What&#x27;s a shoebox(my 2 bed flat in central London is 53 sq&#x2F;m I&#x27;ve seen plenty of sutios in NYC that size (~500-550 sq&#x2F;f))? There have been plenty of studies that show that small apartments lead to actual physical and mental health issues.
While I can accept your anecdotal case that you are very happy with your &quot;shoebox&quot; size apartment it doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s good, beneficial or something that should be acceptable.<p>Smaller housing means smaller kitchens which makes home cooking less pleasant and likely, not to mention that small apartments might have a kitchen which isn&#x27;t fitted with more than a microwave a small fridge and a hotplate or a tiny stove.
This leads to people using takeaway or eating at restaurants which isn&#x27;t good for you, even if you go to the fanciest place you can think off the chances off that the food there is just as caloric and &quot;healthy&quot; as your run of the mill fast food.
A 2-3 course meal at a good restaurant tends to have 1.5-2 times the calories that a super-sized McDonlands meal has, you can easily eat up 2000-3000 kcal in a restaurant with that nice appetizer, big juicy steak, and desert.
Home cooking on the other hand results in many cases in much smaller caloric intake, and the act of cooking it self has quite a few positive mental and physical effects on it&#x27;s own.<p>Smaller housing means less family&#x2F;entertainment space which means you usually can&#x27;t invite many people in, which means you do your socializing outside usually again in restaurants&#x2F;bars which is while plenty of fun and pretty acceptable also has a negative impact.<p>Smaller housing means you are more likely to deffer having children or decide to upgrade your relationship status, smaller housing also makes many people feel like they do not get enough privacy at home even if they are very intimate with their partners which adds to stress.<p>Smaller housing means usually means poorer air-quality, less light (smaller windows, less of them etc.) and general feeling of claustrophobia which can lead to depression even if you do not feel that it does.<p>And this is just the tip of the iceberg because there are many more factors why people need their space, that doesn&#x27;t mean you need to live in a 7 room house, it just means that the rooms you have need to be of sufficient size, and the overall design of the apartment needs to be more open and brighter.<p>I honestly can&#x27;t fathom why people actually argue that it&#x27;s fine to live in a small apartment, I&#x27;ve seen places in London that have a folding bed and if the fridge is open you can&#x27;t open your &quot;front door&quot;.
This is 5th Element level of quarters and we are openly accepting it, yes that 20 sq&#x2F;m flat in IKEA looks extremely cool if it was a hotel room, or a dormitory it would be more than acceptable but for people to live in such place for any length of time is not something we should approve off not to mention push towards.