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A quantification of minimum floor space requirements

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Forum for Social Economics

Abstract

In order to live and maintain life, people require some amount of shelter as protection against nature's elements. This paper investigates minimum areas required for shelter. To this end, standards of floor space for households consisting of one to five persons and available from the World Wide Web were obtained for locations in the United States, Canada, Scotland, England, Denmark, India, Hong Kong, Thailand and refugee camps. While some variation exists among regions, particularly for larger households, plotted data indicate a convergence to a minimum requirement of about 140 square feet for single-person households

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lakewood, Washington

    Matthew A. Isham

Authors
  1. Matthew A. Isham
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Additional information

I am indebted to Ms. Kathie Nelson of Regency at Tacoma for helpful discussion and comments culminating in this paper.

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Isham, M.A. A quantification of minimum floor space requirements. FSSE 33, 81–90 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02745497

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02745497

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