No, but we have a lot of newer "row house" condos all over these parts. There's a TOD development adjacent to my neighborhood. Some interesting observations. The people in these row houses almost never use their tiny backyards. They also own cars but do not use their garages, instead using them for storage because 1500 square feet apparently isn't enough space to store Americans' junk (especially when you don't have attics or basements). I don't think I could live in a row house unless I was on the end, with 3 sides with windows.

now that is a much more straightforward definition. much more useful than "this one looks pretty old, so it's a rowhouse, but that one looks pretty new, so it's a townhouse".

and then getting bogged down in the mind-numbing hair-splitting of "but was that detached garage in back originally built for horses or for cars, because that makes a big difference for some reason" :???:

With all the mind-numbing hair-splitting between which is which just further reinforces what you said of blurry lines. :haha:

It's a rowhome, but this a bit of a po-tay-to, po-tah-to situation. It's a 130+ year old rowhome built for a larger and perhaps slightly wealthier family, but it was still built as middle class housing.

When I think of townhouses in Philadelphia, they're either older rowhome dwellings that were clearly built for the wealthy, or they're modern / frequently high end versions of rows.

Ultimately, I'd saw that most townhouses are rows, but most rows are not townhouses.

All of that is clear as mud, I'm sure.

thats funny. that sounds like my neighbors. im in sellwood and alot the folks in our development either own two cars (units only have a one car garage) or they insisted on forcing their living urban agenda on their wife two teenage kids! two of my neighbors didnt even bother using their garage for one of their vehicles. they just put a couch in there a let teenage sons have a hangout. whats the point. just buy a house in tigard if yer gonna live that way. ive got one gf, one car, one cat, one garage stall. plenty of room.

Well here I am on page 8 to say yes, I live in one currently, and am typing this message from inside it.

It's one of these.

Immediately recognizable as DC!

Yes.
https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram...om&_nc_cat=100
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3iJF-Ajuuv/

Cincinnati is kind of unusual in that although it has a bunch of true rowhouses:

EXAMPLE 1

EXAMPLE 2

EXAMPLE 3

EXAMPLE 4

... a vast majority of the other "rowhoues" have the standard rowhouse form but are acutally detached from one another:

EXAMPLE

EXAMPLE

... And on top of all of that, most of Cincinnati's basin has what might look like rowhouses at first glance, but are actually TENEMENTS. Cincy probably has the highest concentration of tenements in the country outside of New York and maybe Boston.

I lived in THIS almost-rowhouse when I was in university, as well as THIS ONE, which shares one wall, but not the other one, although the two next door also share a wall.

On the terminology... townhouse is used more often than rowhouse, but I feel like here it’s partly a question of scale and age.

The term “town house” meant an aristocratic family’s base in London, where they came to live for the social season (with the rest of the year spent at the country estate). There are townhouses in places like Belgravia and Kensington, but it would be odd to call a much smaller and newer attached Victorian rowhouse in Zone 3 a “townhouse” for historical reasons.

I think it's interesting how rowhouses seem to be mostly housing for the lower classes in some cities, but not others.

Why are these ”tenements”? Because they are multi-family with interior connection?

If so, Pittsburgh and it’s surroundings still has tons of “tenements”... and demolished swaths of them in the Hill District adjacent to downtown in the late 50s/early 60s.

Where are PGH's concentrated? When I think of Pittsburgh, I'm mostly familiar with the more Pennsylvania-esque rowhouse areas like the Mexican War Streets or the South Side Flats. There are a lot of fantastic "apartment buildings" up the hill in Oakland, Shadyside, and East Liberty, but almost all of those were constructed too late to be considered true tenements.

The City of Vancouver defines the difference between townhouse and rowhouses as a question of tenure. Rowhouses are freehold where you own the land it sits on, while townhouses are owned as strata properties where you own a share of the land along with all the other owners of the development. The actual building form is considered to be the same.

Kind of how like the difference between an apartment and a condo is if you rent or own it - the actual housing typology is the same.

As to the actual thread question, I've never lived in a rowhouse and don't know that I ever will. Vancouver's original building typology is narrow wooden single family homes on 33ft wide lots. Rowhouses/townhouses are mostly seen in new sprawl, and almost always in large 40unit+ complexes with internal private roads. Attached ground-oriented housing fronting onto public streets essentially doesn't exist here. I could see myself moving into a townhouse complex one day, but I really wouldn't consider that to be within the spirit of what this thread's talking about.

I don't know whether it counts but I've lived in an attached building of mine for a year. That's the spirit of the question, right? No back yard, no space between properties, building touches the lot lines on all sides including the sidewalk. (I have retail at street level in that building but that didn't have any impact on my living. Functionally it's the same as a multiplex rowhouse.)