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Tract Housing
Tract housing is a type of housing development in which multiple similar houses are built on a tract (area) of land that is subdivided into smaller lots. Tract housing developments are found in suburb developments that were modeled on the "Levittown" concept and sometimes encompass large areas of dozens of square miles. Design Tract housing came about in the 1940s when the demand for cheap housing skyrocketed. Economies of scale meant that large numbers of identical houses could be built faster and more cheaply to fulfill the growing demand. Developers would purchase a dozen or more adjacent lots and conduct the building construction as an assembly-line process. Tract housing development makes use of few architectural designs, and labor costs are reduced because workers need to learn the skills and movements of constructing only those designs rather than repeat the learning curve. In addition, as all houses in the development will be built at the same time, the cost of purchasi ...
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Little Boxes
"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963, when he released his cover version. The song is a social satire about the development of suburbia, and associated conformist middle-class attitudes. It mocks suburban tract housing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky", and which "all look just the same". "Ticky-tacky" is a reference to the shoddy material supposedly used in the construction of the houses. Background Reynolds was a folk singer-songwriter and political activist in the 1960s and 1970s. Nancy Reynolds, her daughter, explained that her mother wrote the song after seeing the housing developments around Daly City, California, built in the post-war era by Henry Doelger, particularly the neighborhoods of Southern Hills on San Bruno Mountain. My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the son ...
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Row House
In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house (British English, UK) or townhouse (American English, US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings party wall, share side walls. In the United States and Canada they are also known as row houses or row homes, found in older cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Toronto. Terrace housing can be found throughout the world, though it is in abundance in Europe and Latin America, and extensive examples can be found in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. The Place des Vosges in Paris (1605–1612) is one of the early examples of the style. Sometimes associated with the working class, historical and reproduction terraces have increasingly become part of the process of gentrification in certain inner-city areas. Origins and nomenclature Though earlier Gothic Architecture, Gothic ecclesiastical examples, such as Vicars' ...
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Railroad Apartment
A railroad apartment or railroad flat, sometimes referred to as a floor-through apartment, is an apartment with a series of rooms connecting to each other in a line.Sennett, Richard. ''The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992. . The name comes from the layout's similarity to that of a typical (mid-20th century or earlier) passenger train car. Without hallways, it results in less semi-public space. This style is most common in New York City, San Francisco, and their surrounding areas. Railroad apartments are common in tenement buildings or even modern apartment blocks, and are sometimes found in subdivided brownstones. Railroad apartments first made an appearance in New York City in the mid-19th century, and were designed to provide a solution to urban overcrowding.Eisner, Simon; Gallion, Arthur; and Eisner, Stanley. ''The Urban Pattern''. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1993. Many early railroad apartments were extr ...
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List Of House Types
This is a list of house types. Houses can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between free-standing or single-family detached homes and various types of attached or multi-family residential dwellings. Both may vary greatly in scale and the amount of accommodation provided. By layout Hut A hut is a dwelling of relatively simple construction, usually one room and one story in height. The design and materials of huts vary widely around the world. Bungalow Bungalow is a common term applied to a low one-story house with a shallow-pitched roof (in some locations, dormered varieties are referred to as 1.5-story, such as the chalet bungalow in the United Kingdom). Cottage A cottage is a small house, usually one or two story in height, although the term is sometimes applied to larger structures. Ranch A ranch-style house or rambler is one-story, low to the ground, with a low-pitched roof, usually rectangular, L- or U-shaped with deep over ...
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List Of House Styles
This list of house styles lists styles of vernacular architecture used in the design of houses. African Asian South American Mediterranean, Spanish, Italian Neoclassical Elizabethan and Tudor Colonial French and Canadian Victorian and Queen Anne American Indian Modern and Post-modern See also * List of architectural styles An architectural style is characterized by the features that make a building or other structure notable and historically identifiable. A style may include such elements as form, method of construction, building materials, and regional character. Mo ... References External links Summary of common residential architectural styles & themes {{DEFAULTSORT:List Of House Styles House styles, List of ...
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Housing Estate
A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Popular throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, they are often areas of high-density, low-impact residences of single-family detached homes and often allow for separate ownership of each housing unit, for example through subdivision. In major Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo, an estate may range from detached houses to high-density tower blocks with or without commercial facilities; in Europe and America, these may take the form of town housing, high-rise housing projects, or the older-style rows of terraced houses associated with the Industrial Revolution, detached or semi-detached houses with small plots of land around them forming gardens, and are frequently without commercial facilities an ...
