Very interesting article, but a tad muddled, I thought.

That doesn’t mean no one is cooking.

Hmm, it seemed to me that that was exactly what it meant in the rest of the article, that you only cook occasionally so you go downstairs and use the communal kitchen. And I guess you also hope nobody else wants to cook that day. Warming up a delivered meal isn't cooking.

This appears to be a pretty specific group of people, the kind of tech folks who mostly exist on soylent, for instance, but I kind of hope it's true, since I may be moving into an old house with a very tiny kitchen space in the next couple of years and I'd love to have more options for smaller appliances.

I wonder how many of these (younger) people have families with small children... This sounds like something for a single person or a "double income no children" couple.

The "dorm" comparison supports that impression.

DS1 is among the "digital workers who eat free at work" (he works for Google). When we were apartment hunting for him, there were a lot of places he knocked off the list because the kitchens were too small (he likes to cook). But now that he's accustomed to eating nearly all his meals on Google campus, that's not as much of an issue for him. He doesn't need a kitchen that functions for every day cooking like we do; he needs a kitchen that's large enough for the occasional meal. That includes making Thanksgiving dinner with his girlfriend.

I think the micro-kitchen, as the article dubs it, fits his and other digital workers' needs to a T. It would not suit DH and my needs, nor the needs of the vast majority us TKO GWers.

The micro kitchen has been around for as long as New York City exists. My best friend lived in Manhattan her entire life and she's rarely cooked. Her fridge was filled with condiments and her stove was pristine. She ordered out or eat out every day at tiny hole in the wall places.

She had two large bulging folders of menus that delivered. All her neighbors in the high rise did the same and there were a lot of families with small children.

The only thing she did in the kitchen was juicing and feed her 5 cats. Hubby is on his own.

Interesting. In a somewhat recent thread on predicting trends, I predicted smaller kitchens. My prediction was soundly rejected. I do see it as a trend in exactly the kinds of markets described in that article especially due to the ever increasing cost of rent and ever decreasing overall square footage in rental units in tight urban areas.

The kitchen in our first house was 8 X 8 with two doors and while I felt constrained in buying kitchen gadgets because I had so little storage space, I never felt constrained in the kind or amount of food I could turn out.

@eam44 don't say fhat. I lost my waist for several years already.

I'm not sure that obesity is related to kitchen size but more to activity in the kitchen - what you eat or not.

I gained a lot of weight because I wasn't getting enough fresh food and I didn't eat much without a kitchen.

"Ok, don't shoot me, but I have wondered whether there's a correlation between bigger kitchens and bigger waistlines"

i found the complete opposite in my situation. I love prepping fresh, healthy food from scratch. We are frugal, with two little ones, and we rarely eat out. My temporary kitchen was my laundry room and the BBQ. I was so frustrated in the laundry room that we often ate out or ate convienence foods. The minute we moved back into the new kitchen, I began losing the "Reno weight", and have now completely lost it. For me, a spacious kitchen that is enjoyable to work in keeps the weight off!

I can speak from experience, as we live part time in that environment --- the outrageous real estate prices beget smaller apartments which have, of course, have smaller kitchens. The kitchen pictured at 400 Grove is really pretty typical (and laid out with form over function). Ours is pretty similar, just a big bigger, even though it is older. (Pet peeve: open shelving in a place screaming for space -- for anything, not just cooking).

Throughout the neighborhood are some small studio-only apartments, from 200 to 450 square feet that go for $100+ a sq ft per month. No one, not even these market-rate SROs, are ditching the classic elements of a kitchen. And yes, there are so many "internationally influenced homey restaurants" around (some in the ground floors, just like the article) that you can eat well and healthy for a reasonable cost via takeout.

Once you go up in price point (and square footage), you'll see bigger dining communal tables, larger kitchens, etc...

The main new thing I see is building a larger social kitchen available for reservation. Many apartment complexes (even in suburbia) have community rooms you can rent. Making one centered on a big kitchen makes perfect sense. A lot of times, these places come only with a catering kitchen.

OTH, shopping for fresh foods a few times a week rather than going to Costco -- hardly a new invention -- that's the way Europeans have done it for years.

Well, the picture in of the micro-kitchen in the article doesn't look all that small to me as my current kitchen is 13x9.5. Although I do have a separate pantry area that includes a beverage center so if you include that, I'm cheating by describing my kitchen as not much bigger than the one in the photo. Oh, well.

I don't think the size of the kitchen has anything to do with waistlines. My kitchen in my previous home was a tad bigger but it was dark, very little natural light and needed the lights on even on a bright, summer day, and I hated being in it. I used convenience, more processed foods a lot just so I could get done quickly. I spend more time on cooking now that I'm in a kitchen I enjoy being in and this translates into healthier meals, made from scratch, and it is rare that any type of convenience or processed food even gets purchased anymore. Our waistlines and our wallet are both in better shape.

In high-priced areas where real estate prices are sky-high, the micro-kitchen makes total sense to me. Although I don't understand giving up kitchen square footage to have a bigger bedroom. Why? To me, a bedroom is for two things and neither require much more room than it takes to walk around the bed and get to the closet. In markets where an apartment is $3,379/month (YIKES!!), I would be really cranky about paying that if I was paying for a big bedroom.

DS lives in an old Victorian divided into two units. His kitchen is so small he only has 24" of counter top , total. It's tucked into a hallway. Yet he loves to cook and makes daily meals. His wife bakes a lot of their bread. He has provided food for over fifty people in that postage stamp hallway of a kitchen.

I know a lot of people who have huge ,beautiful kitchens with the latest in shiny, state of the art, over sized appliances who barely know the difference between braise and broil. I know others who can turn out wonderful mouthwatering meals from tiny galley kitchens.

Small kitchens can actually be more efficient for the serious cook who doesn't want to be on exhibit or share tasks with others. The type of cook who provides the food and leaves the entertainment to others.

A smaller kitchen is for the cook, larger kitchens for entertaining and shared cooking ventures.

I know a lot of Gen Xers in my DS's age bracket (it's not just millennials) who have no desire for bigger is better. Many are excellent cooks since so many are real foodies. Like the article mentions, it's quality over quantity.