Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Standard of living context

When you teach about the UK, students in the US recognize many similarities as well as some differences between the countries and their government and politics.

There are times when it's good to remember that there are ways in which the Britain is not the USA. Here's one.

Room to swing a cat? Hardly
The UK builds the smallest homes in Europe, according to the government's adviser on architecture. How do British new-builds stack up internationally?

The sofa won't fit into the living room. There's not enough room for children to play in the kitchen as you cook. And where's the recycling bin meant to go?

These are some of the complaints from residents of new-build developments surveyed by Cabe, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.

The floor area and room sizes are the smallest in Europe - the average room in a newly built dwelling in France is 26.9 square metres, compared with 15.8 square metres in the UK - and, the graph below [click on it to see it larger] shows how British new-builds are less than half the size of those in the United States and Australia...



What You Need to Know

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