All Topics  
Tract housing

 
Tract Housing

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

Tract housing



 
 
Tract housing (also known as cookie-cutter housing) is a style of housing development in which multiple identical or nearly-identical homes are built to create a community. Tract housing developments may encompass dozens of square miles. Tract housing developments are typically found in North American suburbs that were modeled on the "Levittown"
Levittown, New York

Levittown, a suburb of New York City, is a Administrative divisions of New York#Hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York....
 concept.

Tract housing development only makes use of a few designs, and labor costs are reduced because workers only need to learn the skills and movements of constructing a limited variety of home designs.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Tract housing'
Start a new discussion about 'Tract housing'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Dsc06601
Tract housing (also known as cookie-cutter housing) is a style of housing development in which multiple identical or nearly-identical homes are built to create a community. Tract housing developments may encompass dozens of square miles. Tract housing developments are typically found in North American suburbs that were modeled on the "Levittown"
Levittown, New York

Levittown, a suburb of New York City, is a Administrative divisions of New York#Hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York....
 concept.

Tract housing development only makes use of a few designs, and labor costs are reduced because workers only need to learn the skills and movements of constructing a limited variety of home designs. In addition, as all homes in the development will be built at the same time, the cost of purchasing and transporting building supplies may be reduced due to economies of scale. Components such as roof trusses, plumbing trees, and stair systems are often fabricated in factories and installed on site. This allows contractors to reduce prices, which in turn can make homes more affordable (and more accessible to a larger percentage of the population) and may also allow contractors to reap higher profits.

Early tract homes were often identical, but more recently built tract homes no longer look identical from the exterior; variations range from mass-produced homes with superficial, cosmetic differences to multiple variations in footprint, roof form, and materials. In addition, floor plans may be reversed or rooms or garage bays added or removed. Builders or buyers of new homes may also be able to specialize custom upgrades.

Alternating reversal of floor plans allows the creation of a "utility side" of the house, with common drop locations from the street utilities, reducing both cost and visual clutter, with the opposite side more pleasing in appearance. Such reversal often ignores potential beneficial orientation relative to sun, wind, and shade.

The concept of tract housing is occasionally mocked in American popular culture
Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of Distinction memes, ideas, Perspective s and Attitude s that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture....
 as the basis of a sterile and dispiriting suburb
Suburb

Suburbs are commonly defined as the residential areas which surround the central area of the urban area of a town or city. In the United States, suburbs have a prevalence of usually detached single-family homes.....
ia. Nonetheless, the use of tract housing in new American suburban developments continues to dominate.

See also


  • Housing estate
    Housing estate

    A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance....
  • McMansion
    McMansion

    McMansion is a pejorative term coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westervelt to describe a particular type of house that is constructed in an assembly line fashion reminiscent of food production at McDonald's Corporation fast food restaurants....
  • Ticky tacky
    Ticky tacky

    Ticky tacky or ticky-tacky is a colloquial term for "Wiktionary:shoddy [poor quality] material, as for the construction of tract housing"....