are Alexandra Parade , Victoria Parade , Smith Street and Nicholson Street. Fitzroy is Melbourne's...

, Flemington

Flemington, Victoria

Flemington is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, situated between the Maribyrnong River and Moonee Ponds Creek 4 km north-west from Melbourne's central business district. It was named by settler James Watson after Flemington estate in Scotland. Its Local Government Areas are the...

, Collingwood

Collingwood, Victoria

Collingwood is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...

, Carlton

Carlton, Victoria

Carlton is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...

, Richmond

Richmond, Victoria

Richmond is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...

and Prahran

Prahran, Victoria

Prahran , also known colloquially as "Pran", is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 5 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Stonnington. At the 2006 Census, Prahran had a population of 10,651. It is a part of Melbourne with...

. Similar projects were run in Sydney's lower socio economic areas like Redfern

Redfern, New South Wales

Redfern is an inner-city suburb of Sydney. Redfern is 3 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney...

.

In the 1980s, modern apartment buildings sprang up in riverside locations in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

(along the Brisbane River

Brisbane River

The Brisbane River is the longest river in south east Queensland, Australia, and flows through the city of Brisbane, before emptying into Moreton Bay. John Oxley was the first European to explore the river who named it after the Governor of New South Wales, Thomas Brisbane in 1823...

) and Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

(along the Swan River

Swan River (Western Australia)

The Swan River estuary flows through the city of Perth, in the south west of Western Australia. Its lower reaches are relatively wide and deep, with few constrictions, while the upper reaches are usually quite narrow and shallow....

).

In Melbourne in the 1990s a trend began for apartment buildings without the requirement of spectacular views. As a continuation of the gentrification

Gentrification

Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...

of the inner city, a fashion became New York "loft" style apartments and a large stock of old warehouses and old abandoned office buildings in and around the CBD became the target of developers. The trend of adaptive reuse

Adaptive reuse

Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than which it was built or designed for. Along with brownfield reclamation, adaptive reuse is seen by many as a key factor in land conservation and the reduction of urban sprawl...

extended to conversion of old churches and schools. Similar warehouse conversions and gentrification began in Brisbane suburbs such as Teneriffe, Queensland

Teneriffe, Queensland

Teneriffe is an inner city suburb in Brisbane, Australia. Situated next to Teneriffe are the suburbs of Newstead, Fortitude Valley, Bowen Hills and New Farm...

and Fortitude Valley and in Sydney in areas such as Ultimo

Ultimo, New South Wales

Ultimo is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Ultimo is located 2 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Sydney....

. 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

Postcode 3000

Postcode 3000 was a planning policy for Melbourne, Australia coordinated by the City of Melbourne and supported by the state government, then under the newly elected Premier Jeff Kennett ....

), 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

Melbourne 2030

The Metropolitan Strategy Melbourne 2030 is a Victorian Government strategic planning policy framework for the metropolitan area of Greater Melbourne, intended to cover the period 2001-2030. During this period the population of the metropolitan area is expected to grow by a million people to over 5...

planning policy. Urban renewal

Urban renewal

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...

areas like Docklands

Melbourne Docklands

Docklands is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia occupying an area extending up to 2 km west of and adjacent to Melbourne's Central Business District . Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...

, Southbank

Southbank, Victoria

Southbank is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia located direct south of the Yarra River opposite Melbourne's Hoddle Grid. The northernmost area is considered part of the Central Business District and Central Activities District of the city. Its Local Government Area are the...

, St Kilda Road and Port Melbourne are now predominately apartments. There has also been a sharp increase in the amount of student apartment buildings in areas such as Carlton in Melbourne.

Despite their size, other smaller cities including Canberra

Canberra

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...

, Darwin

Darwin, Northern Territory

Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory, Australia. Situated on the Timor Sea, Darwin has a population of 127,500, making it by far the largest and most populated city in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, but the least populous of all Australia's capital cities...

, Townsville, Cairns, Newcastle

Newcastle, New South Wales

The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...

, Adelaide

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

and Geelong have begun building apartments in the 2000s.

