Talk:Townhouse

UK centric
This article is rather UK-centric, which is ok, but this should either be explicitly indicated in the first line or two. Alternately, it should be expanded to include references to townhouses in other countries.

I agree but the only info I have is about Britain and Ireland. I am hoping others who know about other examples will add them. That is how wiki works. FearÉIREANN 17:53, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Georgian townhouse

Hmmm. Seems to deal only with a somewhat archaic usage. Most modern urban development promotes 'townhouses' only loosely related to the original sense (see Chelsea Harbour, for instance) Icundell 21:40, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * And its accuracy is dubious even in those terms. There is an overlap between town house (or a "house in town") and terraced house which is inappropriately denied. I think the blunt statement about World War I is also rather misleading. Oliver Chettle 00:17, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten it to reflect the above three points. Oliver Chettle 00:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I've always thought, as an architectural term in the UK, one of the defining features of a 'townhouse' is that it is a terraced building over three storeys, rather than a regular terraced property which is usually two storeys only. With the increase in land usage density in the UK at the moment, there is a trend for building upwards rather than outwards, and so more newly built three storey terraced houses are being described by the developers as 'townhouses'. DWaterson 19:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree with the above- I was surprised not to see this meaning mentioned, to me it is the defining feature. It may be an historically idiotic definition but I think where I'm from (Blackburn, Lancashire) it's the normal meaning... 129.234.38.158 (talk) 23:59, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Rowhouse redirects here, yet for the US discussion, it mentions nothing about actual rowhouses and instead focuses on more townhouse/sub-urban style of townhomes...skipping over the actual historic rowhouses found in baltimore/philly/dc/boston and even brownstones and stuff from nyc. this stuff needs to be added if rowhouse is to be redirected here... jtowns 09:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)Brian is wrong.

Under the Canada and United State section, I came across this sentence: "The distinction between dwellings called just "apartments" or "condos" is that these townhouses usually consist of multiple families, usually multiple floors." I can't really understand what that means. Don't apartments usually have multiple families and multiple floors? Perhaps the distinction is supposed to be that each unit in the townhouse has multiple floors, but I'm not really sure. CopaceticOpus (talk) 13:45, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge?
This should definitely be merged with the article terraced house they're practically the same ," said The Person Who Is Strange. ~Yup. It's all true.  Click here for more.  My page is outdated, but there are a lot of boxes. 04:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Dinamik-bot
How do I get the Dinamik-bot to stop adding an interwiki link to no:Bygård? A Bygård is a tenement (or an apartment building, not a townhouse) TorW (talk) 21:21, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Split-off British Isles usage
I have split content relating to British Isles usage of term "Townhouse" to new article Townhouse (Great Britain) & have renamed this original article Townhouse (North America). This is because the US/Canadian & Brit usages are too disparate to co-exist within the same article. The usage in Asia is of course not a native usage but is presumably used for expat English speakers & cosmopolitan native asians, and follows US/Canadian usage, which in the British Isles is a form of marketing-speak designed to give modest housing a glamourous cachet. (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 18:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC))
 * It would be appreciated if you would WP:FIXDABLINKS. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:50, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Lead is confusing
The problem is that the first sentence does not make it clear if it is referring to the term or the usage.
 * "A townhouse, or town house, as used in North America, Asia, Australia, South Africa and parts of Europe, is a type of medium-density housing in cities,"

For example if it is a term then apart from the UK, Ireland and Malta "townhouse" is not used because it is an English language term. It may be used in other countries, but if so then it is a translation, so what does "and parts of Europe" mean?

If it is about the physical buildings then you will probably find them in parts of cities and towns in almost every country in the world. You certainly find townhouses throughout the UK, it is just that they are not called townhouses outside of the adverts in estate agents' windows. So why "parts of Europe" and not "parts of North America, Asia, Australia, South Africa and Europe"? -- PBS (talk) 13:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Redirect to Terrace house
"Townhouse" is the American word for what they call a Terrace house in England and elsewhere. Everything covered here can be (and I believe already is) covered at Terrace house. The sourcing in this article is terrible. It's been tagged for months, and somebody proposed doing this very same thing several years ago, above. For this reason, I propose turning this into a redirect to Terrace house. Does anybody object? Levivich (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You actually wrote this some minutes after you had already done the redirect, and after I had reverted you! Yes, I object, and I have already been thanked for reverting you. This is absolutely not the way to handle an article that has been around for years, worked on by many people, and averages over 500 hits pd (and btw especially by an editor celebrating their 1 month anniversary of their registration). You just did the redirect with the edit summary "Boldly redirecting this page to Terraced house. This article has little or no sourcing. It is entirely duplicative of Terraced house, and the entire content of this article is handled much better in the US section of Terraced house.)", and then did nothing at Terraced house to integrate the content, for example the hatnote with the link to Townhouse (Great Britain), and other stuff.  You should propose the merge in the proper way, as per Merging, and expect some opposition. If a merge were done, a disam page for "townhouse" would probably be needed. Johnbod (talk) 11:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ”No permission or discussion is needed if you think the merge is uncontroversial; just do it (but it might get reverted).” - WP:MERGE. I boldly merged, you reverted, I posted to the talk page. That’s the order of WP:BRD, isn’t it? Anyway, thanks for sharing your objections. I’ll post the merge proposal later today, and we can continue the discussion there. Cheers! Levivich (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: I started a discussion at the Terraced house talk page. Levivich (talk) 02:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Merge from Tenement
The articles seem to describe the same concept. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:40, 3 December 2023 (UTC)


 * In my experience a tenement is a specifically lower class tenant/worker (in a feudal sense) multi residence that has a very specific history hundreds of years old. This then began to morph from the original use from about 1850-1950 when fundamental changes in the land owning class in the UK was happening. But I do see also that the "term" seems to have emigrated to the United States and was the early name for what would then become true townhouses (owned by individuals) - even if that individual then rented it out, and even if one individual bought many of them. 70.48.45.84 (talk) 02:26, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think tenements are, historically, much more dilapidated and poorly maintained, typically built for poor residents. They were largely built during the Industrial Revolution to accommodate the great population growth as a result of urbanization. Townhouses, however, are much better built and have a bit of better connotation to their name. So, overall, even though they're quite similar, they are two different, separate concepts. SonOfYoutubers (talk) 02:52, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Tenements are a very different thing to townhouses. They're a predominantly Scottish thing, and I'd never really encountered them before living in Scotland. Tenements have their own cultural and historical background. Townhouse on the other hand is a term I've almost never heard, but then I spend no time in London. To me a "Townhouse" is a very different type of dwelling - much more up-market than a tenement (which I see is reflected on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townhouse_(Great_Britain) ) - that's COMPLETELY different from a tenement. You may as well be proposing to merge the article for "Van" with the article for "Car".