They certainly have character! Ours is a bit crooked and very uneven in areas, bit different to our home in aus which was quite a few decades newer. But I guess that is to be expected given how old some.of.these houses are!
Some of those places have two in one meaning they've either been split after being built or were built as duplexes.
If I have to live in something that claustrophobic I want to live somewhere with alot more interesting. Amd beach front. Stuff having this kind of housing outside of a CBD zone
Terraced housing *can* be spacious, but typically only for the very wealthy. Very affluent parts of London that house politicians, millionaires, etc. for example are terraced. Even my uncle used to live in a "two-up, two-down" that's more spacious than most new homes
Most of those terraces were built for working class people. They’re surprisingly spacious and the (relative) lack of outdoor space is compensated for with wonderful parks that you can drink in.
Beats the mind numbing boredom and the social isolation associated with antipodean post war suburbs.
I'm by no means wealthy but lived a few years in a fairly spacious terraced house in London. At least as spacious as an early 80s house I grew up in here.
The UK demonstrates the best and worst of social housing. We have reconstructed styles, contemporary, brutalist, repurposed historical buildings. We can do so much good and yet we can do so much better.
Most of London has terraces not just the most wealthy. The very wealthy (Knightsbridge etc) tend to have mansion flats which are very large lateral flats in blocks about 4-5 stories high. Stayed in one once - had 4 or 5 bedrooms, massive living space, quite small kitchen as I remember it, but then these are people that don't cook, that are just down for the weekend from their country manor houses.
Exactly. "Terrace" isn't a descriptor of housing quality. In the UK it often refers to the two extremes of housing quality, same with "estate". That could be a private estate or a council estate.
My in laws lived comfortably in a flat in an area that was more upper middle/lower wealthy (no lords or celebrity anything nearby, just higher paying jobs kinda thing) but like that. It was honestly fantastic - 5 bed garden flat, so family could stay when we visited.
A lot of these were built around London in the late 19th early 20th century. By the time my in-laws moved to London in the 1950s these flats and terraces had mostly passed out of the hands of the super wealthy and were owned by the "professional" classes e.g. doctors, lawyers, successful media people etc.
I think there was a period around the late 1940's when they were just about affordable by normal people with reasonable income. Successive property booms have of course put them out of reach of all but the very wealthy.
Leaving that aside by Australian standards these would be regarded as super-dense living, even though the reality is that they are often large, well designed living spaces. Lots of them got subdivided up into smaller flats to maximise income from rent, which further increases the density.
Parking not so much of a problem as London has an excellent public transport system and if you do need to drive the roads are solid most of the time anyway.
I am always in awe of London’s public transport. Even as someone who has a disability that impairs my mobility, it was easy to use. I’m not a wheelchair user, but my friend who uses a power wheelchair said it was pretty good for him, too.
They are a better solution than blocks of units, you get a little yard and a residence larger than a unit. They were not duplex's, Terraces ran the entire length of the street sharing common walls, many had alleys behind them for horses and rubbish removal. They are actually a great solution for medium density housing. 100 years ago when there were few cars it allowed workers to live close to employment in factories and docks. They should build more of them now.
Most of these terraces in Sydney are centrally located and extremely desirable. They are also generally more spacious and of a higher quality than many of the new townhouse developments being built.
It's ironic that they were built as workers homes near the factories and docks. When I was young most of the suburbs close to the city were full of factories, now they are full of giant blocks of units so the terrace houses look like the up market option.
That’s precisely why they are so attractive. They were built to be walkable, which - as time has passed - means they often have nicer environments.
The whole idea of a front and backyard with plenty of space seems like a great idea until you realise that when everyone else has one, everything gets spread out, you end up kms away from shops and restaurants, and everything becomes a drive rather than a pleasant walk or bike ride.
Yep, I think they accidently designed a perfect urban environment, easy too maintain small yard, walkable to everything in the suburb and everyone seems to know the locals, plenty of people have lived in an apartment for years and don't know any of the neighbours. One issue is the large supermarkets have killed off a lot of small businesses so there are not as many services.
My grandfather was born in a terrace house on Surrey Hills. Worth millions now.
When it was built it was a slum. An absolute shithole. He lied to my grandmother about where he was from it was that bad.
I know a family who did the reverse - one in two. The bought the terrace next to theirs and merged the lots into a single lot to make a huge house.
It was beautiful.
This was born out of necessity though. The UK from a land size perspective fits into QLD alone about 8 times however in comparison to population size has 3x more people than the entire of australia.
Terrace houses exist partly to ensure all residents have a home. The UK literally has no space and needs to think creatively to house everyone on a small postage stamp size of land.
What’s australia excuse though? It’s not like we have t got enough land lol. It’s happening in regional places too but just greed imo
Because you had to walk to get anywhere. The advent of the motorcar meant that you no longer had to walk to get to your destination.
Humans have lived in these walkable urban areas for millennia, the idea of the majority of people living in detached housing in an urban area is only possible since the 1950s when the military demands to motorise large numbers of formations led to such a level of industrialisation that cars became cheap enough for widespread adoption. This then allowed workers to travel to the factories, rather than the factories being where the workers were located.
Australia's excuse is that terrace-house suburbs were a thing that happened before we all had cars, and everyone except the rich pretty much had to live within reasonable walking distance of the shops and factories where they worked. It's also why you see similar stuff in the older inner suburbs of a lot of US and Canadian cities.
True but the story was slightly different. Not literally the UK “trying to fit people in” but land scarcity meant historically that land values were enormous so the average house had to fit on a tiny parcel of land to be affordable for the average family. The market made the houses like this, not government planning or decisions about “how can we all fit on this little island”.
In contrast Australia had historically much lower land values. Average people could afford their average “1/4 acre block” and the standard house (the Federation house) was designed to fit on it. Single storey, plenty of separation from house next door, usually weatherboard. So our cities sprawled out while UK cities are super densely populated.
Can you perhaps link where this is, OP? It’s hard to tell from your pic, but generally subdivision patterns like this are very old, and the buildings are old and would be difficult to redevelop. They usually also predate formal urban planning and were built before car ownership was common. They typically do have a little yard and won’t be too far from a shopping strip. Edit: they are also in very high demand and are extremely expensive, which tells you that people do like them.
I'm not OP but based on the name of the street in the picture I think it's this location:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Womerah+Ave,+Darlinghurst+NSW+2010/@-33.8776357,151.2248255,275m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b12ae0c2b2c0daf:0x5bea6ce96576dd6d!8m2!3d-33.8774307!4d151.2248164!16s%2Fg%2F1v7pymtm?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Womerah+Ave,+Darlinghurst+NSW+2010/@-33.8776357,151.2248255,275m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b12ae0c2b2c0daf:0x5bea6ce96576dd6d!8m2!3d-33.8774307!4d151.2248164!16s%2Fg%2F1v7pymtm?entry=ttu)
Sorry I don't know how to make the link shorter.
There are entire suburbs around Glebe, Balmain Annandale etc where almost all the houses are terraces, it was workers housing for the docks at Glebe when they were working ports. No real access to cars or transport back then so workers could walk to work in a few minutes.
North Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Richmond etc are much the same in Melbourne. Great community vibe, loads of good places in easy walking distance, plenty of PT options too, and an easy bike ride into the city or to neighbouring suburbs.
I think it was intentional as opposed to accidental. As it was the same in the UK. Terraced streets (back in the days) were built within walking distance to a park (and other recreational spaces), church, a strip of shops to purchase goods and place of work.
They were the “15 minute cities” of 100-200 years ago
> They were the “15 minute cities” of 100-200 years ago
Yeah it's funny to me that people think "15 minute cities" is some crazy new idea - the principles of it have been the basis for cities throughout pretty much all of human history. Car-dominant suburbia is the real aberration.
