, Columnist
A Field Guide to Boxy, Stumpy Apartment Buildings
Understanding the new look of America’s cities requires being able to tell your five-over-ones from your Texas doughnuts. So here goes.
Who you callin’ stumpy?
Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
The U.S. is in the midst of (and may be just passing the peak of) a record-setting large-apartment-building construction boom.
Not a record-setting apartment construction boom, mind you. Apartments — to be more precise, housing units in buildings of five units or more — have, since 2015, been going up at a faster pace than at any time in the 1990s and 2000s, but that pace is still well below the peak rates of the 1970s and 1980s. It is only housing units in buildings of 50 units or more that have been going up faster than ever.