living small nyc, tiny apartments, michael bloomberg
AP Images
Mayor Michael Bloomberg reveals the new Living Small NYC project.
With big city dreams come small city apartments.
Urban dwellers must face the reality that cities are becoming increasingly over-crowded which means that housing is in short supply.
In New York City, 1.8 million one- and two-person households exist, but there are only 1 million studio and one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan, leaving a housing shortage.
The surge of tech wizards descending on San Francisco and the Bay area has caused rent in the city to skyrocket 22 percent since 2008, according to The New York Times.
London, too, is dealing with a housing crisis, where 1 in 10 people are on housing waiting lists, according to The Guardian.
In China, the firm Dragonomics estimated nearly 50 million of China's 230 million urban households live in "substandard quarters often lacking their own toilet and kitchen." To combat this issue, China would have to build 10 million apartments a year until 2030.
Clearly there is an urban housing crisis happening around the world, and it's forcing cities to rethink their approaches to real estate. But there's a solution: micro-apartments.