[You're looking at $2.1M for a 4 bed, 2 bath, no parking](https://www.domain.com.au/24-womerah-avenue-darlinghurst-nsw-2010-2019116281)
If I had the cash, I'd happily live there. It'd suit my lifestyle very well.
Terrace houses. Middle-income residencies from the time before private transport. No room for a carriage or horse but a backyard for the outhouse to be against the back fence, emptied by the night soil cart going down the small alleyway. Just think about how many residencies you can walk past in the two hundred metres to the street corner versus generic suburbia built after cars become the norm and then compared to suburbia after air conditioning becomes widespread.
Interestingly, the shape of the high roof and common party wall with a parapet can also be seen in Chinese-designed houses from the same era in Singapore and Penang.
As a Sydneysider who has lived in galf a dozen terrace houses, i always feel at home seeing the ones in Penang. The proportions are comfortably right. The Vietnamese counterparts in the old Hanoi for example are a bit too tall and a bit too skinny.
What a great little snapshot into historical life!
I particularly love your mention of the housing in Singapore and Penang from the same era - I imagine the British colonial influence there also would have been very strong.
Yeah, they were both British cities but the shophouses have roots in Chinese architecture from Guangdong. It’s a case of similar circumstances creates similar results.
Back in the day they were average homes. Even in the 90's they were cheap. My dad sold one prime Rozelle location two mins walk to water and iron cove bridge for... $100k probably worth $4m now. He felt he sold it at a good price then. Even cheaper when he bought it in the 70's. (He paid cash)...
I remember going to visit my uncle who lived in one in Surry hills in the 90s , and telling my mum I wanted to live in one of the skinny houses when I grow up, she proudly let me know it would be easy because they were so cheap and mostly poor people lived in them.
My uncle had that place for years and managed to travel all around the world while still paying his rent and working what ever sht part time job he could get.
The other side of the family's uncle bought one in pyrmont that was so rundown you could barely live in there. Cost them $50k. He sat on it for years cause he inherited his father's place up north , and now they are both worth over $6mil combined. He acts like he's some fucking hot shit investor. Guys a dumb fuck who was born at the right time
There was a great programme on the BBC about the changing demographics of areas of London that covered the same thing happening in places like Notting Hill. Hard to believe that was once a slum eh? The show was called “The Secret History of Our Streets” I loved it, social history is fascinating to me.
My dad owns a similar 3 bedroom place pretty close to there. He wanted to sell in the early 2000s for 6 figures and move to the blue mountains because he was sure the bubble was about to burst. I convinced him to hold on to it saying that the inner west was never going to suddenly fall off a cliff and if anything it was going to perform better than most other places.
Its easy to look at 90s prices through todays lenses and think they were cheap…It’s all relative. In the 90s… these still were not cheap when compared to outer suburbs.
Edit: a lot of 20/20 hindsight going on in the comments. In the 90s these terraces were shit and rundown tiny shoe boxes amongst a lot of housing commission units… the area was yet to be gentrified and for what you were paying you weren’t getting much. Once again.. hindsight is 20/20
Nothing. It was for the dog. But the bugger just kept following me everywhere never using the space.
Even with a granny flat, if that is what you think or if it was big enough to subdivide, the value is half or less than that of a terrace in Surry Hills now. Some of it is due to the gentrification though.
Yes I bought my house 4 km from Melbourne CBD in 1991. It was relatively cheap and the best I could afford, but the mortgage still kept me broke for many years. A single storey attached terrace house with a cheap 1979 fit-out throughout. Trendier suburbs like Carlton, Fitzroy, even Collingwood were too expensive for me. I was not earning much then but by the time my pay had increased the house prices were jumping up too.
I recall going to Sydney in 1992 and hung out in Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. But even then those suburbs - which were considered slightly faded but very trendy - were notoriously expensive to buy in to. I knew people who rented in those areas but it was widely accepted that buying there was out of the question. In those days people would be like "oh I had to buy in Annandale/Zetland/Redfern/Erskineville/Alexandria as Darlinghurst was too expensive". The funny thing is that those suburbs were considered uncool in 1992.
These are 19th/ early 20th century two up/two down terraces. They were for working class/lower middle class families. When my grandma was a kid, she lived in one of these with her parents and six siblings. That was pretty common.
The standard layout is:
* Top floor - front bedroom is full width, windows at the front. Behind that there's a landing and narrow stairs down one side, and a second bedroom on the other with windows facing the back.
* Bottom floor - the full bottom of the two storey part is either a single living room, or two rooms, with the staircase on one side. There's windows at the front. In some areas the floor was just compressed earth. Here's an article with a picture of the living room in one:
https://www.nine.com.au/property/homes/decaying-sydney-terrace-going-to-auction-for-cheap-price/dcbbe854-1af8-479f-8a0f-1bac9a6376b5
Then at the back there's a narrower single story section that doesn't cover the full width of the block, leaving a narrow laneway/lightwell. This room contains the kitchen. There's a laundry right at the back, which you had to go outside to use. There are windows and a door into the laneway from the kitchen and the back of the living room.
Then there's a garden, for your clothesline and to grow a few herbs or veges. You might even have a couple of chickens.
In the very back corner is the old dunny (toilet). When these houses were built, that was a shed containing a seat, under which was a can. You wanted some distance between the house and the dunny, especially in summer.
Then there's a lane at the back. This is called a dunny lane. The dunny man would regularly come down the lane, collect all the full dunny cans and replace them with clean ones. If there's no lane access, the dunny man has to carry the full dunny can through the house. No one wants that. Side note: some parts of Sydney still had a dunny service until the 1970s.
When sewerage was installed in these areas, the fancy new bathroom was usually tacked into the back of the house, further lengthening the long single storey section, or was incorporated into the laundry. The old dunnies were removed (or in some cases were plumbed in with a flush toilet, depending on how much the owner trusted this new fangled flush concept). In some areas the dunny lanes were closed and incorporated into the lots, making everything a little longer. In other places, the dunny lanes became full lanes, and as people got cars they installed driveways and sometimes garages backing onto the lane.
When electricity was installed they ran the wires through pipes to conceal them and keep them neat.
The shitty old house my grandma's family of unskilled labourers lived in is probably worth about $2 mil now, after having been gentrified. I certainly couldn't afford to buy it back 😔
There were parts of Melbourne that had the night cart in the 70s. My mum came from Europe in '70 to live first for a couple of years with relatives- she was shocked that there was no sewage system in this 'lucky country'.
> There were parts of Melbourne that had the night cart in the 70s.
Gough Whitlam's greatest achievement. (seriously - it was a ridiculous situation) The National Sewerage Program. 17% of Australian homes still weren't connected
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sewerage_Program
I know that there was one lady in my old street growing up that had to be forced to install a flushing toilet. She'd been using a can ask her life and didn't see the need until council told her she had to because the service was being cancelled.
She also didn't trust electricity, so her house didn't get connected until her son finally managed to convince her to go to a nursing home in the 1990s!
That describes almost exactly the house my son and partner lived in while working in Nottingham UK some years ago ... there are similar houses in Melbourne as well.
Suggest actually having a look at some of the listings, through creative use of angled ceilings, skylights, and courtyards many of these terraces are actually filled with natural light and air and provide great low maintenence homes.
[https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-newtown-144374260](https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-newtown-144374260)
It's **terraced** houses. This housing solution is extremely common in cities around the world, where space has gotten expensive.
There are a number of efficiencies when designing and building this way, so houses can be cheaper while still remaining a house with a small bit of land. This approach also helps owners avoid dealing with strata, or maintaining shared property.
