Tract housing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tract housing (also known as Cookie-Cutter Houses) is a style of housing development in which multiple identical, or nearly-identical, homes are built to create a community. Tract housing may encompass dozens of square miles of areas. Tract housing developments are typically found in American suburbs, modeled on the "Levittown" concept.
As a tract housing development only makes use of a few designs, labor costs are reduced because the home builders need not be skilled craftsmen. The builders need only learn the skills and movements of constructing a single home design, which can be applied to the other tract homes in the development. In addition, the materials used in the home may be ordered in bulk, reducing materials costs, because all of the homes will be constructed during one time period, and almost entirely from the same materials. Increasingly, components such as roof trusses are fabricated in factories and installed on site. These practices reduce the final price of the homes, and allow greater profits for the developers.
More sophisticated, architect-designed neighborhoods have changed the face of tract housing. Tract housing does not always look identical from the exterior; variations range from mass-produced homes with superficial, cosmetic differences to multiple variations in footprint, roof form, and materials. The newest neighborhoods include so many builder- or buyer-selected options that it becomes difficult to find two homes alike.
The concept of tract housing is occasionally mocked in American popular culture, as the basis of a supposed sterile and dispiriting suburbia.
