The density of residential areas.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
Date:
1952
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The density of residential areas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    75/86 (page 63)
    134. (iii) Conversions. Over the last three or four decades, a great many families have found their accommodation in single houses that have been converted into flats or maisonettes, and this is a process that probably still has some way to run before its possibilities are exhausted. These conversions can, on occasion, give rise to difficult problems of density. It is difficult to give much general advice beyond saying that every individual case should receive close consideration rather on the lines just suggested for single plots. There is however one caution to be observed. Most conversions do not add greatly to the actual size of a building, what they do is to make fuller use of it. Asa result, a long run of conversions may completely alter the population of a district, even to the extent of doubling or trebling it, and the planning authority need to be fully alert to what is happening so that they can properly assess the extent of the ultimate population and its needs, such as schools and open spaces. It is clear that the more knowledge the authority have of existing amounts of accommodation and Occupancy Rates the better will they be equipped to deal with the problem of conversions. Incidentally, conversions demonstrate more clearly perhaps than any other form of residential development the insufficiency of the old method of measuring density in houses per acre. The method has no significance when flats are in- volved, and an attempt to enforce a prescribed density of so-many houses per acre in the case of a conversion could well lead to serious hardship.