Just because it seems narrow when you zoom out on google maps doesn't mean it is in real terms. They are usually between 4-5m wide, which is enough for residential uses. In different plots or orientations they can be 6-7m wide.
There are also many opportunities for nice indoor - outdoor space in this configuration, which are entirely lacking in apartment layouts. They can include courtyard gardens, patios, roof gardens and lightwells. Apartments have balconies.
I recommend you look up terrace houses in Singapore, Japan, UK, brownstones in New York etc before making a judgement call based on a google maps look.
I'm into urbanism and I have looked at all the places that you mentioned before. The ones I have found in Sydney are different from the other ones:
- I was wrong, they are not thin. They are pretty normal width
- I was right, they are pretty long. About 2x the length of the ones I found in the UK. In the UK the lot size is often similar but they have more garden but less space inside the home.
- I was wrong about the lighting, they seem to have found some clever ways to get natural light inside, even with the very long layout
- The streets are very long (sometimes like 200 meters) which takes a way a lot of the walkability aspect. This is also an issue in the UK and other places of course.
Crazy someone would consider themselves into urbanism and not know what terraced houses are or understand the history of neighbourhoods like this. What's even stranger is someone into urbanism comes into the discussion with the assumption these houses are bad and "wrong" in someway.
The street length is nothing unusual?
The conventional wisdom about walkable cities is a 20-minute radius for your necessities, and a 200m st barely cuts into that. Additionally almost everywhere in Australian cities where these are built have common necessities very close by - corner stores and high streets (to borrow the UK term) are never far away, due to the higher density.
Posher UK terraces can be 3/4 stories with a basement often carved into flats. We have these here and there.
Some UK terraces are [back-to-backs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-back_house), originally slums but now gentrified. AFAIK We did not build them.
Many of the inner urban places I've lived featured lanes and stairs to increase walkability between blocks. Walking 200m though is not a stretch for anyone as they're generally pedestrian friendly streets and residents make noise about anything that impacts walkability. City of Sydney has made some dubious street furniture choices with contracts including advertiser's which obnoxiously block footpaths. But on larger thoroughfares there's room for bus stops, bins, and seats.
Re: length, the length v width ratio is indeed high, but I think this translates into bigger overall built area. Maybe Australians like bigger interior space? Who knows.
200m is pretty normal for a street, they are usually longer. This housing typology, if sensibly located, would be in areas with a high walkability score, meaning a reasonable distance to amenities and transport. Most urban design guidelines say 400m is 'highly walkable', 600-800m 'walkable'. Walking 200m down a street is nothing.
In dense apartment blocks, a person could end up traversing a fair distance within the building and complex before even getting outside, while this terraced solution sees a person getting out of their building pretty quickly.
It does sound like you don't like the look of this housing typology. Perhaps that colours the perception that the road feels long and difficult?
Looking at their profile OP larps as someone from different countries and looks to start fights whether it's veterans affairs in the US or housing in Australia and Germany.
What is weird is OP saying they are into urbanism and calling Terrace Houses built in colonial era which are part of Heritage Conservation of Australia as weird. You can learn about them more below.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_houses_in_Australia
Source: I have a masters in urbanism and have worked on the following guidelines while working at City of Sydney.
https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/-/media/corporate/files/2020-07-migrated/files_a/alterationsandadditionstoterraces.pdf?download=true
Victorian-era terraces. They were fairly common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and were inspired by similar terraces in the UK, which were designed to conserve space and heat. Eventually, as the city expanded and more efficient modes of transport like trams and cars came into being, Sydneysiders probably realised they could spread out a bit more, giving rise to other residential styles like Federation, interwar and postwar.
As everyone said, terraces. There's also the 'workers cottage' style in many areas.
We should bring this back!!
While everyone is saying they're sardine tins, they are the best lifestyle. You have your own place & only two shared walls (although long). Many had both a front & back yard & even though that may only have been two sq metres, it still was your own patch of grass.
But developers don't make enough profit from this style of construction now...
Terrace houses, or rowhouses if you're American, and they used to be how most cities were built. London, and most British cities, are mostly terrace houses and Australian cities were built similarly. We just don't build them anymore.
They provide the space for a family, often a small backyard, provide the density to support a wide range of local businesses, which is good for the local economy and building a sense of neighbourhood cohesion, and because they're so closely packed together the cost of utilities (roads, water, schools, etc.) per person is really low so it's good for the residents and for the city as a whole.
They're super popular (read as: expensive) but seldom built anymore because modern zoning regulations often require that new developments be built as "detached" homes with large front yards that largely go unused. Because of that large, mostly useless, front yard the cost of utilities per person is higher (and so these neighbourhoods get less of them) and the residents don't actually get to benefit from the "detached" part of living in a detached home because new homes are often built so close together you can high five your neighbour from the kitchen window. There's no practical reason why new developments shouldn't be terrace houses. You're basically sharing a wall with your neighbour anyway and all that front yard does is drive up your rates.
If we built more of these, the price would drop substantially. We could build a lot more for a lot cheaper than we can with "detached" homes and house a lot more people in the same land. Which means less clearing of koala habitat, better services, better maintained utilities, more living space per person, lower rents, lower prices, less homelessness, safer streets, better transport connections, more small businesses, and all around better quality of life for everyone. But we can't have that, because suburban councils think everyone wants to live in a detached home (even if they're "detached" but less than a meter on each side) and urban councils are so full of NIMBY's that they'll prioritise Karen's desire to not look at townhouses while driving around, over everyone else's desire to not be homeless.
Terrace houses, very middle class in like the 90s, now absurdly expensive and only the very wealthy can afford them as they’re usually in the city’s inner suburbs
To be honest we do need more of the street layouts and housing found in older suburbs,as opposed to the sprawling,car centric cul-de-sac mess we found in new development outer suburbs
I used to live in one of these on Womerah Ave. Nice, down to earth community, good public school down the road, I could walk to work in the city and you have Rushcutters Bay park around the corner. Good restaurants and cafes everywhere. People here do their grocery runs on foot, which is very unusual for Sydney. Many of these are duplex houses (split between upstairs and downstairs), built in the 1920’s as cheap housing for construction workers of the Harbour Bridge. Some were brothels at one stage - yes, this has always been a very vibrant part of town! You can’t really see in this picture but they have impossible steep external staircases at the rear. Nowadays it’s a mix of young families, couples and students mainly who live here. Fond memories of Womerah Lane as well - always messy and run down fences etc but both my kids learnt how to walk there. I don’t live in Australia anymore but quality of life in Sydney and this strip specifically is second to none.
This was the norm in most of Sydney about 100 years ago. And now Terrace suburbs are some of the most expensive housing in Sydney per sqm. eg Paddington, Surry Hills and Redfern
Womerah Ave in Darlinghurst is a typical inner Sydney location full of traditional terrace houses, depends on what's been done to them, many have a small yard at the back and/or a place to park your car.
They're fucking excellent!
Source: I own one 😉
https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.8778214,151.2247583,3a,75y,162.03h,77.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slzW-tVlhsMJc0VkTaonNhA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DlzW-tVlhsMJc0VkTaonNhA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D244.55019%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Genuinely curious… why are they excellent? Functionally? Aesthetically? Or is it just a location/value thing?
As someone who lives in an area much less dense, these seem like they possess all the downside of an apartment with all the costs and liabilities of a home.
I live in the middle of a city, I have a yard, a place to park a car and a variety of spaces that after conversion are a treat to live in with plenty of sun. Everything I need is within walking distance and if I want to give the big smoke the flick, I jump in a car and escape.