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Exurb
An exurb (or alternately: exurban area) is an area outside the typically denser inner suburban area, at the edge of a metropolitan area, which has some economic and commuting connection to the metro area, low housing density, and growth. It shapes an interface between urban and rural landscapes holding a limited urban nature for its functional, economic, and social interaction with the urban center, due to its dominant residential character. They consist of "agglomerations of housing and jobs outside the municipal boundaries of a primary city" and beyond the surrounding suburbs. Definitions The word ''exurb'' (a portmanteau of ''extra (outside)'' and ''urban'') was coined by Auguste Comte Spectorsky, in his 1955 book ''The Exurbanites'', to describe the ring of prosperous communities beyond the suburbs, that are commuter towns for an urban area. In other uses the term has expanded to include popular extraurban districts which nonetheless may have poor transportation and under ...
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Rush (band)
Rush was a Canadian rock band formed in 1968 in Toronto, that was comprised primarily of Geddy Lee (bass, vocals), Alex Lifeson (guitar), and Neil Peart (drums, percussion, lyricist). The band formed in Toronto in 1968 by Lifeson, drummer John Rutsey, and bass guitarist/vocalist Jeff Jones, who was immediately replaced by Lee. After Lee joined, the band went through several lineup configurations before arriving at its classic power trio lineup with the addition of Peart in July 1974, who replaced Rutsey four months after the release of their 1974 self-titled debut album; this lineup remained intact for the remainder of the band's career. Rush achieved commercial success in the 1970s with '' Fly by Night'' (1975), '' 2112'' (1976), ''A Farewell to Kings'' (1977) and '' Hemispheres'' (1978). The band's popularity continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with albums charting highly in Canada, the US and the UK, including '' Permanent Waves'' (1980), '' Moving Pictures'' (1981) ...
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Subdivisions (song)
"Subdivisions" is a song by Canadian progressive rock group, Rush, released as the second single from their 1982 album ''Signals''. The song was a staple of the band's live performances, is played regularly on classic-rock radio, and appears on several greatest-hits compilations. It was released as a single in 1982, and despite limited success on the UK charts, the song had significant airplay in Great Britain. In the United States, it charted at No. 5 on the ''Billboard'' Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and No. 5 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Played live prior to its release, numerous pre-release live versions have circulated among collectors for years. Lyrics and background The song is a commentary on social stratification through the pressure to adopt certain lifestyles. It describes young people dealing with a " cool" culture amidst a comfortable yet oppressively mundane suburban existence in housing subdivisions. Anyone who does not obey social expectations is regarde ...
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Pet Shop Boys
The Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of primary vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 50 million records worldwide, and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music history in the 1999 edition of ''The Guinness Book of Records''. Three-time Brit Award winners and six-time Grammy nominees, since 1984 they have achieved 42 top 30 singles, 22 of these being top 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart, including four UK number ones: "West End Girls" (also number one on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100), "It's a Sin", a synth-pop version of " Always on My Mind", and "Heart". Other hit songs include a cover of " Go West", and their own "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)", and " What Have I Done to Deserve This?" in a duet with Dusty Springfield. With five US top ten singles in the 1980s, they are associated with the Second British Invasion. At the 2009 Brit Awards in London, the Pet Shop Boys recei ...
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Suburbia (song)
"Suburbia" is a song by English synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys. It was remixed and released as the fourth single from the duo's debut studio album, ''Please'' (1986), and became the band's second UK top-10 entry, peaking at number 8. "Suburbia" has drawn comparisons to the theme from ALF, which coincidentally premiered the day that the song was released. Background and music video The song's primary inspiration is the 1983 Penelope Spheeris film ''Suburbia'', and its depiction of violence and squalor in the suburbs of Los Angeles; in addition, the tension of the Brixton riots of 1981 and of 1985 hanging in recent memory led Neil Tennant of the duo to thinking about the boredom of suburbia and the underlying tension among disaffected youth that sparked off the riots at the least provocation. The various versions of the song are punctuated by sounds of suburban violence, riots and smashing glass, as well as snarling dogs on the re-recorded single version (extended even further ...
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