Today, residential buildings Eureka Tower

Eureka Tower

Eureka Tower is a skyscraper located in the Southbank precinct of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction began in August 2002 and the exterior completed on 1 June 2006. The plaza was finished in June 2006 and the building was officially opened on 11 October 2006...

and Q1

Q1 (building)

Q1 is a supertall skyscraper located in Surfers Paradise, on the Gold Coast. It is the world's third tallest residential tower after the 348 metre building The Marina Torch in Dubai won formal recognition as the tallest residential building in the world on 29 April 2011 by the Emporis...

are the tallest in the country. In many cases, apartments in inner city

Inner city

The inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...

areas of the major cities can cost much more than much larger houses in the outer suburbs.

There are Australian cities, such as Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast, Queensland

, which are inhabited predominately by apartment dwellers.

High security

Some apartment buildings have high levels of security. For example, to enter a high-security building, a person must validate their smartcard at the door. In some apartments, while at the lift

Elevator

An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...

, the smartcard would be used again to be able to press the button for lift access. Finally, the person walks towards apartment and uses his key

Key (lock)

to unlock the entrance door. This 2- or 3-tier security will, in most cases, prevent home invasions and theft

Theft

In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

. Some buildings may have a doorman

Doorman (profession)

A doorman is an individual hired to provide courtesy and security services at a residential building or hotel. They are particularly common in urban luxury highrises. At a residential building, a doorman is responsible for opening doors and screening visitors and deliveries...

to guard the premises.
Many middle- and upper-tier apartments have video phones

Video Phone

"Video Phone" is a song by American R&B singer Beyoncé Knowles from her third studio album, I Am... Sasha Fierce . The track was released as the eighth single from the album. A remixed version, featuring pop singer Lady Gaga was released later. Musically, the song consists of simple lyrics and...

, whereby residents can see and verify who is at the main entrance before allowing access to the building.

Owning an apartment is also more convenient than owning a house as the general maintenance and landscaping is taken care of by the owner or body corporate. This is particularly the case in regions with climate extremes, such as the long and snowy winters in the Nordic countries of northern Europe and most of Canada where there is much snow clearing work for house residents.

Real estate investment

The total cost for the construction of an apartment is much less than the cost invested in the construction of a single house. When the cost of a single unit in the apartment is compared to a single house of the same dimension, the difference in cost is very large. The cost of land is shared by all the owners of the apartment. But the price at which the flats are sold is not exactly proportional to the difference, but the real estator makes a big share of profits because the price at which the flats are sold are almost equal to the price of the houses in specific areas of the city. In this way apartment construction is an advantage to the real estator.

Disposable income

In Scandinavian countries apartment dwelling and renting through non-profit housing co-operatives is common place. Apartment users are allowed to modify the interior of the apartment to suit their wishes. Often the extended families have a shared holiday house in the countryside. The investment in real estate for a family is reduced leading to greater disposable income for quality of life.

Energy use

Buildings between 4 and 7 stories have a lower energy footprint per m² than do high-rises greater than 7 stories. There seems to be a tradeoff with many other variables in a life cycle analysis, which would suggest that 7 stories (around fifty dwelling units per hectare for optimum transport petroleum use (Kenworthy)) is the optimum density in T1 urban areas, the city of Paris being an example (Mehaffy). Buildings not requiring lifts (around 4 floors, though it could be five with a final two storey apartment (maisonette)) are normally more energy efficient. Note, this is dependant on the particular country's accessibility requirements.

Climate factors

High-rise buildings cast a significant shadow over nearby buildings, reducing solar energy harvesting. They also cast shadows over public spaces, reducing their amenity value, and these spaces are a very valuable resource in mid-density cities. Wind turbulence can also be a significant problem at ground level if design provisions are not made. The prevailing cooling breezes in summer can be disrupted for nearby buildings also.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Apartment types and characteristics

Property classes

Rome

Egypt

England

Scotland

Yemen

United States and Canada

Australia

High security

Real estate investment

Disposable income

Energy use

Climate factors

See also

External links