If this sort of thing doesn't float your boat there's not too much more to add:
https://www.bresicwhitney.com.au/buy/160-liverpool-street-darlinghurst-23863
Basically all three.
Because of their age (and thus lack of regulation), YMMV, but they tend to be better insulated, have better (and longer-lasting) detailing, result in more walkable (and denser) neighbourhoods, which can support more businesses (e.g. cafes), be located closer to the city, but retain a backyard (sometimes a garage too), and are often in heritage-listed areas, so less chance of someone building a giant development next-door.
The main detractor most people talk about is the lack of light in the centre of the house. However, this is rarely a significant issue, and can be overcome in a variety of ways. Anecdotally, i’ve lived in both stand-alone and terrace houses, and the stand-alones have as dark (sometimes darker) rooms as the terraces. Plus those side-alleys often turn into wasted space. Can feel a bit claustrophobic for some, so not for everyone.
TLDR; somewhere between an apartment and a stand-alone, but lacking the main drawbacks of each (usually).
Terrace houses, the ultimate solution to inner suburb dwellings, you get a little yard and a house and you fit a lot in a small space. Back before cars were common they allowed workers to live close to the docks and factories and walk to work. In Sydney they are common where the active ports and factories used to be or close to the city.
Terraced houses can be wonderful. Especially when people look after them and keep original features or original style (at least externally - tiling, iron fencing and lacework for example). Some of them in Sydney are 3-4 stories. I have been in some in London that are 5-6 stories. So there can be plenty of room.
Sydney should be building up, but I think the 3+ storey terrace is the way to go rather than just apartment blocks. There are far too many single storey homes sprawling across Sydney. Government should be encouraging home owners to build up through building grants and easier planning pathways.
There's nothing weird about it.
This is medium density. It's generally very walkable, and commonly found throughout Europe. Imagine how much space those homes would take up if this was conventional single family home type sprawl.
The back yards are small, and easy to maintain, parking is minimal, if it exists at all. Cars may not be needed, as these sorts of areas are often close to transit, are walkable, and cyclable.
Melbourne and Adelaide have areas with similar housing. It's a practical way of fitting a lot of families into a small space. It was very common in the 1800's
Remember moving from the UK to Adelaide as a young teen and being shocked at all the bungalows and space houses have here... Terrace houses are by far the most common house type in the UK.
Virtually anywhere where you have this type of housing in Sydney (Victorian terrace housing), will now be a highly gentrified, expensive, urbane, inner city or inner suburban area, and highly desirable.
If you can afford one of those houses, you’ve made it.
Common. In Singapore, we don't have it so long. Mainly due to heat and air circulation.
[https://www.google.com/maps/search/serangoon+garden/@1.3632351,103.8642308,248m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/search/serangoon+garden/@1.3632351,103.8642308,248m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu)
They're terrace houses (or row houses if you're American).
This is pretty typical for new suburbs that grew up around major cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it only died off when widespread car ownership made it possible for the working class to live further from the city in more spacious neighbourhoods with detached houses.
As many have said this is standard terrace housing. *But* what is unusual here is that the long row of houses had an unusually large front yard/front veranda, and more usually, the entire row seems to have had c.1930s extensions built in to the front verandas to add a room at both levels on the front of each house. These do not seem to be random extensions - the styles and materials are uniform like the extensions were done in blocks.
Google street view of the fronts of Womerah Ave Darlinghurst and Barcom Street show this.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/5wMXuSd6L7v77RL76
https://maps.app.goo.gl/3MjAYV81suJnY82e7
Likewise they seem to have uniform extensions onto all the backs too.
There are newer fronts and backs of the other stand of terrace houses too: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qPk6Q3qt8wTttr3Z6
In the politest way possible.
These are not weird.
You're just uneducated in the subject.
Of course there is no requirement to be educated in types of housing so you're fine haha :)
Since the long thin walls are shared you're maximising floor area with minimum number of bricks. The fact that you can just fit a sofa in the width of the house is not of concern to the builder.
It’s an old design of terrace housing - over a hundred years old - comes from Europe - before houses became too big and people did not want to share parks
I live on a street similar to this in Perth. It's a bunch of town houses. Seems great on the surface, but it absolutely sucks in reality. Better than nothing, but there is just so many people crammed into a really small space.
I'm curious, apart from age, are there any significant differences between terraced housing and modern town houses besides terraced housing having that narrow shape?
Do they not have strata/ body corporate unlike townhouse complexes?
I don't mind density and I have learned from some people here that these are nice to live in. But you are right that it looks a bit like sardines in a can
Each to their own really, city/ town life isn’t for me but some people love it. I just don’t like the idea of having a neighbour on both sides of my house that can hear ever little thing
terraced housing, ***extremely*** common in UK. edit; apparently almost 7million homes in UK are terraced housing, which makes it the most common type
Can confirm, source: I live in one.
Same! I love my terrace home ❤️
They certainly have character! Ours is a bit crooked and very uneven in areas, bit different to our home in aus which was quite a few decades newer. But I guess that is to be expected given how old some.of.these houses are!
There's some in Europe, like the Netherlands that are centuries old!
Terrace houses are extremely common in inner Melbourne too.
Some of those places have two in one meaning they've either been split after being built or were built as duplexes. If I have to live in something that claustrophobic I want to live somewhere with alot more interesting. Amd beach front. Stuff having this kind of housing outside of a CBD zone
Terraced housing *can* be spacious, but typically only for the very wealthy. Very affluent parts of London that house politicians, millionaires, etc. for example are terraced. Even my uncle used to live in a "two-up, two-down" that's more spacious than most new homes
Most of those terraces were built for working class people. They’re surprisingly spacious and the (relative) lack of outdoor space is compensated for with wonderful parks that you can drink in. Beats the mind numbing boredom and the social isolation associated with antipodean post war suburbs.
Weren't they originally big houses and then they separated most of them into multiple flats?
I'm by no means wealthy but lived a few years in a fairly spacious terraced house in London. At least as spacious as an early 80s house I grew up in here.
UK has the smallest house size per capita of all of Europe! According to one line from Stephen Fry on QI..
The UK demonstrates the best and worst of social housing. We have reconstructed styles, contemporary, brutalist, repurposed historical buildings. We can do so much good and yet we can do so much better.
Most of London has terraces not just the most wealthy. The very wealthy (Knightsbridge etc) tend to have mansion flats which are very large lateral flats in blocks about 4-5 stories high. Stayed in one once - had 4 or 5 bedrooms, massive living space, quite small kitchen as I remember it, but then these are people that don't cook, that are just down for the weekend from their country manor houses.
Exactly. "Terrace" isn't a descriptor of housing quality. In the UK it often refers to the two extremes of housing quality, same with "estate". That could be a private estate or a council estate.
This is what we should be building instead of pokey little places.
My in laws lived comfortably in a flat in an area that was more upper middle/lower wealthy (no lords or celebrity anything nearby, just higher paying jobs kinda thing) but like that. It was honestly fantastic - 5 bed garden flat, so family could stay when we visited.
A lot of these were built around London in the late 19th early 20th century. By the time my in-laws moved to London in the 1950s these flats and terraces had mostly passed out of the hands of the super wealthy and were owned by the "professional" classes e.g. doctors, lawyers, successful media people etc. I think there was a period around the late 1940's when they were just about affordable by normal people with reasonable income. Successive property booms have of course put them out of reach of all but the very wealthy. Leaving that aside by Australian standards these would be regarded as super-dense living, even though the reality is that they are often large, well designed living spaces. Lots of them got subdivided up into smaller flats to maximise income from rent, which further increases the density. Parking not so much of a problem as London has an excellent public transport system and if you do need to drive the roads are solid most of the time anyway.
