A Literature Review of Early Housing Units: History, Evolution, Economy and Functions

Housing and its evolution constitutes an important study for all councils. This paper limns the encyclopaedic timeline of housing from the times of pre-urban dwellings of nomadic, semi-nomadic, and sedentary agricultural societies to the present day, while focusing on the chunks of a comprehensive architecture, history and anthropology. A detailed literature review made it evident that early urban dwellings were insular and extended around an internal patio. Lately, these housing forms lasted in the original metropolitan house arrangements in the Islamic world, China, India, Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent like Indus valley civilization. After the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a drift towards peripheral house forms which engaged the early forms of urban settlement in the world today. The study also revealed that the Middle Age dwellings functioned as both residences and work places, yet with the passage of time the buildings became more functionalized, thus dividing dwellings and work places from each other. With the advent of the industrial revolution, there were remarkable variations in the suburban expansion of housing in the western world that became isolated along socioeconomic outlines and the housing types diverged with less populated, single-family communities at one extreme and densely populated, high rise, multi-family apartments at the other extreme. It is concluded that the side effects of the American transportation system have resulted into rigorous peripheral dwellings which includes ineffective use of land, air contamination and the city degeneration suggesting solutions based on a rich variety of historical examples.