ancient cities

Castells, Manuel and Peter Hall. 1994. Technopoles of
the World: The Making of 21st-century Industrial
Complexes. London and New York: Routledge.
Cooke, Philip. 2001. “From Technopoles to Regional
Innovation Systems: The Evolution of Localised
Technology Development Policy.” Canadian Journal
of Regional Science 24:21–40.
Te n e m e n T
In the nineteenth century, the governments of
Great Britain and the United States officially
defined a tenement house as any structure housing
three or more families above the second story, with
each family living separately and having its own
cooking facilities. Each individual unit, or apartment,
was called a tenement; thus, a tenement
house was a structure holding multiple tenements.
Legally, this definition included all multifamily
housing, no matter the type of structure or its
inhabitants. The term existed before this legal
definition, however, and came to be associated
with urban, working-class rental housing.
In England and America, the term was also
associated with housing for the poor found primarily
in city slums. This negative connotation
persisted into the twentieth century, when the use
of apartment or flat became more commonly used
to refer to multifamily housing, regardless of the
quality of the building. Scotland has a longer history
of building tenements, and there, the term
never acquired this same stigma and is still used to
refer to multifamily, multistory urban housing.
Historical Evolution
English and American tenement houses developed
as a building type during the Industrial Revolution
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
in response to the rapid urbanization and
industrialization that brought many workers into
cities. Lack of affordable transportation in this
period meant the working classes needed to reside
within walking distance of employment. As cities
grew and industries expanded, cities became
increasingly congested, and real estate prices rose
accordingly. Land for housing, especially affordable
working-class housing, became scarce while
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working-class populations continued to grow, creating
a severe housing shortage and leading many
profit-seeking builders to erect inexpensive speculative
housing.
While all European cities were faced with housing
shortages for the working classes through the
nineteenth century, the problem was exacerbated
in England and the United States, where there was
no existing tradition of building multistory apartment
houses. As the urban working class grew,
more of the middle and upper classes moved to the
periphery, leaving their existing single-family
houses to be converted into multifamily tenement
housing. There was little demolition and reconstruction;
more often landlords adapted existing
structures to house as many families as possible.
Every available corner became space to rent,
including attics and cellars. In New York and
Boston, tides caused regular flooding of cellars,
but cellars were still popular spaces to let because
they were cool in summer and warm in winter.
As demand continued, speculative builders
erected purpose-built multifamily housing on all
available scraps of land, including the back yards
of existing structures. Desire for profits drove these
first tenement designs. Each building often filled
90 percent or more of the lot with as many stories
as legally possible. Individual units were small to
create the greatest number of rentals. The neighborhoods
containing these tenements quickly
became congested, especially as families rented two
or three rooms and sublet one of them to others.
Tenement Legislation
Before 1850, building legislation was limited, if
not nonexistent, in British, European, and American
cities. Laws that were enacted were rarely enforced.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the effects of population
growth and the overcrowded tenement
houses created slums, forcing reformers to grapple
with legislation as a way to exert control over the
rapidly decaying built environment. Demands for
improved housing arose from concerns for public
safety, fire, and disease, threats that were particularly
associated with the poor living conditions in overcrowded
neighborhoods. Building codes, because
they imposed restrictions that most often increased
construction costs or reduced building size, diminished
the potential profits for developers. They,