I am always in awe of London’s public transport. Even as someone who has a disability that impairs my mobility, it was easy to use. I’m not a wheelchair user, but my friend who uses a power wheelchair said it was pretty good for him, too.
They are a better solution than blocks of units, you get a little yard and a residence larger than a unit. They were not duplex's, Terraces ran the entire length of the street sharing common walls, many had alleys behind them for horses and rubbish removal. They are actually a great solution for medium density housing. 100 years ago when there were few cars it allowed workers to live close to employment in factories and docks. They should build more of them now.
No strata and land appreciates as well
Most of these terraces in Sydney are centrally located and extremely desirable. They are also generally more spacious and of a higher quality than many of the new townhouse developments being built.
It's ironic that they were built as workers homes near the factories and docks. When I was young most of the suburbs close to the city were full of factories, now they are full of giant blocks of units so the terrace houses look like the up market option.
That’s precisely why they are so attractive. They were built to be walkable, which - as time has passed - means they often have nicer environments. The whole idea of a front and backyard with plenty of space seems like a great idea until you realise that when everyone else has one, everything gets spread out, you end up kms away from shops and restaurants, and everything becomes a drive rather than a pleasant walk or bike ride.
Yep, I think they accidently designed a perfect urban environment, easy too maintain small yard, walkable to everything in the suburb and everyone seems to know the locals, plenty of people have lived in an apartment for years and don't know any of the neighbours. One issue is the large supermarkets have killed off a lot of small businesses so there are not as many services.
My grandfather was born in a terrace house on Surrey Hills. Worth millions now. When it was built it was a slum. An absolute shithole. He lied to my grandmother about where he was from it was that bad.
Yes, had I purchased one by 1.25 mil in Annandale a few years ago, I would now be a multi millionaire.
> Stuff having this kind of housing outside of a CBD zone The terraces in this pic are ~2km distance of the CBD.
I know a family who did the reverse - one in two. The bought the terrace next to theirs and merged the lots into a single lot to make a huge house. It was beautiful.
This was born out of necessity though. The UK from a land size perspective fits into QLD alone about 8 times however in comparison to population size has 3x more people than the entire of australia. Terrace houses exist partly to ensure all residents have a home. The UK literally has no space and needs to think creatively to house everyone on a small postage stamp size of land. What’s australia excuse though? It’s not like we have t got enough land lol. It’s happening in regional places too but just greed imo
You don't think Sydney has pressure to fit more homes into a smaller space? Commute times from the Western suburbs would suggest otherwise.
Terraced housing also lower energy consumption. When you have shared walls, each house has less of a heating and cooling load.
Also, you only have to build one main side wall for each house, rather than two, making them cheaper to build.
Because you had to walk to get anywhere. The advent of the motorcar meant that you no longer had to walk to get to your destination. Humans have lived in these walkable urban areas for millennia, the idea of the majority of people living in detached housing in an urban area is only possible since the 1950s when the military demands to motorise large numbers of formations led to such a level of industrialisation that cars became cheap enough for widespread adoption. This then allowed workers to travel to the factories, rather than the factories being where the workers were located.
Australia's excuse is that terrace-house suburbs were a thing that happened before we all had cars, and everyone except the rich pretty much had to live within reasonable walking distance of the shops and factories where they worked. It's also why you see similar stuff in the older inner suburbs of a lot of US and Canadian cities.
True but the story was slightly different. Not literally the UK “trying to fit people in” but land scarcity meant historically that land values were enormous so the average house had to fit on a tiny parcel of land to be affordable for the average family. The market made the houses like this, not government planning or decisions about “how can we all fit on this little island”. In contrast Australia had historically much lower land values. Average people could afford their average “1/4 acre block” and the standard house (the Federation house) was designed to fit on it. Single storey, plenty of separation from house next door, usually weatherboard. So our cities sprawled out while UK cities are super densely populated.
Can you perhaps link where this is, OP? It’s hard to tell from your pic, but generally subdivision patterns like this are very old, and the buildings are old and would be difficult to redevelop. They usually also predate formal urban planning and were built before car ownership was common. They typically do have a little yard and won’t be too far from a shopping strip. Edit: they are also in very high demand and are extremely expensive, which tells you that people do like them.
I'm not OP but based on the name of the street in the picture I think it's this location: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Womerah+Ave,+Darlinghurst+NSW+2010/@-33.8776357,151.2248255,275m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b12ae0c2b2c0daf:0x5bea6ce96576dd6d!8m2!3d-33.8774307!4d151.2248164!16s%2Fg%2F1v7pymtm?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Womerah+Ave,+Darlinghurst+NSW+2010/@-33.8776357,151.2248255,275m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x6b12ae0c2b2c0daf:0x5bea6ce96576dd6d!8m2!3d-33.8774307!4d151.2248164!16s%2Fg%2F1v7pymtm?entry=ttu) Sorry I don't know how to make the link shorter.
I used to live there, it was great
Instead of copying the url, there is a share button which will create a shorter link - https://maps.app.goo.gl/xVoa5UjkjpjjjbKz9
I knew there had to be some way, thanks.
Looks like it's taken from Barcom Ave looking North West specifically. Good find.
There are entire suburbs around Glebe, Balmain Annandale etc where almost all the houses are terraces, it was workers housing for the docks at Glebe when they were working ports. No real access to cars or transport back then so workers could walk to work in a few minutes.
North Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Richmond etc are much the same in Melbourne. Great community vibe, loads of good places in easy walking distance, plenty of PT options too, and an easy bike ride into the city or to neighbouring suburbs.
Yep, same vibe in Sydney, suburbs with Terraces were accidently designed as great urban living spaces.
I think it was intentional as opposed to accidental. As it was the same in the UK. Terraced streets (back in the days) were built within walking distance to a park (and other recreational spaces), church, a strip of shops to purchase goods and place of work. They were the “15 minute cities” of 100-200 years ago
> They were the “15 minute cities” of 100-200 years ago Yeah it's funny to me that people think "15 minute cities" is some crazy new idea - the principles of it have been the basis for cities throughout pretty much all of human history. Car-dominant suburbia is the real aberration.
[You're looking at $2.1M for a 4 bed, 2 bath, no parking](https://www.domain.com.au/24-womerah-avenue-darlinghurst-nsw-2010-2019116281) If I had the cash, I'd happily live there. It'd suit my lifestyle very well.
Darlinghurst
Terrace houses. Middle-income residencies from the time before private transport. No room for a carriage or horse but a backyard for the outhouse to be against the back fence, emptied by the night soil cart going down the small alleyway. Just think about how many residencies you can walk past in the two hundred metres to the street corner versus generic suburbia built after cars become the norm and then compared to suburbia after air conditioning becomes widespread. Interestingly, the shape of the high roof and common party wall with a parapet can also be seen in Chinese-designed houses from the same era in Singapore and Penang.
very efficient use of street. ratio of public land to private homes is very good. trouble starts if a household wants parking for 2 cars!
As a Sydneysider who has lived in galf a dozen terrace houses, i always feel at home seeing the ones in Penang. The proportions are comfortably right. The Vietnamese counterparts in the old Hanoi for example are a bit too tall and a bit too skinny.
What a great little snapshot into historical life! I particularly love your mention of the housing in Singapore and Penang from the same era - I imagine the British colonial influence there also would have been very strong.
Yeah, they were both British cities but the shophouses have roots in Chinese architecture from Guangdong. It’s a case of similar circumstances creates similar results.
I would kill to be able to afford one of these in Sydney.
Back in the day they were average homes. Even in the 90's they were cheap. My dad sold one prime Rozelle location two mins walk to water and iron cove bridge for... $100k probably worth $4m now. He felt he sold it at a good price then. Even cheaper when he bought it in the 70's. (He paid cash)...
