There is no discernible difference between terraced housing and row housing because they are the same thing. It’s just an issue of terminology choices and usage.
Row housing is both a generic and a North American phrase. Terraced housing is the phrase used in the United Kingdom. Townhouse, patio townhouse, maisonette, court housing, and group house are architectural synonyms. However, we will look at the definitions below.
What Is Terraced Housing?
British architects of the late Georgian period took the term terrace from garden terraces to describe streets of buildings with identical fronts and uniform heights that made a more attractive ensemble than a “row.”
A terrace, also known as a terraced house or townhouse, is a kind of medium-density housing that dates back to the 16th century in Europe and consists of a series of linked homes that share partitions.
Terraced houses are typically less expensive to purchase than detached or semi-detached houses in the same neighborhood. Because they are surrounded by other properties and hence retain heat well, they are generally more energy-efficient.
This is a high-intensity zone that allows for more intense growth. Terrace houses and flats with five to seven storeys are available in this zone for urban residential life.
What Is Row Housing?
The row house is inhabited by wealthy inhabitants of public housing, but it is mostly a reliable supply of middle-class accommodation. Row homes and comparable forms of housing provide renters with affordability and stability, as well as chances for non-professional landlords to acquire wealth and entrance points for small developers.
A row house is a multi-story structure that shares one or two common walls and a roof with its neighbors. Rowhouses, like townhouses, frequently line whole street blocks and have consistent exteriors.
Row houses get their name from the fact that they are properly lined up in a row along a roadway. A row house varies from a townhouse in that it frequently appears identical to the other units in the neighborhood. With a single façade, these houses have a highly homogeneous appearance.
Advantages Of Terraced Housing And Row Housing
- Row housing is an alternative to the land-consuming detached dwelling in terms of the community as a whole. In other words, row housing allows more families to be accommodated on the same amount of land
- For the government, this means that municipal services may be delivered more cost-effectively in terraced development zones than in other places. Terracing’s compact form allows more people to congregate in one area.
- reduced building costs; detached and semi-detached houses are more expensive to construct.
- The usage of precut sub-units, which are employed more frequently in terraced buildings than any other kind, saves money on construction.
- additional cost savings because there are fewer windows and party walls.
- By increasing the number of units per square foot of available space, each dwelling unit requires less land.
- a lower purchase price, which is usually due to lower construction costs
- Terraced designs with more useable open spaces, rather than conventional designs with useless tiny side yards and exposed front/back yards that give little seclusion, are created by current thinking in architecture and aesthetics.
- The homeowner saves money because, given current land and construction prices, terraced housing provides more area for less money than the alternatives.
- Cheaper operating and maintenance costs due to lower heating, external upkeep, and other costs
- more privacy as a result of living in rows
- Terracing allows for more efficient land utilization. As a result, more actual usable open space is available for more people, which would otherwise be locked up in detached housing. In other words, unused side yards and other areas can be turned up to create more space that is better suited for community benefit.
- In terms of government politics, terracing and its lower purchase cost both represent a larger dispersion of homeownership, which supports social and community stability without changing land allocation.
Disadvantages Of Terraced Housing And Row Housing
- The majority of terraced home projects have occurred in major cities.
- The question for city planners and regulators is whether such developments would eventually become slums.
- Admittedly, terraced housing began as nice housing and eventually devolved into slums or near-slums.
- Modern design and architectural treatment have substantially eliminated the majority of the negative characteristics of row housing in the past. What remains are our ingrained tastes and perceptions, which might be difficult to modify.
- Older terraced dwellings are almost often too tiny to accommodate effective interior design. This makes decorating difficult and limits the amount of living space available to the residents.
- Noise from adjacent units travels through the normally thin party walls, thereby establishing a nuisance structure.
- Since ventilation is difficult in tight constructions, terraced dwellings are generally hot and stuffy in the summer. As a result, the cost of installing ventilation systems for the resident’s increases.
- Though contemporary designs might make this a moot issue, outside monotony is aesthetically unpleasant.
- In older terraced houses, open space is largely unused. Front yards are worthless since they are unnecessary, to begin with. Backyards are frequently too lengthy and narrow to be useful for anything other than storing trash cans.
- Since every terraced property does not come with a garage, the street can quickly become congested, and vehicle servicing material.
OVERALL
Terraced housing is a type of medium-density urban dwelling in architecture and city planning. Its design and format date back to the sixteenth century in Europe.
The distinguishing feature is a row of similar buildings with shared sidewalls that are identical in style, structure, and construction (i.e., architectural monotony).
A terraced house (row house) usually consists of three or more residences organized two deep, either vertically, so that the dwellings are on top of one another, or horizontally so that the buildings are below one another, so dwellings are front and back. This type of multi-family building is known as “stacked row/terraced housing.”
Overpopulation and restricted open space, air, and light; overcrowding; terraced housing is perhaps one of the primary characteristics and bad repercussions that represent the emergence of the Industrial Age, overcrowding, and restricted open space, air, and light.
The architectural monotony conjures up strong mental images of unsuitable or dangerous living situations. The working classes and their living circumstances are frequently connected with such architecture.
Simply showing a snapshot of a row of historic townhouses is frequently enough to persuade a local community to change its housing zoning rules.