Overcreowding is probably the word you are searching for. There are some studies but the idea is usually a refrence of this many square mts/ft per person and how kitchen and bathroom have to be if shared. WHO has it’s own and many governments too. There is a cultural factor too for example Japanese ppl is much more accustomed to smaller spaces rather than US ppl living in suburbs.

There’s lots of architectural guidance, building codes, etc. normally linked to number of people in the household. But it’s all pretty damn relative, both culturally and individually.

When I lived in the city, I was pretty comfortable with a small appartment, because I spent a lot of time out of my home in cultural spaces. Now I live in the country, and in city-terms our house is gigantic for just the two of us. Netherthless, we’re continuing to convert old out buildings into more space because the demands on our home are much higher and we have lots of unused space.

Not only do we live there, but we’ve got jobs that involve a lot of remote working, and it’s also a building site/workshop as we renovate and make our own fixtures and furniture. Plus, because it’s more remote, we want guest bedrooms and extra space so that guests can come and stay for a while without feeling cramped. Then we’ve got animals, who bring their own clutter, and we also want to create a guesthouse that we can rent to tourists. Even without those extra requirements, we choose to sleep in adjacent, but seperate, bedrooms because we have sleep issues. And I know that is a crazy luxury that we wouldn’t have been able to afford in the city, but when space is cheap, there’s no real reason not to.

I know that my example is pretty extreme, but everyone’s needs are different. I have friends who basically live in one room and love that, because everything is within easy reach and they don’t want to have guests. But I know it would be depressing and claustrophobic for others. Sharing an apartment with four adult strangers is a different experience from a family home with four children.

I think there can be rules (you can’t claim something is a bedroom if it’s smaller than 6sqm) but there isn’t a one size fits all solution.

My house is 0.4 dam², and I find it cramped for one person. It would be more acceptable as an apartment, but as a house there’s no space to store tools for maintenance, let alone have a workshop for hobbies. I’d be able to use all of 1 dam², at least.

I think it greatly depends on how big the family is. If someone has six kids, they need rooms for those kids, and that would be too much for people with two or fewer kids. Even if you take away the dumb “girls need their own private locking space with two doors between them and any male in the house” rules.

Going to the other extreme, I’ve heard of prisons shut down and renovated as affordable housing. I think if you were going to make prison cells into housing for free people though, you would have to give those people control of the doors, and while I suppose a prison probably has a centralised location to cook for the entire population, you would probably want more local cooking on each housing unit, if it’s a big one with more than one. And the doors would be opened by the residents, I’m thinking with RFID or NFC cards. You can run power to each room through the water closets, i.e. where the plumbing goes. But none of these would be good for families, only singles. This would be a better solution for homeless people who don’t have anyone, and possibly for those who need help, as you could have social services, mental health type people go there instead of guards, to care for the people and their needs. Yes, almost like an insane asylum, but you give the residents full agency. No lockdowns or anything like that. Just people with basic living conditions being helped as needed, with conditions that are livable but would make anyone want to seek something better outside, anything, even if it’s just a single-wide trailer in tornado alley, just for the room and the space.

My house is 90m², though the upstairs has a low ceiling and mostly just functions as a bedroom, so it’s more like 60m² in practice. While I wouldn’t want to raise a family here, I still find it perfectly sufficient for two people. It also comes with the additional benefits of having fewer rooms to heat, clean, and renovate. I also like that my yard feels a lot bigger due to the smaller footprint of the house itself.

That being said, I would prefer it to be slightly bigger. Maybe one extra room and a bigger-than-1.5m x 1.5m bathroom.

It is my obwervatoin that as houses approach 325m2 people start looking for more luxury in the space vs more. Beyond that more space isn’t needed unless you are rich enough to win the cities largest mansion competition and so people who are rich but not rich enough to compete don’t go bigger even though they could.

Live in a pup tent and you want a bigger one, but in a bigger tent you start thinking lights or a cot before bigger.

there is of course a lot of variation. you can be happy in anything - but you will want more anyway until you get to about 325

Short answer. No.

People vary too much, and have wildly different ideas about how much is ‘enough.’

This line is from a novel, but there’s a lot of truth in it. “If I was on my own, I could live in a pup tent. When I have to live with one other person I need a 30 room mansion.”

Other people would be happy in a small place if they had access to different things; parks, gyms; museums; libraries; schools.

And, a world where all the hosues were similar size would look pretty boring.

Our house is ~100 m², but legally that doesn’t count the cellar or finished attic. It feels small for a family of five. So maybe 20m² as a minimum, even counting communal bathrooms and galley and laundry.

It’s been my experience that the areas most often referred to as “bad parts of town” are the areas with the most people squeezed in without consideration for anything else. Small homes can be fine of there are other outlets in the area such as community centers, parks, libraries, stores, etc. Without those you just concentrate too much human suffering in one area.

I don’t think I’m leaning too far out this window when I say: no, there isn’t an optimal size. It depends on so many factors. How many people? Is this urban or rural? What’s there neighborhood like? Facilities, public transport, doctors, grocery stores, etc.? What’s the crime rate like? How long is the commute to work? People have different priorities and make different choices as a result.

I think there’s reasonable high and low bounds as you say, but i think there’s a lot of factors as others have said. Income, culture, and cost of living are big factors. If you live in the USA and basically need to do a weekly shop at Costco for a family of 4 you need a lot more space than a single person who is able to eat out for nearly every meal in a dense urban area with affordable and moderately healthy street food (so a tiny hot plate suffices as a kitchen). But a family of 4 living in an urban area with lots of shops might do the groceries on the way home from work several times a week and then the refrigerator doesn’t need to be enormous.

Lifestyle plays into it as well. If you have a serious hobby you need space for it - whether it’s sewing, machining, fitness, or gaming. If you live on a rural property, you need space to keep chickens and a lawn tractor and a lot more necessities than someone in a flat in London.