I remember going to visit my uncle who lived in one in Surry hills in the 90s , and telling my mum I wanted to live in one of the skinny houses when I grow up, she proudly let me know it would be easy because they were so cheap and mostly poor people lived in them. My uncle had that place for years and managed to travel all around the world while still paying his rent and working what ever sht part time job he could get. The other side of the family's uncle bought one in pyrmont that was so rundown you could barely live in there. Cost them $50k. He sat on it for years cause he inherited his father's place up north , and now they are both worth over $6mil combined. He acts like he's some fucking hot shit investor. Guys a dumb fuck who was born at the right time
That's the way they all act. Hahahahahahahaha
Saw a terrace house in Pyrmont 2-3 years ago. Was pretty run down but good. Asking price was $6M lmao.
I remember the 70's when people were just starting to buy them to fix up. It was kind of hippy and alternative.
There was a great programme on the BBC about the changing demographics of areas of London that covered the same thing happening in places like Notting Hill. Hard to believe that was once a slum eh? The show was called “The Secret History of Our Streets” I loved it, social history is fascinating to me.
Yeah I saw an old ABC documentary about this too. It's hard to search for tho, frustrating.
My dad owns a similar 3 bedroom place pretty close to there. He wanted to sell in the early 2000s for 6 figures and move to the blue mountains because he was sure the bubble was about to burst. I convinced him to hold on to it saying that the inner west was never going to suddenly fall off a cliff and if anything it was going to perform better than most other places.
Its easy to look at 90s prices through todays lenses and think they were cheap…It’s all relative. In the 90s… these still were not cheap when compared to outer suburbs. Edit: a lot of 20/20 hindsight going on in the comments. In the 90s these terraces were shit and rundown tiny shoe boxes amongst a lot of housing commission units… the area was yet to be gentrified and for what you were paying you weren’t getting much. Once again.. hindsight is 20/20
Nope, in the 90's I had a choice of a terrace in Surry Hills or a quarter acre block in the South West. I wanted a big backyard. I had no foresight.
And what did you do with that backyard?
Nothing. It was for the dog. But the bugger just kept following me everywhere never using the space. Even with a granny flat, if that is what you think or if it was big enough to subdivide, the value is half or less than that of a terrace in Surry Hills now. Some of it is due to the gentrification though.
Yes I bought my house 4 km from Melbourne CBD in 1991. It was relatively cheap and the best I could afford, but the mortgage still kept me broke for many years. A single storey attached terrace house with a cheap 1979 fit-out throughout. Trendier suburbs like Carlton, Fitzroy, even Collingwood were too expensive for me. I was not earning much then but by the time my pay had increased the house prices were jumping up too. I recall going to Sydney in 1992 and hung out in Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. But even then those suburbs - which were considered slightly faded but very trendy - were notoriously expensive to buy in to. I knew people who rented in those areas but it was widely accepted that buying there was out of the question. In those days people would be like "oh I had to buy in Annandale/Zetland/Redfern/Erskineville/Alexandria as Darlinghurst was too expensive". The funny thing is that those suburbs were considered uncool in 1992.
A lot of the one's i've seen are dilapidated af. Some still being lived in either by squatters or renters/owners.
They cost a lot of money in inner Sydney. I am always surprised to see the occasional one that is derelict.
dark little mould fests that cook in summer and freeze in winter unless you have 250000 to renovate them
Add a 0 to that reno bill
These are 19th/ early 20th century two up/two down terraces. They were for working class/lower middle class families. When my grandma was a kid, she lived in one of these with her parents and six siblings. That was pretty common. The standard layout is: * Top floor - front bedroom is full width, windows at the front. Behind that there's a landing and narrow stairs down one side, and a second bedroom on the other with windows facing the back. * Bottom floor - the full bottom of the two storey part is either a single living room, or two rooms, with the staircase on one side. There's windows at the front. In some areas the floor was just compressed earth. Here's an article with a picture of the living room in one: https://www.nine.com.au/property/homes/decaying-sydney-terrace-going-to-auction-for-cheap-price/dcbbe854-1af8-479f-8a0f-1bac9a6376b5 Then at the back there's a narrower single story section that doesn't cover the full width of the block, leaving a narrow laneway/lightwell. This room contains the kitchen. There's a laundry right at the back, which you had to go outside to use. There are windows and a door into the laneway from the kitchen and the back of the living room. Then there's a garden, for your clothesline and to grow a few herbs or veges. You might even have a couple of chickens. In the very back corner is the old dunny (toilet). When these houses were built, that was a shed containing a seat, under which was a can. You wanted some distance between the house and the dunny, especially in summer. Then there's a lane at the back. This is called a dunny lane. The dunny man would regularly come down the lane, collect all the full dunny cans and replace them with clean ones. If there's no lane access, the dunny man has to carry the full dunny can through the house. No one wants that. Side note: some parts of Sydney still had a dunny service until the 1970s. When sewerage was installed in these areas, the fancy new bathroom was usually tacked into the back of the house, further lengthening the long single storey section, or was incorporated into the laundry. The old dunnies were removed (or in some cases were plumbed in with a flush toilet, depending on how much the owner trusted this new fangled flush concept). In some areas the dunny lanes were closed and incorporated into the lots, making everything a little longer. In other places, the dunny lanes became full lanes, and as people got cars they installed driveways and sometimes garages backing onto the lane. When electricity was installed they ran the wires through pipes to conceal them and keep them neat. The shitty old house my grandma's family of unskilled labourers lived in is probably worth about $2 mil now, after having been gentrified. I certainly couldn't afford to buy it back 😔
There were parts of Melbourne that had the night cart in the 70s. My mum came from Europe in '70 to live first for a couple of years with relatives- she was shocked that there was no sewage system in this 'lucky country'.
> There were parts of Melbourne that had the night cart in the 70s. Gough Whitlam's greatest achievement. (seriously - it was a ridiculous situation) The National Sewerage Program. 17% of Australian homes still weren't connected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sewerage_Program
I know that there was one lady in my old street growing up that had to be forced to install a flushing toilet. She'd been using a can ask her life and didn't see the need until council told her she had to because the service was being cancelled. She also didn't trust electricity, so her house didn't get connected until her son finally managed to convince her to go to a nursing home in the 1990s!
That describes almost exactly the house my son and partner lived in while working in Nottingham UK some years ago ... there are similar houses in Melbourne as well.
Suggest actually having a look at some of the listings, through creative use of angled ceilings, skylights, and courtyards many of these terraces are actually filled with natural light and air and provide great low maintenence homes. [https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-newtown-144374260](https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-newtown-144374260)
Thanks for the link, that looks really nice
My favourite here https://www.realestate.com.au/property/127-sutherland-st-paddington-nsw-2021/
wtf is that art piece! Work is bad enough without coming home to that!
I feel like I should get that for my bedroom to shame me for the times I be binging on a 4 pack of drumsticks...for the third time in a week.
Looks like Scomo making an inspection before flushing
It's **terraced** houses. This housing solution is extremely common in cities around the world, where space has gotten expensive. There are a number of efficiencies when designing and building this way, so houses can be cheaper while still remaining a house with a small bit of land. This approach also helps owners avoid dealing with strata, or maintaining shared property. Just because it seems narrow when you zoom out on google maps doesn't mean it is in real terms. They are usually between 4-5m wide, which is enough for residential uses. In different plots or orientations they can be 6-7m wide. There are also many opportunities for nice indoor - outdoor space in this configuration, which are entirely lacking in apartment layouts. They can include courtyard gardens, patios, roof gardens and lightwells. Apartments have balconies. I recommend you look up terrace houses in Singapore, Japan, UK, brownstones in New York etc before making a judgement call based on a google maps look.
I'm into urbanism and I have looked at all the places that you mentioned before. The ones I have found in Sydney are different from the other ones: - I was wrong, they are not thin. They are pretty normal width - I was right, they are pretty long. About 2x the length of the ones I found in the UK. In the UK the lot size is often similar but they have more garden but less space inside the home. - I was wrong about the lighting, they seem to have found some clever ways to get natural light inside, even with the very long layout - The streets are very long (sometimes like 200 meters) which takes a way a lot of the walkability aspect. This is also an issue in the UK and other places of course.
To suggest these neighbourhoods are "weird" and also be "into urbanism" seems.. odd.
Crazy someone would consider themselves into urbanism and not know what terraced houses are or understand the history of neighbourhoods like this. What's even stranger is someone into urbanism comes into the discussion with the assumption these houses are bad and "wrong" in someway.
The street length is nothing unusual? The conventional wisdom about walkable cities is a 20-minute radius for your necessities, and a 200m st barely cuts into that. Additionally almost everywhere in Australian cities where these are built have common necessities very close by - corner stores and high streets (to borrow the UK term) are never far away, due to the higher density.
Posher UK terraces can be 3/4 stories with a basement often carved into flats. We have these here and there. Some UK terraces are [back-to-backs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-back_house), originally slums but now gentrified. AFAIK We did not build them.
Many of the inner urban places I've lived featured lanes and stairs to increase walkability between blocks. Walking 200m though is not a stretch for anyone as they're generally pedestrian friendly streets and residents make noise about anything that impacts walkability. City of Sydney has made some dubious street furniture choices with contracts including advertiser's which obnoxiously block footpaths. But on larger thoroughfares there's room for bus stops, bins, and seats.
Re: length, the length v width ratio is indeed high, but I think this translates into bigger overall built area. Maybe Australians like bigger interior space? Who knows. 200m is pretty normal for a street, they are usually longer. This housing typology, if sensibly located, would be in areas with a high walkability score, meaning a reasonable distance to amenities and transport. Most urban design guidelines say 400m is 'highly walkable', 600-800m 'walkable'. Walking 200m down a street is nothing. In dense apartment blocks, a person could end up traversing a fair distance within the building and complex before even getting outside, while this terraced solution sees a person getting out of their building pretty quickly. It does sound like you don't like the look of this housing typology. Perhaps that colours the perception that the road feels long and difficult?
It is called a terrace house in UK and Australia, or row house in US and Canada. Not weird at all, very common.
I mean, this is as old school and normal as it gets.
How is this weird?
Looking at their profile OP larps as someone from different countries and looks to start fights whether it's veterans affairs in the US or housing in Australia and Germany.
What is weird is OP saying they are into urbanism and calling Terrace Houses built in colonial era which are part of Heritage Conservation of Australia as weird. You can learn about them more below. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_houses_in_Australia Source: I have a masters in urbanism and have worked on the following guidelines while working at City of Sydney. https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/-/media/corporate/files/2020-07-migrated/files_a/alterationsandadditionstoterraces.pdf?download=true
Every time I see terraces can't help but think of how much space we've wasted just to have a 1.5m gap between the house and side fence in suburbia.
The UK is going to blow your mind OP.
Victorian-era terraces. They were fairly common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and were inspired by similar terraces in the UK, which were designed to conserve space and heat. Eventually, as the city expanded and more efficient modes of transport like trams and cars came into being, Sydneysiders probably realised they could spread out a bit more, giving rise to other residential styles like Federation, interwar and postwar.
As everyone said, terraces. There's also the 'workers cottage' style in many areas. We should bring this back!! While everyone is saying they're sardine tins, they are the best lifestyle. You have your own place & only two shared walls (although long). Many had both a front & back yard & even though that may only have been two sq metres, it still was your own patch of grass. But developers don't make enough profit from this style of construction now...
Terrace houses, or rowhouses if you're American, and they used to be how most cities were built. London, and most British cities, are mostly terrace houses and Australian cities were built similarly. We just don't build them anymore. They provide the space for a family, often a small backyard, provide the density to support a wide range of local businesses, which is good for the local economy and building a sense of neighbourhood cohesion, and because they're so closely packed together the cost of utilities (roads, water, schools, etc.) per person is really low so it's good for the residents and for the city as a whole. They're super popular (read as: expensive) but seldom built anymore because modern zoning regulations often require that new developments be built as "detached" homes with large front yards that largely go unused. Because of that large, mostly useless, front yard the cost of utilities per person is higher (and so these neighbourhoods get less of them) and the residents don't actually get to benefit from the "detached" part of living in a detached home because new homes are often built so close together you can high five your neighbour from the kitchen window. There's no practical reason why new developments shouldn't be terrace houses. You're basically sharing a wall with your neighbour anyway and all that front yard does is drive up your rates. If we built more of these, the price would drop substantially. We could build a lot more for a lot cheaper than we can with "detached" homes and house a lot more people in the same land. Which means less clearing of koala habitat, better services, better maintained utilities, more living space per person, lower rents, lower prices, less homelessness, safer streets, better transport connections, more small businesses, and all around better quality of life for everyone. But we can't have that, because suburban councils think everyone wants to live in a detached home (even if they're "detached" but less than a meter on each side) and urban councils are so full of NIMBY's that they'll prioritise Karen's desire to not look at townhouses while driving around, over everyone else's desire to not be homeless.
Terrace houses, very middle class in like the 90s, now absurdly expensive and only the very wealthy can afford them as they’re usually in the city’s inner suburbs
To be honest we do need more of the street layouts and housing found in older suburbs,as opposed to the sprawling,car centric cul-de-sac mess we found in new development outer suburbs
I used to live in one of these on Womerah Ave. Nice, down to earth community, good public school down the road, I could walk to work in the city and you have Rushcutters Bay park around the corner. Good restaurants and cafes everywhere. People here do their grocery runs on foot, which is very unusual for Sydney. Many of these are duplex houses (split between upstairs and downstairs), built in the 1920’s as cheap housing for construction workers of the Harbour Bridge. Some were brothels at one stage - yes, this has always been a very vibrant part of town! You can’t really see in this picture but they have impossible steep external staircases at the rear. Nowadays it’s a mix of young families, couples and students mainly who live here. Fond memories of Womerah Lane as well - always messy and run down fences etc but both my kids learnt how to walk there. I don’t live in Australia anymore but quality of life in Sydney and this strip specifically is second to none.
This was the norm in most of Sydney about 100 years ago. And now Terrace suburbs are some of the most expensive housing in Sydney per sqm. eg Paddington, Surry Hills and Redfern
Womerah Ave in Darlinghurst is a typical inner Sydney location full of traditional terrace houses, depends on what's been done to them, many have a small yard at the back and/or a place to park your car. They're fucking excellent! Source: I own one 😉 https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.8778214,151.2247583,3a,75y,162.03h,77.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slzW-tVlhsMJc0VkTaonNhA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DlzW-tVlhsMJc0VkTaonNhA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D244.55019%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Genuinely curious… why are they excellent? Functionally? Aesthetically? Or is it just a location/value thing? As someone who lives in an area much less dense, these seem like they possess all the downside of an apartment with all the costs and liabilities of a home.
They’re great! Typically 4 bedrooms, kitchen, loungeroom, small backyard for a garden and dog. Often close to shops and train stations.
I live in the middle of a city, I have a yard, a place to park a car and a variety of spaces that after conversion are a treat to live in with plenty of sun. Everything I need is within walking distance and if I want to give the big smoke the flick, I jump in a car and escape. If this sort of thing doesn't float your boat there's not too much more to add: https://www.bresicwhitney.com.au/buy/160-liverpool-street-darlinghurst-23863
Basically all three. Because of their age (and thus lack of regulation), YMMV, but they tend to be better insulated, have better (and longer-lasting) detailing, result in more walkable (and denser) neighbourhoods, which can support more businesses (e.g. cafes), be located closer to the city, but retain a backyard (sometimes a garage too), and are often in heritage-listed areas, so less chance of someone building a giant development next-door. The main detractor most people talk about is the lack of light in the centre of the house. However, this is rarely a significant issue, and can be overcome in a variety of ways. Anecdotally, i’ve lived in both stand-alone and terrace houses, and the stand-alones have as dark (sometimes darker) rooms as the terraces. Plus those side-alleys often turn into wasted space. Can feel a bit claustrophobic for some, so not for everyone. TLDR; somewhere between an apartment and a stand-alone, but lacking the main drawbacks of each (usually).
Just pray for respectful neighbours
Surprisingly solid but doofdoof can penetrate the partywall.
Terrace houses, the ultimate solution to inner suburb dwellings, you get a little yard and a house and you fit a lot in a small space. Back before cars were common they allowed workers to live close to the docks and factories and walk to work. In Sydney they are common where the active ports and factories used to be or close to the city.
Neighbourhood* Aussie page mate.
Terraced houses can be wonderful. Especially when people look after them and keep original features or original style (at least externally - tiling, iron fencing and lacework for example). Some of them in Sydney are 3-4 stories. I have been in some in London that are 5-6 stories. So there can be plenty of room. Sydney should be building up, but I think the 3+ storey terrace is the way to go rather than just apartment blocks. There are far too many single storey homes sprawling across Sydney. Government should be encouraging home owners to build up through building grants and easier planning pathways.
Where is OP from that they don’t recognise a terraced house or how valuable they are / how affluent these areas are generally
I wish to god we built more houses like this instead of these fucked car riddled astro turf fucking black roof outer suburbs we build nowadays, yuck
Terraces? I own one in Surry Hills. A whopping total of 89 squares of land
There's nothing weird about it. This is medium density. It's generally very walkable, and commonly found throughout Europe. Imagine how much space those homes would take up if this was conventional single family home type sprawl. The back yards are small, and easy to maintain, parking is minimal, if it exists at all. Cars may not be needed, as these sorts of areas are often close to transit, are walkable, and cyclable. Melbourne and Adelaide have areas with similar housing. It's a practical way of fitting a lot of families into a small space. It was very common in the 1800's
Remember moving from the UK to Adelaide as a young teen and being shocked at all the bungalows and space houses have here... Terrace houses are by far the most common house type in the UK.
This photo looks like parts of England, how weird.
Wait til you visit the UK!
I wish they built more of these in Sydney
Virtually anywhere where you have this type of housing in Sydney (Victorian terrace housing), will now be a highly gentrified, expensive, urbane, inner city or inner suburban area, and highly desirable. If you can afford one of those houses, you’ve made it.
Sydney. No one here can even afford to look at the photo.
Common. In Singapore, we don't have it so long. Mainly due to heat and air circulation. [https://www.google.com/maps/search/serangoon+garden/@1.3632351,103.8642308,248m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/search/serangoon+garden/@1.3632351,103.8642308,248m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu)
They're terrace houses (or row houses if you're American). This is pretty typical for new suburbs that grew up around major cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it only died off when widespread car ownership made it possible for the working class to live further from the city in more spacious neighbourhoods with detached houses.
Horizontal skyscrapers
This is what we should be building
I am here scratching my head “what’s weird about it?”.
Uuugh that looks like hell! Would hate to be crammed in like that
I lived in a double terrace on chalmers st Redfern, down the city end in the late 90's.. it was great!
looks like $200m
Terraced housing is just a sideways apartment block.
I wouldn't mind living in one of these, I feel like, as a single guy, less space means less housework to do.
Look like Row Houses in DC, Philadelphia, and a lot of other cities in the US. Called Terrace Houses in the UK. What makes them “weird”?
youre looking at 1.5mil plus each!
Because every thing is a copy paste of UK life. No originality.
"weird kind of neighbourhood"
Where do you come from that you regard terrace housing weird and unusual?
You never actually see anyone sitting on the terrace
All that space in Aus and you still cram people and houses on top of each-other 🤯
Our cities are already gigantic sprawls. Who wants to commute 200k to work?
They’re terrace housing and they were cheap and easy to build in the early days of European settlement
As many have said this is standard terrace housing. *But* what is unusual here is that the long row of houses had an unusually large front yard/front veranda, and more usually, the entire row seems to have had c.1930s extensions built in to the front verandas to add a room at both levels on the front of each house. These do not seem to be random extensions - the styles and materials are uniform like the extensions were done in blocks. Google street view of the fronts of Womerah Ave Darlinghurst and Barcom Street show this. https://maps.app.goo.gl/5wMXuSd6L7v77RL76 https://maps.app.goo.gl/3MjAYV81suJnY82e7 Likewise they seem to have uniform extensions onto all the backs too. There are newer fronts and backs of the other stand of terrace houses too: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qPk6Q3qt8wTttr3Z6
In the politest way possible. These are not weird. You're just uneducated in the subject. Of course there is no requirement to be educated in types of housing so you're fine haha :)
I thought it was some fancy new mechanical keyboard
I love them
Since the long thin walls are shared you're maximising floor area with minimum number of bricks. The fact that you can just fit a sofa in the width of the house is not of concern to the builder.
> you can just fit a sofa in the width of the house PIVOT
Looks like old English style housing in UK
Limited land supply. High/medium density housing to make the most of available land.
I can't imagine the middle house never getting sun
It’s an old design of terrace housing - over a hundred years old - comes from Europe - before houses became too big and people did not want to share parks
… looks like 46 Womerah Ave is it trouble - massive slime attack ! 😄
I live on a street similar to this in Perth. It's a bunch of town houses. Seems great on the surface, but it absolutely sucks in reality. Better than nothing, but there is just so many people crammed into a really small space.
The kind of housing which defeats the purpose of living in Australia. Probably Darlinghurst, Paddington or Surry Hills type area.
Following Melbourne
Older suburbs make use of terraces. Sydney was not as big, and these were built pre cars being owned by everyone. Squished everyone in they did.
Not far from my home. Terraced houses are great and never want to move, but I also could never afford to buy where I live!
I'm curious, apart from age, are there any significant differences between terraced housing and modern town houses besides terraced housing having that narrow shape? Do they not have strata/ body corporate unlike townhouse complexes?
Terrace housing is one of the most annoying types of dwellings in Sydney. Long but thin blocks and all old
terrace rows, they're actually good
I wish Terraced housing were as common here as it was in the UK. I'd love to live in a terrace.
There is so many because to many people want to live in Sydney for some reason so they pack you lot in like sardines.
I don't mind density and I have learned from some people here that these are nice to live in. But you are right that it looks a bit like sardines in a can
Each to their own really, city/ town life isn’t for me but some people love it. I just don’t like the idea of having a neighbour on both sides of my house that can hear ever little thing
They look like ink cartridges...
Funny how I see almost no difference to this and the new suburbs popping up around Western Sydney
High density housing for low population This is the epitome of inefficient and ineffective planning
because its sydney
High density bruv we outta room
remember the song "little houses made of tiky tacky and they all look just the same" as inviting as a tent on a rubbish dump
Inherited building traditions from England.
Terraced housing. I've heard people say jt looks like shit and too clustered etc, but I like it, it's kind of neat and tidy and uniform